Michael Aspel

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Michael Aspel, OBE (Born 12 January 1933) is an English journalist and television presenter, well-known in the United Kingdom since the 1960s. Aspel was born in Battersea, where he attended Emanuel School. After National Service in the Army he secured his first journalistic job working for the Cardiff morning daily, the Western Mail, in the late 1950s.

From there he went to the BBC as a newsreader, becoming one of the country's most familiar faces during the 1960s and 1970s, as a regular presenter of the evening news. He moved on to a wide variety of light entertainment roles in UK commercial broadcasting. These included the long running BBC children's TV series', Crackerjack and Ask Aspel. In 1969 and 1976 he hosted the BBC's A Song for Europe contest and provided the UK commentary at the Eurovision Song Contest that year. Aspel was also a regular host of Miss World.

He presented Capital Radio's mid-morning music and phone-in programme in London in the station's 1970s, as well as popular ITV programmes such as Give Us a Clue, Childs Play and his own eponymous chat show on ITV.

He also guest starred twice on The Goodies, in which he appeared as himself — notably in the episode "Kitten Kong", which won the Silver Rose at the Montreux Light Entertainment Festival.

Together with Eddie Waring and a number of well known British newsreaders, he appeared in a song and dance routine on The Morecambe and Wise Show. In another episode, Morecambe refers to him as "Michael Asprin".

His career took a severe knock after his chat show Aspel and Company was seen to offer too much to Planet Hollywood and Matthew Freud's PR company to secure an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, he replaced Eamonn Andrews as presenter of This Is Your Life, and continued to present the programme on the BBC until it ended in 2003.

In 1993, Aspel began presenting the ITV supernatural programme Strange But True?, a series which explored supernatural phenomena and unexplained mysteries. The programme ran between 1993 and 1997.

Since 2000 he has presented BBC's Antiques Roadshow. He was the guest host on the 21 October 2005 episode of the topical quiz show Have I Got News For You.

In 2006, he played the role of the narrator in the UK tour of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show.

He was at one point favourite to be the new host of Countdown, though on 16 October the Daily Express reported that he had told an audience at a book launch he had already turned the job down.

Honours

In 1993, Aspel was awarded the OBE for his services to broadcasting, and has been voted TV Times and Variety Club Television Personality of the Year. He was also voted into the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame for outstanding services to television.

He is a supporter of the charity Cancer Research UK.

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