Michael Terence Aspel is a British television presenter. He is famous for his work on Cracker Jack, Aspel & Company, Give Us the Key, This Is Your Life: Strange But True, and BBC Antiques Roadsow.
Biography
Michael Aspel was born on January 12, 1933 in London. During the Second World War, he was evacuated in the city of Charde, Somerset.
I entered school quite late - at the age of 11. He received his secondary education at the "School of Emmanuel" in the period from 1944 to 1951.
From 1951 to 1953 he served in the Royal Rifle Corps of the British National Service. The place of service was West Germany.
Before serving in the army, he worked as a plumber and gardener, as well as an advertising agent for the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff. He spent some time at William Collins' publishing house in London.
After completing military service, Michael got a job at David Morgan's department store in a cardife and worked there until 1955.
Television career
In 1955, Aspel became a news anchor for the BBC in Cardiff.
In 1957, he began acting in the TV series Children’s Hour CounterSpy, which was produced by BBC Wales with John Darran as writer and lead actor. Aspel played in it a Canadian nicknamed "Rocky Mountain".
At the turn of the 50s and 60s, Michael of the BBC reduced the number of news anchors to 4 people. These included Richard Baker, Robert Dougall, Corbett Woodall and Michael Aspel himself.
In the 60s, Michael was entrusted with conducting many programs, such as Come Dancing, Cracker Jack, Ask Aspel and the Miss World beauty pageant. Aspel has been the undisputed host of the beauty pageant for 14 consecutive years.
He was the host of the animated documentary The Color Television Receiver, filmed at BREMA Studios and broadcast on BBC 2 every day from 1967 to 1971.
Michael was a host for BBC Nuclear Radio and also starred in the war documentary War Game, which won the 1966 Best Documentary Film award. This film, by order of the government, was banned from showing to the general public and first appeared on television only in 1985.
In 1969 and 1976, Aspel was one of the hosts of the BBC's Song for Europe competition, in which the audience selected a song for Eurovision. In 1969 and 1976 he worked as a British television commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest. He was also a radio commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest for Great Britain in 1963.
On the Kenny Everett radio show on Metropolitan Radio, Aspel was given a separate time for his comic appearances. On The Goodies, Michael played the lead role twice, playing himself. For one such episode, called Kitten Kong, he won the Silver Rose prize at the Montreux Entertainment Festival.
From 1974 to 1984, Aspel presented a three-hour musical chat talk on weekdays on Capital Radio in London. In late 1984, he presented the Capital Sunday show, which lasted only a few months.
In 1985, Michael switched from the BBC to LBC, where he worked until the end of the decade. On BBC Radio 2, he only hosted Sunday shows in the late 80s and 90s.
In 1977, Aspel hosted the Wise Sailors show, in which the hosts, dressed as sailors, read the news, sang songs and danced. This show is now considered a classic of British comedy. The character played by Michael was named Michael Aspirin.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Aspel also worked for the ITV channel, on which he hosted the popular programs Give Us the Key, Children's Game and Six Hours. They were live entertainment broadcasts of current events and were shown only on London Weekend Television.
In 1989, he presented an original television show: The Solution to an Interactive Murder at a Wedding called Murder Weekend. The author and creator of the show was Joy Swift, who, in the form of a ghost, invited viewers to solve a riddle in order to win a prize.
In the early 1990s, Aspel presented two documentaries on BBC Radio 2, written by Terence Pettigrew, in which Pettigrew and Aspel expressed their personal views on compulsory military service. Both of them served at different times in West Germany: Aspel in the Royal Rifle Corps, and Pettigrew in Röhme. The films featured comedian Bob Monkhouse, Virgin Soldiers Leslie Thomas, and BBC Radio 2 presenter John Dunn.
A little later, the third documentary, "Nobody Cried When the Trains Left," was released, which told about the evacuation of children from major British cities during World War II. The film features actor Derek Nimmo, writer Ben Weeks and world boxing champion Henry Cooper.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Aspel hosted the Aspel & Company chat show on ITV. The success of the show was in attracting famous people such as Margaret Thatcher, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to the show.
In 1993, there was a scandal at the Aspel & Company show. In an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, they actively promoted their joint venture Planet Hollywood. The UK Independent Television Commission strongly condemned the interview and, although ITV ratings skyrocketed, Aspel had to close the show due to the resulting scandal.
Since 1980, Aspel has been a regular guest on This Is Your Life: Strange But True. When its host Eamonn Andrews died unexpectedly in 1987, Aspel had to lead the program until it closed in 2003.
Since 1993, Aspel has broadcast the supernatural "Strange But True" on the ITV channel. The show explored supernatural phenomena and unexplained mysteries. The program ran until 1997.
In 1997, Michael recorded 60 episodes of the new BBC game show BlockBusters.
In 1993, Aspel became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for Merit in Radio Broadcasting. In the same year, he was named Personality of the Year by the TV Times Variety Club and was inducted into the Royal Television Society's Hall of Fame for Distinguished Service to Television.
From 2000 to 2006, Michael was the host of the BBC Antiques Roadsow. Michael recorded the last episode of the show at Kentwent Hall, Suffolk as a tribute to himself.
In 2003, Aspel starred in the BBC documentary Three Deceptions, which claimed he had an affair with Pamela Anderson, Valerie Singleton and Angie Best.
As a guest Aspel twice took part in the thematic quiz "Did I receive news from you?" (in 2005 and 2007).
In 2006 he worked as a commentator on Richard O'Brien's tour The Rocky Horror Show.
In 2008, Michael directed the 5-part documentary series Evacuated Memories, which was produced by Leopard Films for ITV1. In this series, he, along with 15 other evacuees during the war, returned to the places of his youth, including the military house in Chard, Somerset. I met my childhood friends at Forde Abbey, not far from Chard. Later he met his 96-year-old former school teacher Audrey Guppy.
Personal life
Aspel was married three times and has seven children from all of them.
Aspel's first wife is Diana Sessions. Their marriage lasted from 1957 to 1961. They had two children.
The second wife is Anne Reed, a television screenwriter. They married in 1962 and had two twin children. Divorced in 1967.
The third wife was the little-known to the general public Irene Clarke, production assistant of the program "This is your life: strange, but true." They also had two children, but Michael left the family for his mistress, the married actress Elizabeth, who later also bore him a child.
Charity
Aspel is known for his charity work. As a member of the Cancer Researh UK charity, Aspel established a nursing home in Ambridge, Surrey in 2008.
In addition, Aspel is Vice President of The Children Trust, a UK-based charity for children with traumatic brain injury. He is the patron saint and longtime supporter of Princess Alice Hospice, Escher and the British Evacuees Association.
Michael is one of nine presidents of the Youth Trust for the Environment.
In 2004, The Independent reported that Aspel was diagnosed with a dormant case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
