Information about Richard Skinner (broadcaster)

Richard Skinner (born December 26, 1951) is a British radio and television broadcaster. The only presenter to have fronted the three BBC 'flagship' programmes Whistle Test, Top Of The Pops and Radio 1's Top 40.

Early career

He grew up in Portsmouth where he began his career as a newspaper journalist, before joining BBC Radio Solent as a presenter of music programmes and news reader.

Radio 1

He joined BBC Radio 1 in 1973 as one of the original presenters of Newsbeat. He continued in this role for some years, also working as an in-vision continuity announcer for Thames Television.

He then went onto present music shows for Radio 1 in early 1981 taking over the Monday -Thursday evening show from Mike Read, who had taken over the Breakfast show.

In late 1981, Skinner moved to the Rock On show on Saturday afternoons & also Roundtable on Friday evenings, where he and a panel of guests would review the new releases. He continued with this until late 1985

In addition to Roundtable, in 1983, Skinner moved to the Saturday Live show from 4-6.30pm alongside Andy Batton-Foster & on September 30 1984.

Seventeen years to the day after Radio 1 began, he took over the Sunday afternoon Top 40 show, also broadcast on FM, on the same day that David Jensen, who had just left Radio 1 at the time, started presenting the Network Chart on commercial radio in direct competition.

On BBC Television, he also presented Top of the Pops and Whistle Test, and also played two definitive roles in the Band Aid and Live Aid phenomena of the 1980s - Bob Geldof announced the Band Aid project on Skinner's Radio 1 show in 1984 instead of publicising new Boomtown Rats material as planned.

Then, on July 13th 1985, Skinner made the famous opening announcement at Live Aid ("it's 12 o'clock in London...") as the event got underway. He also fronted the first stint of BBC TV's coverage of the event.[1]

Capital FM

In the spring of 1986 Skinner left Radio 1 to join Capital Radio, and was replaced on the chart show by Bruno Brookes. At Capital, he presented on its FM Album Rock station "CFM", and hosted The Way It Is - Capital's equivalent of Radio 1's Newsbeat.

Back to Radio 1

In October 1988, when Radio 1 - which had recently acquired its own FM transmitters - extended its broadcasting hours, Skinner rejoined the station to host a midnight show which tended to play adult rock music of the sort associated with Q magazine, but also championed The Stone Roses, a band of whose merits John Peel was notably sceptical. He also presented Top of the Pops again around this time. In addition to this, in late 1989, Skinner took over the Saturday afternoon Radio 1 show (the 'Saturday Sequence') from the late Roger Scott.

In April 1990 he was replaced on the midnight show by Bob Harris, but still continued with the Saturday sequence, where he remained until 1991, when Johnnie Walker took over the programme.

GLR

From the turn of the 1990s, while he was still at Radio 1, Skinner also presented a daily show on BBC GLR, a mix of music, both recorded and live, and a range of live interviews featuring people from pop to politics. This programme continued until January 1993.

Virgin Radio

In January 1993, he joined the launch team at Virgin Radio, working as Joint Programme Director and Head Of Music at the station and presenting the weekday morning show until the Autumn of 1996.

It's Magic

After a short spell at London's Liberty Radio as Breakfast presenter alongside Carol McGiffen. In 1997 Richard joined London's Melody FM, which later became Magic 105.4, presenting the station's mid-morning show until September 2003, which included 12-months of networked programming on Magic's newly-rebranded heritage stations in the north of England.

Virgin Radio Classic Rock

In late 2003 Skinner was on air at Wave 105 on the Solent, & in addition to that, in early 2004 Richard rejoined Virgin Radio on their London digital station Virgin Radio Classic Rock, where he hosted the mid-morning show which was initially pre-recorded, but was broadcast live from mid-2005. During this period, he was also heard providing holiday cover on Virgin Radio. He eventually left when live programming was abandoned in December 2005.

Current Work

After freelancing on the Classic Gold network, Richard can now be heard on BBC Radio Berkshire, every Saturday and Sunday morning from 10am & also provides holiday cover for their weekday presenters.

Miscellaneous

Richard is married to 'Delightful' Deborah, who was part of Steve Wright's 'posse' on BBC Radio One in the 1980s. He has two sons, Christopher, born in 1977 and Jamie, born in 1996.