| Biography | Michael Aspel OBE is an English television presenter on programmes such as Crackerjack, Aspel & Company, Give Us A Clue, This is Your Life, Strange but True? and Antiques Roadshow.
During the Second World War, he was evacuated from the area and spent nearly five years in Chard, Somerset. He attended Emanuel School after passing his eleven-plus in 1944 and served as a conscript of the National Service, in the ranks of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, from 1951 to 1953.
He worked at the David Morgan department store, Cardiff until 1955, before working as newsreader for the BBC in Cardiff in 1957. He also acted in Cardiff, in a BBC Children's Hour serial "Counterspy", produced by BBC Wales and written by and starring John Darran. By the early sixties, he had become one of four regular newsreaders on BBC national television, along with Richard Baker, Robert Dougall and Corbet Woodall.
At the BBC he began presenting a number of other programmes such as the series Come Dancing, Crackerjack, Ask Aspel, and the Miss World beauty contest, which he covered 14 times. He narrated the BREMA cartoon documentary, The Colour Television Receiver (aka Degaussing or The Colour Receiver Installation Film) between 1967 and 1971. He provided narration for the BBC nuclear war drama documentary The War Game, which won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1966.
In both 1969 and 1976 Aspel hosted the BBC's A Song for Europe contest to choose Britain's Eurovision entry and provided the UK TV commentary twice at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969 and 1976, in which year he also presented the contest previews. He provided the Eurovision radio commentary for the UK in 1963. Aspel was featured on This is Your Life in 1980, and when host Eamonn Andrews died in 1987 he became presenter of the programme until its run ended in 2003. He also presented BBC's Antiques Roadshow from 2000 until 2008. |