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Profile: Tommy Boyd: Born around 1955, the now 5ft 8inch green-eyed Tommy was raised in West London. His radio career began with the BBC in Brighton during his student days, when he attended university in the seaside town. On graduating, he joined London's LBC, and at one time reaching the upper echelons of News Director of what turned out to be an award winning breakfast show titled 'AM'.
Tommy's more recent broadcasting exploits have been so successful that they've arguably clouded how he came to widespread acclaim - as one of the hosts of ITV's 'Magpie', Channel 3's answer to BBC1's 'Blue Peter'. 1977 saw the beginning of a three-year stint on the 'make & do' show which aired twice a week from the cult-status studios of Thames Television in Teddinglon. As with it's BBC counterpart, there was the odd presenter change - in 1972, Douglas Rae took over from Tony Bastable and Mick Robertson replaced ex-Radio 1 DJ Pete Brady. Jenny Hanley took over from future Children's Radio campaigner Susan Stranks in 1974 - with Robertson and Hanley, there was a missing link of probably the most remembered Magpie line up - that of Tommy Boyd who replaced Douglas Rae in 1977. The final three were no match for the BBC's long established 'Blue Peter' and the fight ended in 1980 when 'Magpie' aired for the last time after a run of around 1,000 25 minute episodes all told. Returning back to LBC, within just three months, he was given the Variety Club's 'Commercial Radio Personality of the Year" award.
However, Tommy had proved himself in Children's television-land, and his ITV work continued into the 1980s as a presenter on breakfast TV channel TV-am's children's programme 'The Wide Awake Club'. One of Tommy's earliest links with the radio world came in the early 1980s with the Central TV children's current affairs quiz 'What's Happening?' which took teams of kids specifically from different Independent Local Radio station's broadcast areas, and pitted them against each other. In 1981, he provided the voice for Pterry the Pterodactyl, and the Scottish giant 'Biggum' (who was only ever seen in the form of a tartan sock and sandal) for BBC TV show 'Jigsaw'.
Another ITV bid to beat the Beeb came in 1982 when 'The Saturday Show' began a run of two years against Auntie's 'Saturday Superstore'. On this occasion, for Central Television, Tommy worked alongside Generation Game hostess and Irish singing legend Isla St. Clair on a show some critics said, was not close enough to the TISWAS style for most people's liking. Tommy's reputation was still shining brightly - his skills didn't go un-noticed, and he began on-screen continuity work for the fledgling 'Children's ITV' in 1983.
Another TV legend was born on an October Saturday morning in 1984 when TV-am, forerunner to GMTV, brought in 'The Wide Awake Club' fronted by the man you either love or loathe, one Mr. Timmy Mallett, who appeared from Manchester's Piccadilly Radio. Having fired the station up, Timmy returned to the radio fold in Manchester leaving Arabella Warner, a one-time TV-am researcher and James Baker, a one-time TV-am postroom worker to link up with a new team-mate. Cometh the hour, cometh the man - our very own Tommy Boyd with a trio that lasted until 1985 when Mallett returned to present again.
Radio connections continued in 1987, when he joined Southern Sound in Brighton as a presenter and member of the Board of Directors. An industrial dispute at TVam, (where Tommy was once 'Head of Weekend Programmes') that same year was followed by the return of the team and Michaela Strachan. WAC elements included 'WAC Snax', 'Bopping In The Bathroom' and a feature with a title that no-one would ever dare use on Children's telly today ' Bonk & Boob'. Such was the popularity of WAC that a Sunday morning spin-off also began called 'WAC Extra', firstly with the same line up, and latterly just Timmy and Michaela. Meanwhile, back on Saturdays, Arabella and James left towards the end of 1988, leaving Timmy, Tommy & Michaela to be joined in by Countdown mathematics statistician Carol Vorderman. Tommy was still an ever present through two 1989 revamps and a name change to 'WAC 90' in 1990. This show was presented from Granada Studios in Manchester by Tommy and Michaela but had morphed into something completely different and was replaced towards the end of the year by a show fronted solely by Michaela that only lasted until TV-am lost it's franchise in 1992. In between times, Tommy joined BBC Radio Five hosting the drivetime show, 'Sportsbeat', through 1990 and 1991, but then returned once more to the 'Children's ITV' fold during 1991. When the new controller of CITV got to grips in 1993, on-screen continuity, i.e. Tommy, was replaced with voice-only promotions.
