TV Cream

Radio 1: The Jocks

READ, Mike

mikereadDARK-GLASSED frustrated musician who regularly serenaded his breakfast listeners or Roadshow crowd with a quick strum through Alice’s Restaurant, before running through the day’s listening on Radio 1 by doing bad impressions of all the jocks. Most famous for banning Frankie’s Relax, although largely self-perpetuated claims that Reid’s censorship helped the already-at-number-six waxing become a hit are urban myth, inventor of the distinctly Our Tuneish ‘First Love’ slot, forever wittering about playing tennis with Cliff, or about Dan Dare (as a result of which he briefly had a column in the relaunched eighties Eagle comic), became a millionaire through Curiosity Beret Bloke-endorsed Pop Quiz board game, had his own band (Mike Read and the Rockolas!) and released a single extolling the virtues of living in a high rise tower block to the tune of his “Mike Read! Mike Read! 275 and 285!” jingle (“me neigbours are bangin’ on the wall again!”) – as later replaced by Mari Wilson going “Mike Read, just what I’ve always… want-ed!” – and after a truly staggering amount of TV Work came to dominate saw out his final months on Ver 1 fronting a bizarre show in which he reunited listeners with long-lost copies of the 12″ of Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding. Trademark tartan suit somehow still audible on the radio, and he never, ever passed up the slightest opportunity to get out his guitar.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Aidy

    October 15, 2009 at 8:26 pm

    I remember a jingle of Mike Reads in which he played snippets of original songs where it sounded like they were singing his name. The songs used were B A Robertsons “to be or not to be mike read”,and Queen singing “look what they done to mike read” and Jacko’s ” mike reads crawling the depths…”. Sounds daft, I admit, but have a listen and it makes sense and a good jingle too!!

  2. Matthew Rudd

    March 25, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    For all the criticism of Mike Read, I always rather liked him. He was never more human than when covering the Golden Hour and accidentally giving away the mystery year after just one song.

  3. johnnyboy

    March 26, 2010 at 2:36 am

    I must admit I always liked Mike R’s balance of music, pathos and subtle humour. The ‘Our Tune’ was always the highlight of my radio day before Steve Wright (…”Steve Wright in the afternoon!!……uzi 9mm!! etc) managed to hijack my afternoon radio days. The Garrard hifi (stereo!! what’s this about, then) played out almost every day Mike from 10 to 12, then 2 to 5 on R1 (fm!) for Stevie boy. Really, that was the best radio days of my life.
    Now I’m mostly Classic FM (never on fm, by-the-way), Planet Rock and ‘Temp 1’.
    Oh, my!

  4. gareth jones

    March 26, 2010 at 8:23 am

    just looking at the pic at the top i had this board game,very easy to play and good fun with little record tokens you moved up the board to no1. but god some of the questions were ridiculously tough for a kid of 9 or 10 like i was,only thing that spoilt it in my opinion.

  5. Glenn Aylett

    March 26, 2020 at 10:52 am

    Last seen on Vintage TV introducing eighties hits and covering nostalgia festivals with the likes of The Human League headlining. As a VJ, he was quite good and was enthusiastic about what he presented.

  6. richardpd

    March 26, 2020 at 5:20 pm

    He had a good balance of patter & a genuine interest in music. Quite a good presentation record with Pop Quiz, Top Of The Pops & Saturday Superstore.

    He was unfortunate to be out of favour at Radio 1 just before the 1990s nostalgia for the 1970s kicked in.

    For years I had a the Pop Quiz game as a hand me down from my cousins but I think it went in a clearout.

    I can remember he had a brief cameo the Beano during Dennis The Menace’s missing Gnasher story arc in 1986,

  7. Glenn Aylett

    March 28, 2020 at 11:22 am

    I think Mike Read did the right thing to move on before the big cull at Radio 1 and probably he felt he was too old for the station by 1991. Certainly there wasn’t the bitterness that some of his colleagues displayed after they left, and the rise of Gold stations in the early nineties meant there was plenty of work for ex Radio 1 DJs.

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top