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Mike Read
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- This article is about the broadcaster. For those with an identical-sounding, but differently-spelled name, see Mike Reid.
Mike Read (b. Manchester 1 March 1947) is a British broadcaster, writer and television presenter.
has won many broadcaster of the year awards including Sonys, Smash Hits and Carl Allan Awards.
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 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.
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Encyclopedia
- This article is about the broadcaster. For those with an identical-sounding, but differently-spelled name, see Mike Reid.
Mike Read (b. Manchester 1 March 1947) is a British broadcaster, writer and television presenter.
Pre-Broadcasting
Broadcasting
Read has won many broadcaster of the year awards including Sonys, Smash Hits and Carl Allan Awards.
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 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 5th January 1981. His tenure in that slot is chiefly remembered for his on-air decision in 1984 not to play the Frankie Goes to Hollywood single "Relax" due to supposedly obscene lyrics (though Read might have mistaken Paul Morley's provocative sleeve notes for the actual lyrics). The record shot to Number One and Read was widely ridiculed. His credibility was not helped by a tabloid story two years later which alleged he had used the music of the deeply unfashionable Liverpool band Icicle Works to soundtrack his amorous adventures.
Following on from his five year stint on Radio 1's Breakfast show, Read took over a Sunday morning show in 1986, from 10a.m.-12.30p.m.. In 1987, he moved to Saturday Mornings from 10 a.m.-1 p.m., & also a Sunday afternoon show from 1-3p.m., where he played classic tracks. In addition to this, Mike also 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 & his Sunday afternoon oldies shows finished in December 1988, 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 to its original name of Round Table). He remained in this slot, until 1991.
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, Read 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 morning 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. Big L also broadcasts across Europe on Sky 0190 and around the world on line at www.bigl.co.uk. Among the line up of presenters are former Radio One colleagues, David Hamilton, Emperor Rosko and Adrian John as well as former Capital colleague Randall Lee Rose.
In November 2008, Read took time out from Big L to present the 3pm-7pm Drivetime show on Hull-based station KCFM (kcfm.co.uk) for one week (Nov 10th - 14th) 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 the 17th November 2008, he launched a 10am-2pm weekday programme slot on Star 107.5 FM (star1075.co.uk) covering Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds region as a Big L-syndicated show, also available online at bigl.co.uk
Television
He combined his radio work with a second career as a TV presenter, hosting the popular 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. Additionally, he presented UK Gold's TV genre quiz Goldmaster in 1997, having more memorably 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 2005 he returned to co-host the show when his single 'Grief Never Grows Old' reached #4 in the singles chart. In June 2008 a revamped Pop Quiz, again hosted by Read, aired on Red TV.
He is a regular newspaper reviewer for Sky News.
I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here
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 recorded a charity single off the back of the show 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.
Stalkers
Read is one of many celebrities who have had trouble with stalkers. Read famously had a stalker who has changed her name to Blue Tulip Rose Read and believes that she is married to him. Rose appeared in a 1996 Channel 4 documentary as part of a fame theme night.
Songwriting
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".
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 #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 and Ricky Nelson...Teenage Idol. He took one of the lead roles in the Cliff Musical, touring with it and appearing for a three month run in the West End at the Price 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 Cribbens.
Books & 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. he and his fellow authors received a special award for the sales of the Guinness books, one of which topped the best-selling book chart.
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.
The Rupert Brooke Society
In 1999 he 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.
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 . 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.
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, Read claims he was asked to run for the Conservative Party nomination for the London Mayoral elections in 2008. 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 July 17, 2007, attracted a record 1,132 comments, most of them derisive.
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