RADIO

BIG GEORGE'S BUSINESS OF SOUND / UNSIGNED - BBC 3CR
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED

Currently lifting the lid off the music industry in the 21st century and giving airtime to featured unsigned artists, every Sunday 3-5pm ** LINK **

MILTON KEYNES/BUCKS BREAKFAST SHOW - BBC 3CR
PRESENTED

Hosted an all speech breakfast show in the year running up to, and eleven months after, the station won the 2005 Sony Radio Academy "Station of the Year" award.

During my time on the firing line, I interviewed John Prescott for 20 minutes in his office in Whitehall (now there's a tale), saved the oldest football stadium on the planet and made a real difference in the local community. It was also my pleasure interviewing more profs than any other human in the world, I got them all laughing!

BIG GEORGE SOUND OF MUSIC BBC 3CR
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED

Sony Radio Academy Gold Award: Music Broadcaster 2002

The judges verdict … "Big George has an absolutely peerless passion for music of all varieties and he communicates that passion brilliantly. He's one of those unique broadcasters who just keep you listening - you can't walk away from the radio when he's talking."

What the boss reckoned …

"Big George isn't your average broadcaster. He has no time for "celebrity tosh" and no patience with music that has been manufactured, marketed and manipulated for short-term financial gain. Instead, he is a consummate storyteller, using some of the world's greatest musicians as the central characters in a daily odyssey through the history of music.
Some of them are household names. But there are many more whose names would previously have meant nothing to BBC 3CR listeners. For example, Bob and Dick Sherman are hardly instantly recognisable as having made a significant contribution to musical history; yet, as you will hear, their compositions are better known - and have been enjoyed - by more people than have those of The Beatles.
Not for Big George a glorified discography or salacious muso gossip. Rather, his programmes dig deeper into the psyche of his subjects, explaining what drove them to make their music and how it has left a lasting impact on the world.
George shuns the easy option. Who else but this engaging Londoner would do an hour on John Lennon without playing Imagine?
From Mozart to Malcolm Arnold, Chuck Berry to the music of the Carry On films, Bob Marley to Beethoven and Edith Piaf to the Ealing Comedies, George has catalogued the lives of more than 250 artists, of which a fraction are presented here, with real passion and enthusiasm.
His Managing Editor has received three complaints about George - all bemoaning his "common" accent. But with thousands of letters and e-mails of praise, Big George's Sound of Music has attracted the greatest response of any single programme in the station's history. Enjoy."

BIG GEORGE'S REAL MUSIC HOUR - CHILTERN NETWORK
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED

My first radio show as a presenter. I got the gig after jamming the stations breakfast show for seven minutes in protest of their music policy.

My show only played music performed by peoples fingers, no computers, samplers or digital trickery.

* Guardian review by Ann Karpf
"Chris Tarrent may make big money from Capital Radio; Big George at the Chiltern Radio Network in Milton Keynes doesn't make a penny. But Big George is of the old school and passionately hostile to drum-machines, samplers, the record industry - jeez, even Dolby(TM).
His Thursday evening show, BIG GEORGE'S REAL MUSIC HOUR, consists of the music he prizes, an idiosyncratically eclectic mix of country, rock, new bands and even (last week) a Scottish mod group as well as Woody Guthrie.
No polished patter; his speech is confined to exhortations to buy this or that record and invective against the record companies (playing a band who couldn't secure a deal in Britain, he says it's because they don't have a member in the cast of Eastenders) in unmistakable tones of the proselytiser, giving his show the feel of a pirate station. The ads in between sound surreal - shopping malls and Alice On Ice. George, who composed the rousing theme tune for "Have I Got News For You", is a bit of a bully and seems to get off on being a Luddite, but by God he loves the music, and it shows."

I resigned on air the day after the network was bought out by a company who play wall to wall adverts occasionally interrupted by Tina Turner, Wet Wet Wet or Phil Collins. In fact I dedicated the entire show to Phil Collins, but not the housewives favourite, cuddly Phil Collins, but the unlistenable Phil Collins in his Jazz Fusion outfit Brand-X. They'd have sacked me anyway, as I'm not the kinda guy who reads cue cards and plays the next piece of safety on the playlist

SHLANGING!!! - BBC GLR
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED

A wonderful 18 months broadcasting every Saturday from 10pm until 1am. Sadly it finished due to me having a heart attack on air (mind you, I finished the show without mentioning the agony - then took three years off to get betterer than better)

PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE - BBC RADIO 4
WRITTEN AND PRESENTED
Taking a looking at the hidden world of session musicians

JEWEL IN THE CROWN - BBC RADIO 4
PRODUCED AND PRESENTED
30 minute programme about my home town of Stony Stratford

THE TODAY PROGRAMME - BBC RADIO 4
Interviewed about the state of the music industry

HALF MINUTE MELODIES - BBC RADIO 4
Along with Ronnie Hazelhurst and Tony Hatch, interviewed in the bowels of Broadcasting House by Chris Searle, about how TV themes are composed

QUESTIONS QUESTIONS - BBC RADIO 4
I answered a question on the life and times of Arthur Woods, the chap who wrote the Archers theme (tragically I know an awful lot about miscellaneous musical escapades)

MARK LAMARRS BIG TABLE - BBC RADIO 1 (pilot)
MUSICAL DIRECTOR/BANDLEADER
Variety show recorded at Jongleurs

SANDI TOKSVIGS SOUND Co. - BBC RADIO 4
Cast member & bandless bandleader

PAUL GAMBACINNI - BBC RADIO 2
Musicicologist, explaining modern studio techniques

FRED MACAULAY SHOW - BBC SCOTLAND
Regular breakfast buddy doing paper reviews and generally irreverent about the morning agenda

LANDMARK PLACES - BBC RADIO 4
Interviewed by Laurie Taylor

MUSIC MATTERS - BBC RADIO 3
GUEST

MORAL NOTES - BBC RADIO 4
GUEST

RICHARD ALLINSON - BBC RADIO 2
GUEST

LYNN PARSON - BBC RADIO 2
GUEST

SATURDAY LIVE - BBC RADIO 1
House musician - live from a bunker at BBC Maida Vale - long long ago

BBC RADIO NORWICH - ah ha!