Mark Radcliffe (radio broadcaster)
Mark Radcliffe (born 29 June 1958) is an English radio broadcaster, musician and writer. He is best known for his broadcasting work for the BBC, for which he has worked in various roles since the 1980s.
Mark Radcliffe
29 June 1958
3
The Folk Show & Radcliffe & Maconie
Weds 9–10pm and Sat–Sun 8–10am
United Kingdom
Radcliffe began his broadcasting career in local commercial radio in Manchester before a move to the national station BBC Radio 5, where he met and formed a partnership with Marc Riley, a former guitarist with the Fall. In 1991 he moved to BBC Radio 1, closely followed by Riley with whom, under the moniker Mark and Lard, he worked for 11 years on the station. The pair's stint on Radio 1 included a brief and opinion-dividing spell on the flagship Radio 1 Breakfast and a subsequent afternoon slot show that garnered three prestigious Sony Radio Academy Awards.[1]
When the Mark and Lard duo left BBC Radio 1 in 2004, Radcliffe joined BBC Radio 2 and has also presented various TV shows for the BBC, including its coverage of the Glastonbury Festival. He remains a presenter on BBC Radio 2, where he presents the weekly programme The Folk Show. On BBC Radio 6 Music, he co-hosts the weekend breakfast show with Stuart Maconie; they previously co-presented the weekday afternoon show on the same channel, and before that the evening show on Radio 2.
Early life[edit]
His father Philip (1932–2018)[2] joined the BBC in Manchester as a news assistant from 2 December 1963, aged 31.[3]By 1967, his father was the producer of Look North in Manchester.[4] His father later worked in the press office of the University of Manchester from 1970 until 1996.[5] His father spoke Russian, and worked with the Great Britain–Russia Society, and later lived in Derbyshire.[6]
Radcliffe was born in Bolton, Lancashire, and educated at Bolton School[7] and the University of Manchester, where he studied English, American Studies and Classical Civilisation. He stayed at the traditional all-male Woolton Hall, Manchester of the university at the Fallowfield Campus, where gowns and suits were worn at meal times, in the late 1970s; there were no exceptions.
He took an interest in music from a young age, playing drums in numerous bands while at school and university and into his working life.
Personal life[edit]
He married Bella Sharp on Saturday 19 April 1997 in Cheshire; his 27 year old wife, from Hampshire, was an assistant at Granada TV.[8][9][10]
In 1995 he lived in Heaton Mersey.[11]
As of 2007, he lived in Knutsford, Cheshire; with three daughters (one from his first marriage), and became a grandfather in October 2008. In July 2011, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Bolton.[12] On 3 October 2018, he announced on his BBC Radio 2 show that he had "cancerous tongue and lymph node issues" and he would take a break from his radio broadcasting for a while.[13][14] Radcliffe returned to the show on 13 February 2019.[15]
Television[edit]
Radcliffe presented a live music TV programme, The White Room, for four series on Channel 4 from 11 June 1994 to 23 August 1996, and has regularly appeared in both Channel 4 and the BBC's coverage of the Glastonbury Festival, as well as the latter's broadcasts from the Cambridge Folk Festival. He made a guest appearance as himself in CITV show Children's Ward in 1997.
On Thursday 10 July 1997, he presented a 15-week series entitled 'Schools Challenge' on Granada, for schools in the Manchester area, with a set like University Challenge. He was a huge fan of University Challenge in the 1970s.[26][27][28]
Along with Marc Riley, he presented a music-based quiz programme, Pop Upstairs Downstairs, for the BBC/Flextech digital TV channel UK Play in 1999 and 2000. He also presented the BBC One football retrospective show Match of the Nineties, which aired in summer 1999. In 2006, he won the ITV singing competition Stars in Their Eyes with an appearance portraying The Pogues front-man Shane MacGowan singing "The Irish Rover". In 2009, he took over from Steve Wright as the presenter of Top of the Pops 2. He presented the BBC Four documentary The Richest Songs in the World, which counted down the 10 most successful songs of all time in terms of money earned.
The Shirehorses were due to appear in an episode of the sitcom Phoenix Nights as the folk band Half a Shilling, but had concerns about the potentially racist content of the part they were to play. They were replaced at the last minute by Tim Healy.
In 2014, Radcliffe was the narrator of BBC One's Call the Council.
In 2021, he presented Live from the Edge,[29][30] a 13-part music series shown on Showcase TV (Sky channel 191) from Edge Recording Studio, with performances by bands like The Sherlocks,[31] Sea Fever[32][33] and The Lottery Winners. Radcliffe was also one of a number of music experts hired by Viacom International Studios UK, to comment on the best selling chart hits of the 1980s and 1990s, for a number of Friday night music countdowns on Channel 5 (with the shows being known under various titles such as Greatest Hits of the 80s,[34][35][36] or Britain's Biggest 90s Hits).[37][38][39]
Writing[edit]
Radcliffe wrote the autobiographical Showbusiness: The Diary of a Rock 'N' Roll Nobody (1999); a critically acclaimed history of his attempts at a career as a musician, including his exploits with Shirehorses. His novel Northern Sky, based around a folk music club in an imaginary Northern English city, was published in 2005. A book of anecdotes about his life and career, Thank You For the Days was published in 2009. Another memoir, Reelin' in the Years, was published in 2011. Crossroads: In Search of the Moments that Changed Music, a "personal journey" through music history, was published in September 2019.[40]
Producing[edit]
Radcliffe started his BBC Radio career in 1983, where he worked as a producer, producing sessions for John Peel featuring artists such as Billy Bragg.[41]
Radcliffe was a producer of Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! for BBC Radio 4 from series 1 to series 6.[42]