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Michael Aspel
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Michael Terence Aspel, OBE (born 12 January 1933) is an English journalist and television presenter. He has been a high-profile TV personality in the United Kingdom since the 1960s, presenting programmes such as Crackerjack, Aspel and Company, This is Your Life, Strange But True? and Antiques Roadshow. Aspel is married to but separated from the actress Elizabeth Power, best-known for her role in EastEnders. He is frequently mistaken for Michael Parkinson and vice versa.
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Encyclopedia
Michael Terence Aspel, OBE (born 12 January 1933) is an English journalist and television presenter. He has been a high-profile TV personality in the United Kingdom since the 1960s, presenting programmes such as Crackerjack, Aspel and Company, This is Your Life, Strange But True? and Antiques Roadshow. Aspel is married to but separated from the actress Elizabeth Power, best-known for her role in EastEnders. He is frequently mistaken for Michael Parkinson and vice versa. In April 2008 he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Elmbridge, Surrey (see Honours).
Early life
Aspel was born in Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. During the Second World War he was evacuated and spent nearly five years in Chard, Somerset. He had been being packed on a train, aged just seven, with a label tied to his clothes - 'like a parcel' and like so many of his generation (3.5 million British children were evacuated to the countryside, away from the threat of German bombs), the young Michael spent what many would regard as the formative years of his life with strangers, many miles from his home.
He then attended Emanuel School after passing his eleven-plus in 1944. He did National Service in the ranks of the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1951-53.
Early career
He worked as a drainpipe-layer and gardener, and sold advertising space for Western Mail. He also took up jobs at publishing houses, before his National Service. In his words:"National Service was the catalyst that got me to Wales. Before that I was a teaboy in William Collins publishers, in London, serving tea to all these famous authors like Peter Cheyney."
He then took up a job with the David Morgan soft furnishings store in Cardiff, which was shortlived as he spent most of his time pursuing a job as a radio actor for a children's play on BBC Wales, before working as newsreader for BBC Cardiff in 1957:"I only got into news broadcasting because Richard Baker had a cold one day and I was asked to pop up for that weekend and ended up staying for eight years, until 1968. But that was because it was such bloody good fun with such a wonderful team which made me so thoroughly happy."
At the BBC he presented a number of different programmes such as the series Come Dancing, Crackerjack, a game show for children,
In 1969 and 1976 he hosted the BBC's A Song for Europe contest and provided the UK commentary at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976. He also had a regular joke slot on the Kenny Everett radio show on Capital radio. and guest-starred twice on The Goodies, appearing as himself, notably in the episode "Kitten Kong", which won the Silver Rose at the Montreux Light Entertainment Festival.
In the 1970s, Aspel appeared with a number of other newsreaders and presenters in a song-and-dance routine on The Morecambe and Wise Show. The sketch, in which the presenters were dressed as traditional sailors, is often cited as one of the classic moments of British TV comedy. In another episode, Morecambe refers to him as "Michael Aspirin". Aspel also presented a mid-morning music and phone-in programme on Capital Radio in London in the 1970s, as well as popular ITV programmes such as Give Us a Clue, Child's Play and The 6 0'Clock Show, a live current affairs and entertainment programme shown only in the LWT London region.
Aspel and Company
One of his best-known roles was as host of his own chat show, Aspel and Company, which ran for several series in the 1980s and 1990s on ITV. The programme was seen as a rival to the BBC's long-running Parkinson. Aspel and Company was successful in attracting high-profile guests, including then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher giving a rare non-political interview.
In 1993, Aspel and Company was censured by the Independent Television Commission over a deal with the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood and Matthew Freud's PR company to secure an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. The trio effectively hijacked the programme, and at one point Aspel started reading from the menu, asking the guests if hamburgers and fries were really the way to "body beautiful"
For a time, Aspel and Company performed well for ITV in the highly-competitive Saturday night ratings. After the Planet Hollywood controversy, Aspel vowed never to host a chat show again.
Later career
Aspel's life was featured on the show This is Your Life in 1980. After the demise of his chat show, Aspel replaced Eamonn Andrews as presenter of the progamme till it finished in 2003. Although he had guest-starred on The Goodies (see above), Bill Oddie did not return the favour - when Aspel approached him, big red book in hand, and uttered the famous line: “Bill Oddie, this is your life”, Oddie replied: "No it f****** isn’t."
In 1993, Aspel began presenting the ITV supernatural programme Strange But True?, a series exploring supernatural phenomena and unexplained mysteries. The programme ran between 1993 and 1997. He presented a new version of the ITV gameshow Blockbusters for the BBC in 1997; 60 programmes were made.
He presented BBC's Antiques Roadshow from 2000 until 2008, his last programme (filmed at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk) shown on March 30, 2008 being a tribute to himself.
In 2003, Aspel starred in a BBC Three spoof documentary which claimed he had affairs with Pamela Anderson, Valerie Singleton and Angie Best, among others. Several well known celebrities were claimed to be love children from these and other conquests, including Daniella Westbrook (with Pamela), Shane Lynch (with Valerie), Mel B (with a West German Eurovision Song Contest entrant), Melinda Messenger, Gail Porter, Michelle Heaton and Ben Shephard.
He has guest hosted the topical quiz show Have I Got News for You on two occasions (October 2005 and November 2007).
In 2006, he played the role of the narrator in the UK tour of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show.
He was at one point favourite to be the new host of Countdown, though on 16 October the Daily Express reported that he had told an audience at a book launch he had already turned the job down.
Personal Life
He is thrice married, first to Dian Sessions a "stunning domestic science student" in 1957. "She was particularly fecund," he says, "and we had two children [Greg and Richard]> in barely the time it takes to have two [sic]." They divorced in 1961 and, on a whim - "I suggested a holiday become a honeymoon" - he married Anne Reed, a TV scriptwriter, in 1962. They had twins, Edward and Jane, but divorced in 1967.
His third marriage was to actress Lizzie Power and lasted 17 years. Lizzie gave birth to a stillborn daughter, then a baby boy who lived only three days. Finslly son Patrick was born 11 weeks premature and had cerebral palsy and Lizzie then suffered a miscarriage before giving birth to a healthy second son, Daniel. There were times, says Aspel, when he felt his very name carried a curse.
He has lived with Irene Clarkm a production assistant on This Is Your Life, with whom he still lives since 1994, when their affair made headlines and ended his marriage to Lizzie.
In 2004, Aspel announced that he had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
His sanguine attitude toward his health is borne of family tragedy. One of his brothers was killed in a motorbike accident; his son James died at three days old; another son, Patrick, suffers from cerebral palsy. Most poignantly he watched his son Greg fight a long battle against cancer of the sinuses through the second half of his 20s, succumbing to the disease just weeks after turning 30 in 1989. He said:
"It has made everything else seem no more than a vague toothache. In remission, Greg was reinstated as the handsome, healthy person he had been before, but then it came back to get him. He went through dreadful operations and fought so hard, but he was a ruin when he died. If I'd gone a week later myself, I'd have not cared. It has put my own illnesses into perspective."
Honours
In 1993, Aspel was conferred the honour of the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to broadcasting, and has been voted TV Times and Variety Club Television Personality of the Year. He was also voted into the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame for outstanding services to television.
He is a supporter of the charity Cancer Research UK and on 9 April 2008 Elmbridge Borough Council, Surrey, appointed him an Honorary Freeman of the Borough:"...in recognition of the eminent service to the community and local charities, which he has given consistently for more than 30 years. In addition to being very involved with cancer charities, he has continued to support local events, whether to celebrate a resident’s 100th birthday or give his time freely to help raise the profile of local charities."
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