Alan Roberts

Alan Roberts (born 19 July 1946) aka "Alan Price-Roberts", is a TV presenter, producer, actor and artist originally from Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Broadcasting history

His radio debut was at the age of 19 when he had a short stint on Radio England as Rob Allen where he also did a couple of programmes on sister station Britain Radio under his real name. Alan was the Station Programme Director with The Voice of Peace during a highly publicised journey through the Suez Canal in January 1976. Founded by Jewish businessman Abie Nathan, the "Peace Ship" broadcast highly successfully to millions of Israeli and Arab listeners from the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tel Aviv. It was staffed by a multi-national group of mainly Christian DJ's and crew members, and gave many astute young broadcasters their first taste of radio.

He first started broadcasting on British radio in 1977 at BBC Radio Oxford, where he was part of a whole generation of new British Broadcasting luminaries that included Timmy Mallett, David Freeman, Martin Stanford, Gary Richardson, Guy Michelmore and Peter Grant.

After several years with BBC at Radio Oxford, Alan joined Swansea Sound replacing John Sachs. He then moved to Severn Sound where he was Head of Music and their first voice on air. Subsequently he moved to GWR FM as afternoon presenter, replacing Paul Phear who, like John Sachs, had left to join Capital Radio.

In 1989, Roberts joined BBC Radio 2 as the producer of "The Gloria Hunniford Show", then Ed Stewart and Derek Jameson. He also produced the final "Sounds Easy" series with David Jacobs and regular series with Benny Green, Alan Titchmarsh and Martin Kelner. Alan also produced several documentary series including Dusty Springfield, Cher, Elkie Brooks, Decca Records Story and "The Vipers Tale" a three part documentary about the life of his good friend Wally Whyton.

In 1996, Alan Roberts left Radio 2 and joined the BBC World Service where he produced Bob Holness, Tommy Vance, Sarah Ward and the last two years of "Country Style" with Wally Whyton before he died in 1997. Alan returned to the airwaves for a short while as the presenter of "Country Style" on the BBC World Service before the programme, which all agreed was Wally's programme, was finally ended.

Alan Roberts moved to Torquay in 2000 and set up Quay Productions, a small scale production company making local history, art and travel programmes for digital television networks and occasional documentaries for BBC network and local radio.

Acting

As an actor, Roberts has appeared in "Robin of Sherwood" for HTV, "Boon" for Central TV, and "Reasonable Force" and "Casualty", for BBC TV. He has directed a concert and documentary television programme on Claudia Hirshfeld for German TV.

In 2005, Alan returned to painting and makes just occasional radio programmes usually for BBC local radio.

Trivia

He is an active supporter of Torquay United FC.