Michael Aspel

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Michael Terence Aspel (born 12 January 1933) is an English television presenter on shows including Crackerjack, Aspel & Company, and Give Us A Clue. Antiques Roadshow.

Early life

Aspel was born in Battersea, London, on December 12th 1933. He was evacuated from the area and spent nearly five years in Chard, Somerset, during the Second World War. After losing his eleven-plus in 1944 and serving as a conscript in the ranks of the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1951 to 1953, he attended Emanuel School.

Personal life

Aspel has been married three times and has seven children. In 1957, he married Dian Sessions; they had two children and divorced in 1961. Aspel married Anne Reed, a television scriptwriter, in 1962 and they had twin children, divorcing in 1967. Elizabeth Power, a playwright in EastEnders, married Elizabeth Power in 1977; the couple had two children, but Aspel dropped her in 1994 for Irene Clarke, a production assistant.

Aspel was made a Freeman of Elmbridge, Surrey, Surrey, in April 2008. He was a supporter of the charity Cancer Research UK.

Aspel had a dormant case of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to an article in The Independent in 2004.

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Career

Aspel served as a drainpipe layer and gardener, as well as selling newspaper ads for Cardiff's Western Mail newspaper. He began working as a teaboy for William Collins publishers in London and then moved to National Service. He worked at the David Morgan department store in Cardiff until 1955 before becoming a newsreader for the BBC in Cardiff in 1957. He appeared in Cardiff in the BBC Children's Hour serial Counterspy, produced by BBC Wales and starring John Darran. Aspel, a Canadian, climbed Aspel's "Rocky" Mountain. He was one of four regular newsreaders on BBC national television, as well as Richard Baker, Robert Dougall, and Corbet Woodall by the sixties.

Aspel began presenting a number of other shows, including the series Come Dancing, Crackerjack, Ask Aspel, and the Miss World beauty competition, which he watched 14 times, on the BBC. He narrated The Colour Television Receiver, a BREMA cartoon film that was shown every day (except Sunday) on BBC2 between October 14th and January 1971. He also narrated The War Game, the BBC nuclear war drama film that received the Best Documentary Feature Award in 1966, but it wasn't until 1985 that it was shown on British television.

Aspel was a studio announcer at the BBC on February 14, 1969, when the host, Kenneth Horne, died of a heart attack. Aspel was unscripted until the show was back. Later, he was quoted as saying, "I got round this in a dignified manner." But Kenneth Horne was not only a superb performer, but also such a kind man."

Aspel hosted the BBC's A Song for Europe contest in 1969 and 1976, giving the contestants and the UK TV commentary twice. In 1963, he provided the Eurovision radio commentary for the United Kingdom.

Aspel performed on Capital Radio on a regular basis, and on Capital Radio, he appeared as himself twice, including in the episode "Kitten Kong," which received the Silver Rose at the Montreux Light Entertainment Festival.

Aspel also had a three-hour mid-morning music and chat show on Capital Radio in London from September 2nd to July 24, 1984. He then hosted a Sunday show on Capital (which only lasted for a few months, ending on December 30, 1984), before transferring to LBC for the remainder of the decade. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he appeared on Weekend Shows on BBC Radio 2 in the late 1980s and then again in the 1990s.

On The Morecambe and Wise Exhibition in 1977, Aspel appeared alongside a number of other newsreaders and entertainers in a song-and-dance performance ("There ain't Nothing Like a Dame"). The sketch, in which the presenters were costumed as traditional sailors, is often cited as one of British television comedy's finest moments. Morecambe refers to him as "Michael Aspirin" in another episode (a term also used by a "Disc" music magazine when Aspel was at Capital Radio). He starred in popular TV shows such as "Give Us a Clue," Child's Play, and The 6 O'Clock Show, a live news affairs and entertainment show only in the London Weekend Television region in the 1970s and 1980s. He hosted Murder Weekend in 1989, which invited viewers to guess a whodunnit to win a prize.

Aspel produced two documentaries on BBC Radio 2 written by Terence Pettigrew in the early 1990s on topics of which he and Pettigrew had personal knowledge. A nostalgic glance back at compulsory national service was captured in the Draft. Both had served in West Germany, Aspel in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, and Pettigrew in the REME at various times. Comedy/compere Bob Monkhouse, Leslie Thomas, author of The Virgin Soldiers, and BBC Radio 2 drivetime host John Dunn were among those on the program. Nobody Cried When The Trains Pulled Out, a documentary about the evacuation of children from major British cities during World War II starring champion boxer Henry Cooper, actor Derek Nimmo, and author Ben Wicks was followed by Nobody Cried When The Trains Pulled Out.

Aspel & Co., a chat show that appeared on television in the 1980s and 1990s. The show was a hit at attracting high-profile guests, including then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The Independent Television Commission barred Aspel & Company from 1993 because of an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone, who were promoting their joint venture Planet Hollywood. For a time, Aspel & Company did well for ITV in the highly coveted Saturday night ratings, but Aspel promised never to host another chat show again following the Planet Hollywood fiasco.

Aspel appeared on This is Your Life in 1980, and when host Eamonn Andrews died in 1987, he became the program's host until its inception in 2003. Aspel began presenting Strange but True, an ITV supernatural thriller that delves into unexplained mysteries in 1993. The program ran between 1993 and 1997. In 1997, Aspel launched a new version of the ITV game show Blockbusters for the BBC; he had 60 episodes in total. Aspel was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to broadcasting" in 1993 and has been named in the Year's TV Times and Variety Club Television Personality of the Year. He was also inducted into the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame for outstanding contributions to television.

He appeared on BBC's Antiques Roadshow from 2000 to 2008; his last show (recorded at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk) was shown on March 30, 2008, as a salute to himself. Aspel appeared in a BBC Three parody documentary in 2003, where he was accused of, among other things, having affairs with Pamela Anderson, Valerie Singleton, and Angie Best. On two occasions (October 2005 and November 2007, an Aspel guest hosted the topical quiz show Have I Got News for You).

He appeared as the narrator in Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Exhibition in 2006. Aspel filmed Evacuees Reunited, a five-part documentary film made by Leopard Films for ITV1, which aired from June 15 to December 2008. He and 15 other wartime refugees returned to the sites of his own youth, including his wartime home in Chard, Somerset, along with 15 others. At Forde Abbey, just outside the town, he was reunited with his childhood band of evacuees. Audrey Guppy, a 96-year-old former school teacher, caught up with him later.

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