Mike Read Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Mike Read (born 1951) is an award-winning broadcaster from the UK, renowned for his work on both radio and TV.Read joined BBC Radio 1 in 1978 and made his TV presenting debut in the same year when he became one of the hosts of Top Of The Pops. In 1981 he began a successful five-year stint on the Radio 1 breakfast show.
He combined his radio work with a second career as a children's TV presenter, hosting the popular Saturday morning programme Saturday Superstore, as well as the teatime music game show Pop Quiz, which featured rock stars answering music trivia questions. The show spawned a successul board game spin-off.
Read's radio career was respected and impressive but largely uneventful until he played the Frankie Goes To Hollywood single Relax on his show in 1984. Seeing the saucy imagery and lyrics on the cover, he listened more intently to the song and took action, removing it from the turntable midway through, snapping it on air and branding it "disgusting".
The BBC backed up Read's stance by banning the song from all of its broadcasting outlets, but this led to huge public clamour and the song went to Number 1 for five weeks.
Read is a guitarist and writer in his own right, producing songs and poems, including the hit More To Life, which soundtracked a BBC TV show and was a hit for Cliff Richard. He has written music and lyrics for a selection of musicals and also some accompanying books.
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 Major to Minor: The Rise and Fall of the Songwriter (2000) and, with Richard Havers, Read's Musical Reciter (2004), a collection of tall tales from the music business.
In his later years at Radio 1, Read presented a weekly show called The Collection and also anchored the Friday panel show Singled Out (later re-named Round Table) in which musicians and disc jockeys would review the new single releases.
Read left Radio 1 in 1991 and has since worked for Classic FM and presented a show on the Magic network around the UK. In 2003 he married long time partner Eileen, an interior designer.
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 proved short-lived - he was the first celebrity to be evicted by the viewing public.
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