He returned to his roots, albeit for a short time, in August 1995 when BBC Radio Brighton received a new name - BBC Southern Counties Radio. ; The music output disappeared, and SCR became the first all-talk BBC local radio station. He joined the likes of Al Clarke and Gordon Astley. When national commercial radio began in the UK, Tommy went out of TV vision and into sound only as a presenter on AM station talkRadio UK (later talkRADIO) from February 1995 until November 1998. Here, Tommy slotted in amongst the likes of Caesar The Geezer, Terry Christian, Jeremy Beadle, Moz Dee and Carol McGiffen, in amongst both daytime and early evening slots. The Daily Mail described his show as "The funniest show on British Radio".
His first departure from the station, initiated on 12th November of that year, was caused following a reshuffle instigated by a take-over consortium led by former Editor of national newspaper The Sun, Kelvin McKenzie. Tommy was shown the door as were a group of his fellow broadcasters - there was no explanation given but media reports suggested he was sent to the office and informed that he was fired. Having carried speech radio quite suitably in this time, he moved over to BBC Radio Five Live - only later to be dismissed when Auntie took a dislike to what it called '...his argumentative style of broadcasting'. It was still only 1999. In March of that year, Tommy sent foot in a fictional radio studio, as DJ Steve Mason in Episode 1406 of ITV Police drama serial 'The Bill' titled, most un-originally, 'On The Air'. His return to a proper radio studio came on the internet only, via his own internet website and home-based facilities. The webcasts led to the formation of a new company called 'First Webcast'. At the same time, and with his Sussex connections, he was at one time a Director of Southern Sound Radio Group (an independent radio group later swallowed up by Capital Radio). Later in 1999, he made his full-time return to the airwaves, again in London, back to commercial waters with London's LBC. Here, he worked alongside Midlands, Breakfast and BBC broadcaster Anne Diamond on an overnight slot from 3:00am. As you would expect, his other one-man show on LBC was ground-breaking and away from the norm. It's rumoured that Tommy's show was required to be less exciting by station bosses - and this ultimately led to his departure by the end of the same year.
Having got to grips with it's new acquisition, McKenzie and his colleagues rebranded talkRadio in January 2000, restructuring it to be in direct competition with BBC Radio Five Live and calling it talkSPORT, however, programming elements were permitted for general conversation away from a sporting theme. Tommy rejoined the AM network on February 26th 2000, covering for absent presenters on many an occasion - and this was deemed acceptable enough by station management to give him a full-time weekend and late-night slot in April of 2000. Fridays adopted the theme of the new station format with a sports quiz, and again, with Tommy's penchant for wresting, Saturdays included a wrestling hour which was followed by a debate phone-in, but the now cult-status element was still around the corner.
Just a month into his new slot, on Sunday nights, Tommy began pushing the boundaries of live talk radio when, in May, he started airing telephone callers without any form of screening - it was here that the popular Human Zoo format began. Along with engineer Ashley Gould as co-presenter, the show, named after a 1969 book by Desmond Morris, was basically a normal phone in with seemingly no-holds barred, and broadcast regulations permitting. Cult status was quickly attached to Tommy's show - infact, by the Summer of 2001, around one million calls were reported to have been received over the course of a four hour show. The success of the show was attributed not to the format itself, but to the encouragement of listeners to participate by the host himself, some of who gave short performances, some played audio or blurt out catchphrases in the hope they would receive nationwide recognition and use.
