Simon Bates
Encyclopedia
Simon Bates is a UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 and radio presenter. Between 1976 and 1993 he worked at BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

, presenting the station's weekday mid-morning show for most of this period. He later became a regular presenter on Classic FM
Classic FM (UK)
Classic FM, one of the United Kingdom's three Independent National Radio stations, broadcasts classical music in a popular and accessible style.-Overview:...

. In January 2011, he took over as host of "The Breakfast Show" on Smooth Radio.

Early career

Bates was raised in Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

 and Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

 and was educated at Adams' Grammar School
Adams' Grammar School
Adams' Grammar School is a selective state grammar school in Newport, Shropshire, rated by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills as a Grade 1 outstanding school , the latest OFSTED report concludes "this is a truly impressive school"...

 before working for radio stations in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 while still a teenager. Bates returned to the UK in 1971 to join the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, initially working for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 and then joining BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...

 in 1973 presenting the Late Night show, before presenting the Early Morning show in 1975. Bates left BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...

 in January 1976 and joined BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 in May the same year standing in for Tom Browne
Tom Browne (broadcaster and actor)
Tom Browne is a British broadcaster and actor, born in Lymington, Hampshire, and educated at King's College School, Wimbledon.-Radio and acting career:As an actor, he graduated from RADA...

 to host the Sunday Top 20 show before presenting the Sunday morning show two months later.

BBC Radio 1

Initially a weekend presenter playing new pop records, Bates took over the weekday mid-morning programme in November 1977 and remained the presenter for 16 years. The least flashy and garrulous of Radio 1's principal broadcasters, with an avuncular
Uncle
An uncle is a type of familial relationship.Uncle may also refer to:* Uncle , by J. P. Martin* U.N.C.L.E., a fictional organization in the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E....

 appearance (sober clothes, large glasses), Bates nevertheless became popular, attracting up to 11 million listeners. His voice — essentially a sped-up, slightly Americanised version of the standard Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...

 associated with BBC Radio 4 — was unusual in that most Radio 1 DJs of the time had a more informal 'DJ' voice.

Two long-running features of his programme were particularly well known: "The Golden Hour" and "Our Tune". Bates inherited "The Golden Hour" from his predecessor, Tony Blackburn
Tony Blackburn
Tony Blackburn is an English disc jockey, who broadcast on the "pirate" stations Radio Caroline and Radio London in the 1960s and was the first disc jockey to broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in 1967. In 2002 he was the winner of the ITV reality TV programme I'm a Celebrity.....

. The listener had to guess the year from records played and clues given by Bates.

However, the "Our Tune" feature, which ran from 1980, became a daily 11am fixture of his Radio 1 show, and is the element for which it is best remembered. Over the background of Nino Rota
Nino Rota
Nino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...

's theme to Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....

's 1968 film Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...

, Bates would read a story sent by a listener. The story invariably had a theme of tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

, often starting with a happy courtship but followed by a disaster such as illness or death. The story would conclude with a record chosen by the correspondent. Although some bemoaned the feature's mawkish nature, a number of spin-off albums, featuring songs chosen by listeners, were released.

A third, less well-remembered feature was "The Birthday File", in which Bates would play music by stars celebrating a birthday.

Bates afforded regular airtime to Jonathan King
Jonathan King
Jonathan King is an English singer, songwriter, impresario and record producer. He is also the author of three novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner , and Beware the Monkey Man , and an autobiography, 65 My Life So Far .King first came to prominence as an...

 to comment about the music scene, and was always the presenter sent by Radio 1 to interview stars at the BRIT Awards
Brit Awards
The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...

. In 1989 he did a summer series called "Round The World" in which his show broadcast from a new country each day — the idea being that he would go round the world without flying within 67 days, an aim in which he was ultimately unsuccessful (he had to fly over Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

) although he did raise £300,000 for Oxfam and it did only take 78 days. This won him awards, though cynics claimed he did it to avoid being given one of the BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 roadshows, and Bates himself has since effectively confirmed that suggestion. Bates' daily reports ran for only half an hour — Mike Read
Mike Read
Michael David Kenneth Read is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter.-Early life:...

 stepped in to present The Golden Hour during this period while the rest of the morning was taken up by the roadshow.

