Mike Read

Not to be confused with Mike Reid.

Mike Read
Born	1 March 1947 (1947-03-01) (age 64) Manchester, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	radio host, television presenter, writer
Known for	Saturday Superstore; Radio 1

Michael David Kenneth Read (born 1 March 1947, Manchester) is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter.

Early life

Read is the only child of a publican, but the family moved from Manchester to Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, when he was still an infant. He attended Woking Grammar School followed by a sixth-form college. He was an estate agent for a while and recorded under various names including Mickey Manchester. ^[1]

Broadcasting career

Read's professional broadcasting career began in March 1976 at Reading's Radio 210, where he co-hosted a show with Steve Wright, before joining Radio Luxembourg late in 1977.

He joined BBC Radio One at the end of 1978 and was soon presenting the night time programme before John Peel's show, where he championed new groups and featured live sessions. He was one of the most popular Roadshow presenters during his time at the station and took over the Breakfast Show on Monday 5 January 1981, a spot notable for his on-air decision in 1984 not to play the Frankie Goes to Hollywood single "Relax" due to supposedly obscene lyrics.^{[citation needed]}

Following on from his five-year stint on Radio 1's Breakfast Show, Read took over a Sunday morning show in 1986, from 10am-12.30pm. In 1987, he moved to Saturday Mornings from 10am-1pm, and also to a Sunday afternoon show from 1-3pm, where he played classic tracks. In addition he hosted Round Table and later went back to it as the renamed Singled Out on Friday evenings, where musicians and disc jockeys would review the new single releases.

Read's Saturday morning show ended in September 1988 and his Sunday afternoon oldies shows finished in January 1989, when Alan Freeman rejoined the station to host an oldies version of Pick of the Pops. From January 1989 to September 1990 Read presented a weekly show called The Mike Read Collection which went out on Monday evenings, and still remained on the Friday panel show Singled Out (which had by then gone back to its original name of Round Table). He remained in this slot until 1991.

Read currently (from 1st September 2011) presents a three-hour Saturday Breakfast Show on Covent Garden Radio where he shares his recent conversations with people in the world of entertainment and music, information about what's on in London generally and Covent Garden specifically, and his favourite music tracks.

After Radio One

Read left Radio 1 in 1991 and moved to Capital Gold, (then a London-only station), presenting his Mike Read Collection, which went out on a Sunday night, before taking on the weekday Drivetime show in mid-1992, where he remained until he left the station in late 1995. Also in 1992 he was heard on BBC Radio 2 presenting special shows looking back at Cliff Richard's career and playing his music. In addition to a daily show on Capital Gold, he joined Classic FM, where he presented a weekend show. In 1996, he presented the networked Breakfast Show on Classic Gold stations around the UK. From September 1999, he presented the Breakfast Show on Jazz FM in the North of England, then in 2001 joined Spirit FM in Chichester, initially presenting a Sunday show from 10am to 1pm before moving to a weekday afternoon show from 2 to 3pm, playing music from various featured years.

Between 2003 and 2004, Read presented a Saturday morning show on the Magic network around the UK. In May 2005, he became the weekday morning presenter on Big L 1395, a station modelled on the 1960s pirate radio station. He has also done occasional stints on Talksport. In November 2008 he took time out from Big L to present the 3pm-7pm Drivetime show on Hull-based station KCFM for a week (10–14 November) as cover for Shaun Tilley. Mike became the third ex-Radio 1 DJ to broadcast on the station, along with Tony Blackburn and Paul Burnett. From 17 November 2008, he launched a 10am-2pm weekday programme slot on Star 107.5 covering Gloucestershire and the Malverns. Read recently presented a weekday show between 5am and 7am (Feb 09 - Sept 09) on internet radio station Wight FM (this was voicetracked). He also presented a regular slot called "Dancing Through The Decades" on Saturday evenings between 6 and 10pm on KCFM.

In October 2009 Read was reported to be part of a team of veteran DJs forming a new radio station One Gold to rival the BBC.^[2]

In November 2009 Mike began hosting a mid-morning show on the TotalStar network in the west of England.^[3]

Read has won many 'broadcaster of the year' awards including Sonys, Smash Hits and Carl Alan Awards.^{[citation needed]}

From 1 November 2010, he returned to BigL with a daily show from 8am-12pm Mon-Fri.

From July 2011, He has hosted the Golden Hour on both More Radio (Swindon & Wiltshire) and More Star (Cheltenham & Gloucestershire), weekdays at 9am and repeated at 9pm

Television

He combined his radio work with a second career as a TV presenter, hosting the popular 1980s Saturday morning programme Saturday Superstore, as well as the Saturday Night music game show Pop Quiz, which regularly got audiences of 10 million and featured rock and pop stars answering music trivia questions. The show spawned board game and computer game spin-offs. The penultimate episode of Pop Quiz in 1984 featured a face-off between pop bands Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, and in 1994 he returned to host a one-off special of the show for the anniversary of Top Of The Pops. The format was revived twice, firstly in 1994 by the BBC with Chris Tarrant as the host, and then in June 2008 a revamped Pop Quiz, filmed without a studio audience and in a pub (rather than a television studio) in which the participants were members of the public, aired on Red TV. This was, again hosted by Read.

Additionally, he presented UK Gold's TV genre quiz Goldmaster in 1997, having also presented Top of the Pops on many occasions between 1978 and 1989, and hosted Yorkshire Television's children's series Pop Quest from 1977 to 1979.

In 2004, Read was one of the contestants recruited for the jungle-based ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! though his stay in the Australian outback was short-lived — he was the first celebrity to be evicted by the viewing public. He is a regular newspaper reviewer for Sky News.

