Simon Bates

Simon was born in Birmingham in 1946 but lived in Suffolk until 1954, when he moved to Shropshire. He had to go to New Zealand, though, to gain his first broadcasting experience, working for a year as a radio actor in Auckland in 1965.

Then he moved to Wellington for the next three years as a radio and television DJ. He left Wellington for Australia, where he worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission – the down-under equivalent of the BBC, where he divided his time between a weekly arts programme on television and three radio series.

By 1971, he was back in England and joined the BBC as an announcer and newsreader for Radio 1 and Radio 2 in December.

He built up his reputation by presenting Radio 2’s Early Show from March 1974 to January 1976 and also proved his versatility (and availability) by introducing Late Night Extra and Folk 74.

By 1977, he took over the prestigious weekday mid-morning programme, a slot he held for 16 years.

His show was defined by two culturally iconic segments  – “Our Tune” (where Bates would read out a highly dramatic, poignant, or tragic true-life love story submitted by a listener) and “The Golden Hour” (a popular music nostalgia game slot where Bates played hit tracks from a secret, specific year, challenging listeners to guess the year before the clock ran out).

Bates was also a regular, recurring host of the BBC’s flagship weekly music chart show, Top of the Pops, from 1979 to 1988, and for an entire generation of film fans, his was the friendly face who appeared at the beginning of rented VHS tapes to explicitly explain the BBFC’s film classification ratings (like “PG” or “15”).

Following a management shake-up at Radio 1, Bates resigned in the summer of 1993, moving on to high-profile roles in the commercial radio sector, including stints at Atlantic 252, Talk Radio, LBC, and Classic FM, where he presented the breakfast show for seven years.

He later fronted breakfast shows for Smooth Radio and BBC Radio Devon.