Bates also had two runs presenting the Sunday afternoon Top 40, from 2 April 1978 to 26 August 1979 (during which time the Top 20 was extended to the Top 40 on 12 November 1978) and 8 January 1984 to 23 September 1984. He presented BBC TVs Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...

regularly from 1980 to 1988, and presented the roadshow — which he came to despise — every summer for many years until 1988, on one occasion insisting on wearing long trousers when it was compulsory to wear shorts. After his round-the-world trip in 1989, he was exempted roadshow duties during his last four summers at the station.

Bates worked on the mid-morning slot until 1993, seeing breakfast-show presenters like Noel Edmonds
Noel Edmonds
Noel Ernest Edmonds, is an English broadcaster and executive, who made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. He has presented many light entertainment television programmes, including Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Top of the Pops, The Late, Late Breakfast Show, Telly Addicts, Noel's Saturday...

, Dave Lee Travis
Dave Lee Travis
Dave Lee Travis , also known professionally as DLT and the Hairy Cornflake, is a British radio presenter, best known for his career on BBC Radio 1.-Early life:...

, Mike Read
Mike Read
Michael David Kenneth Read is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter.-Early life:...

, Mike Smith
Mike Smith (television presenter)
Mike Smith is a British television, radio presenter, racing driver, pilot, and businessman.-Radio career:...

 and Simon Mayo
Simon Mayo
Simon Mayo is an English radio presenter who has worked for BBC Radio since 1981. As of January 2010, Mayo is presenter of Simon Mayo Drivetime on BBC Radio 2 and, with Mark Kermode, presenter of Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews on BBC Radio 5 Live.In 2008, Mayo was recognised as the "radio...

 come and go. He was not the most popular member of staff at Radio 1. John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

 was fond of repeating that he formed a posse with David Jensen
David Jensen
David "Kid" Jensen , is a Danish Canadian-born, British radio DJ.-Early career:Born in a Danish family residing Victoria, British Columbia, Jensen began his career in his home country at the age of sixteen playing jazz and classical music. He then joined Radio Luxembourg at the age of eighteen in...

 and Paul Burnett
Paul Burnett
Paul Burnett is an English radio disc jockey, who began his radio career while in the Royal Air Force in the Persian Gulf in 1964. In 1966 he joined offshore radio station, Radio 270, broadcasting off Scarborough, North Yorkshire...

 to attack him in the car park but admitted they never actually confronted him.

When new controller Matthew Bannister
Matthew Bannister
Richard Matthew Bannister is a British media executive and broadcaster. After attending King Edward VII School , he graduated in law at the University of Nottingham in 1978, and joined BBC Radio Nottingham as a trainee reporter and subsequently the presenter of its speech-based breakfast show,...

 arrived at the station intending to shake-up its safe feel and modernise it, Bates was one of the presenters thought to be under threat. Bannister's comments in the book The Nation's Favourite indicate that he feared Bates's supposed subversive influence rather than his broadcasting style. Bates resigned before the station was able to sack him.

Bates was heard on all five national BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 stations — apart from his stint at BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 and his broadcasts for BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...

 and BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 (unusually before he joined the pop network), he also presented a Prom
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...

 concert on BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

 in 1987 and presented a digest of the daily papers on the original version of BBC Radio 5
BBC Radio 5 (former)
BBC Radio 5 was a BBC radio network that carried sport, children's and educational programmes.It was transmitted via analogue radio on 693 and 909 kHz, and lasted for three years and eight months. The success of BBC Radio 4's coverage of the Gulf War, on a service known as Scud FM,...

 (now BBC Radio Five Live
BBC Radio Five Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...

) in 1990.

After Radio 1

After leaving Radio 1 he worked for Irish-based long wave station Atlantic 252
Atlantic 252
Atlantic 252 was a long wave radio station broadcasting to Ireland and the United Kingdom on 252 kHz from its 1988 purpose built transmission site Clarkstown radio transmitter, which provided service to Atlantic 252 from 1989 until 2002. The station's studios were located just 12 km away in...

