FOR a good while ‘Smiffy’ was pretty much Mr BBC – The Late Late Breakfast Show, The Montreux Rock Festival, Live Aid, erm, Friday People – and he also managed to find time to become perhaps Radio 1’s least memorable Breakfast Show presenter between 1986 and 1988. Noel-affiliation doubtless assisted in his getting of the gig, and indeed several familiar Edmonds tropes, including those all-important ‘Funny Phone Calls’, recieved a second outing here. Got a bit lost in the face of S’Express and M/A/R/R/S and headed back TV-wards, presenting about eight million series of That’s Entertainment! before revisiting former telephonic interests for a very successful career away from the screen.
TGOBE
January 8, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Two distinct yet maddeningly incomplete memories from the ’80s of Mike Smith.
He hosted some kind of “Jukebox Jury” style show on R1 in the evening and he and his “panel” were given “Some Candy Talking” by the Jesus And Mary Chain. After about a minute he pulled the disc and started bleating something along the lines of “I’m not playing this, it’s about drugs”.
Then in 1987 they were reviewing “True Faith” by New Order. One highly accomplished member of the aforementioned “panel” (Samantha Fox no less – a woman so fick she didn’t realise that she was a lesbian until her late ’30s) commented that although the song had a nice tune, the singer had “a weak voice”. I was driving home on the M3 at the time and nearly crashed into the J3 flyover support, such was my astonishment.