Music and arts

Songwriting

Read wrote and performed the pop-punk song "High Rise" (based on his Radio One intro jingle) in 1979 under the guise of "The Trainspotters". Read wrote lyrics to Simon May's TRIC Award-winning Trainer TV theme. The resulting UK Top 30 single, "More to Life", was performed by Cliff Richard. Read provided a guest rap on Slade's 1991 UK Top 30 hit Radio Wall Of Sound.

After I'm a Celebrity..., Read recorded a charity single when he lyrically re-worked Hank Mizell's Jungle Rock and as The Jungle Boys (with Neil 'Razor' Ruddock and Lord Charlie Brocket had a UK Top 30 hit single. The follow-up, which made the top 75 was a new version of Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime. In 2005, Read's song Grief Never Grows Old featured on a charity recording in aid of victims of the 2004 Tsunami. Performed by an ensemble of artists named One World Project, the single reached Number 4 in the UK singles chart.

Read has written music to accompany many poems written by John Betjeman. Thirty of these songs were recorded by artists including Cliff Richard, David Essex, and Gene Pitney for the 2006 various artists' album Words/Music, and subsequently re-released in 2008 as a double CD titled Sound of Poetry.

Musicals

Read has had many musicals on stage, including Young Apollo, Oscar, (which closed after one performance), Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Cliff - The Musical (which closed after three months) and Ricky Nelson...Teenage Idol. He took one of the lead roles in the Cliff Musical, touring with it and appearing for the three month run in the West End at The Prince of Wales Theatre. His Betjeman show, based on his many collaborations with Sir John Betjeman form the basis of a show that has occasionally been staged for charities, including The Royal Marsden Hospital and Children With Leukaemia. Eminent actors appearing in his musicals and shows have included Nyree Dawn Porter, Brian Glover, Colin Baker, Anton Rogers, Jeremy Irons, Alvin Stardust and Bernard Cribbins.

Books and poetry

He was one of the founder editors of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, the best-known UK chart reference book, and also co-wrote many of the other Guinness music books.

In his own right he is the author of 35 books, the most current being Forever England a new biography of Rupert Brooke, Major to Minor: The Rise and Fall of the Songwriter (2000) and, with Richard Havers, Read's Musical Reciter (2004), a collection of trivia from the music business. His poetry books include The Aldermoor Poems, Elizabethan Dragonflies, A Room With Books and the latest, New Poems for Old Paintings. Also on the Poetry front he has edited and supplied biographies for the two best-selling poetry books 100 Favourite Poems and 100 Favourite Humorous Poems and contributed to many of the Poets' England series. He has just completed his first crime novel and is currently working on a second.

Contemporary art

In October 2007, Read embarked on a career in the world of contemporary art, with a gallery of works in the medium of confectionery entitled Choc Art. The work includes recreations of album sleeves by The Beatles, his own take on the iconic map of the London Underground, and works based on the paintings of L.S. Lowry [1]. By the beginning of 2008 he has created over 25 canvasses. Two galleries had exhibitions of his Choc Art at the latter end of 2007 in Surrey and Hampshire and another in Essex in January 2008.

Personal life and ventures

Stalkers

Read had a stalker who had changed her name to Blue Tulip Rose Read and believed that she was married to him. Rose appeared in a 1996 Channel 4 documentary as part of a fame theme night.

Politics

Having spoken three times at Conservative Party conferences, including in 2006 entertaining guests at a Tory conference dinner with a ten minute political rap,^[4] Read claims he was asked to run for the Conservative Party nomination for the London Mayoral elections in 2008.^[5] His article announcing that he was instead putting his energies behind Boris Johnson's ultimately successful candidacy, published on The Guardian's Comment is Free blog on 17 July 2007, attracted a then record 1,132 comments, most of them derisive.

The Rupert Brooke Society

In 1999, Read founded the Rupert Brooke Society of which he was Chairman for a few years as well as editing the Society's twice-yearly magazine and creating a museum at The Orchard Grantchester with Robin Callan.

2009 Christmas Charity Single

Mike Read promoted a Christmas Charity Single - released on 6 December 2009 called "My Christmas Card To You". Proceeds were promised to 'The Shooting Star Children's Hospice'. The single was written by Mike Read, Elliott Frisby and Roy Wood of Wizzard. The music video also featured Dave Hill of Slade, David Hamilton and Mr. Christmas ^[6] The single failed to chart, and at its peak was the 80,397th most popular track on amazon.co.uk. It is unclear how much money the project raised for charity.

References

1. ^ Chalmers, Robert (17 October 2004). "Mike Read: Wilde man". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/mike-read-wilde-man-543588.html. Retrieved 2011-03-09. 
2. ^ Fryer, Jane; Clements, Jo (1 October 2009). "Radio GaGa? Not us, pop pickers: With a combined age of 400, these veteran DJs are set to unleash a rock'n'roll revolution". London: Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1217271/Radio-GaGa-Not-pop-pickers-With-combined-age-400-veteran-DJs-set-unleash-rocknroll-revolution.html#ixzz0SgyISSGO. 
3. ^ "Mike Read joins Star 107.5". http://www.radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?item.4081.17. Retrieved 2010-04-17. 
4. ^ "Mike Reads 10-minute rap", The Independent, 5 October 2006
5. ^ "I'm Backing Boris", Guardian, 17 July 2007
6. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGQeM2iNVlY

External links

• Mike Read Online*
• Mike Read's Radio Station on the Costa Blanca, Spain. OneGOLD Radio*
• My Christmas Card To You Music Video - Released 06/12/2009*
• Big L Radio London International website
• Pop Quiz at the Internet Movie Database

Media offices
Preceded by Dave Lee Travis	BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show Presenter 1981–1986	Succeeded by Mike Smith

Persondata
Name	Read, Mike
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1 March 1947
Place of birth	Manchester, England
Date of death
Place of death