, reviving "Our Tune" and then presented a TV version of the feature daily for BBC1's Good Morning with Anne and Nick
Good Morning with Anne and Nick
Good Morning with Anne and Nick was a BBC1 daytime television show presented by Anne Diamond and Nick Owen, from October 1992 to May 1996. The pair had previously presented TV-am on ITV, but now directly competed with ITV's This Morning....

in 1994-95 and later for Sky One
Sky One
Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...

.

During these few years he also became the face of the VSC
Video Standards Council
Video Standards Council was established in 1989 to establish a Code of Practice for the UK video industry. VSC is the designated body responsible for the age rating of video games supplied in the UK....

 often seen before films that had come out on rental video, describing the classification of the movie. This was lampooned by comedians such as Harry Enfield
Harry Enfield
Henry Richard "Harry" Enfield is a BAFTA-winning English comedian, actor, writer and director.-Early life:...

 and Ben Elton
Ben Elton
Benjamin Charles "Ben" Elton is an English comedian, author, playwright and director. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV....

.

From September 1995 - April 1996, Bates broadcast for Talk Radio UK (now TalkSport) as the breakfast show presenter. He was then heard on London's Liberty Radio
Liberty Radio
Liberty Radio is a UK radio broadcaster and company based in London, England that, , broadcasts on satellite and the Internet, but not terrestrial radio or DAB. The company started as Viva 963, broadcasting on terrestrial radio, predominantly for women, and was later renamed...

 as mid-morning presenter until 1997.

In 1997, Bates joined Classic FM
Classic FM (UK)
Classic FM, one of the United Kingdom's three Independent National Radio stations, broadcasts classical music in a popular and accessible style.-Overview:...

, presenting the weekly Classic Romance programme and was also heard on BBC Southern Counties Radio
BBC Southern Counties Radio
BBC Southern Counties Radio was the BBC Local Radio service for the English counties of Surrey and Sussex. The station also covered a large part of North-East Hampshire. It was the first BBC Local Radio station to introduce a controversial all-speech format...

 presenting a Sunday morning show until late 1998. In addition, between 1996 and 1998, Bates presented a show on the Classic Gold
Classic Gold
Classic Gold was a network of three "Gold" music formatted stations which broadcast on AM in Bradford, Hull and Sheffield. They were the Pennine Radio, Viking Radio and Radio Hallam's medium wave franchises...

 Network on weekday evenings. He then moved to London's LBC
LBC 97.3
LBC 97.3 is a London-based talk and phone-in radio station. It is one half of the latest incarnation of LBC, the news and speech service which was Britain's first commercial radio station when it went on air in October 1973...

 as breakfast host from 1999–2002.

Classic FM

Bates originally appeared on Classic FM in 1997, presenting the weekly Classic Romance show. In mid-2002 he was offered his first daily slot, presenting the drivetime show. From June 2003 he hosted the Classic FM weekday breakfast show and the one-hour "Classic FM at the Movies" programme, discussing films and film music on Sunday evening. In September 2006, his programme's hours changed from 7-11am to 8am-noon. In 2010 Bates was moved to mid morning (9am to 1pm) and shortly afterwards it was announced he would be leaving the station in January 2011 to present a show on Smooth Radio.

Gold

As well as his daily show for Classic FM, Bates can also be heard on Gold (radio) Radio Network every Sunday morning from 8am-noon.

Smooth Radio

On 17 August 2010, it was announced that from January 2011 Simon Bates would take over as host of the Breakfast Show on Smooth Radio, leaving Classic FM after 13 years. Bates' show replaced local programming on a number of regional radio stations, and began on 4 January 2011. He has brought back both The Golden Hour and Our Tune to the show. The Golden Hour
The Golden Hour (radio feature)
The Golden Hour is a long-standing feature/segment on UK radio station BBC Radio 1, where records are played that all charted in the UK Top 40 in a certain year and listeners are invited to guess the year.- History :...

 airs every day from 9-10am as it did originally, while Our Tune airs weekly on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:40. Other features in the show include the Thousand Pound Minute, where listeners must answer a series of ten questions correctly to win £1,000.

A Revival

In addition to Classic FM shows, Bates presents a revival of his classic feature from Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 "Our Tune". "Our Tune at Noon" can be heard every Monday–Friday at 12.00 Midday, syndicated on commercial stations across the UK.

External links

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