Nobody knew just what would come on-air next - it could be something light-hearted, or the complete opposite - deep discussion and debate of the type unheard on other stations, although mixed with atmosphere lightening humour. Critics thought the man was quite arrogant or mad, even going as far as ringing him up to have a go, putting down his ideas and deliberately starting fiery, often bitter arguments. His fans respected him for his control and wisdom, particularly of the fact that, on Sunday nights, people were slightly downcast about having to return to work the following day, or grimly determined to defy the world and the universe when they did return to work. Tommy's show provided a mouthpiece for such vibes to be expressed..
Almost two years would pass without too much controversy but a pit opened up in March of 2002 when he was dismissed over an outburst from a caller which he failed to rapidly remove from the airwaves. By this time, the 'Zoo' reflected it's animal world counterpart, i.e. housing the same animals, or as a better explanation, a mainstay of the same group of telephone callers - and this was despite Tommy's efforts to rejuvenate the show. On-air, a requirement was to prevent offensive or illegal output making it to the listeners' ears - this was done via a 7-second delay in which time, a 'dump button' could be used to clear the call and return the output to real time, thus removing the offensive material from the loop.
It was Saturday 30th March 2002 when the nation heard the sad news of the death of The Queen Mother. At 10:00pm, the show inevitably began with comment about the sad news - it was only 15 minutes into the show when a listener embarked on a fierce attack of the Royal Family concluding with an abusive statement in Tommy's direction too. LISTEN HERE! Tommy, enraged at both attacks, returned the gesture and cut the call off, but, probably so taken aback by the comments, omitted to hit the 'dump' button. Critics suggested he didn't apologise or distance himself or the station from the views expressed. It was only inevitable that a listener would complain to the Radio Authority, and complain they did, much as was the case for the types of shows aired on the station from all presenters, that challenged life and it's trials and tribulations.
The evening's show concluded as normal and so too did his Sunday evening outing. In the course of the following week, talkSPORT aired trailers promoting Tommy's absence from the following weekend's shows. On 11th April, talkSPORT announced that Tommy had been dismissed in connection with the incident, along with his producer and technical operator who were present at the time, on the grounds that they had failed to control the output of the station, leading to the airing of the comments. A spokesperson for the station said: "...it was either a gross error of judgement or one of those three people in the studio failed properly to monitor the output." It was just one single complaint that was used to prove the offence that had been caused.
Reporting it's findings and
upholding the complaint, The Radio Authority said that the complainant
questioned why a caller had been allowed to make offensive comments about the
Royal Family. The RA said: 'We listened to the item and asked the station to comment on the broadcast, which
had taken place on the day of the Queen Mother's death. We understood that a
caller had told the programme's technical operator that he wished to go on air
to praise the work of the Royal Family. He continued this line on air and told
the presenter that he had "great respect" and that they all did a
"fantastic job in this country". The station told us that this had put
the presenter at ease, believing that he had an innocuous caller on the line.
The caller asked whether the presenter agreed with him but then changed tack,
declaring that he was really a republican and that he thought, "they should
shoot the ******* lot of them. How's that for your national radio? **** you,
pal". The delay mechanism was not used and the comments were therefore
broadcast.
talkSPORT's management told us that they very much regretted that the comments
had been allowed to go to air. They assured us that procedures were in place to
prevent this happening and that all staff were aware of these procedures. They
acknowledged a lack of judgement and concentration by those staff involved in
the broadcast, and they felt the station had been let down. They also told us
they had taken immediate internal action.' With a favourite removed from
the station, petitions began filling up to restore Tommy to the airwaves - all
attempts failed.
As fans scoured the UK for nuggets of info about Tommy's whereabouts, the early part of 2004 saw him linked not with the world of wrestling, but with the world of Golf. Some thought he was a course owner, others said he'd been seen collecting stray balls and raking bunkers, and he was also rumoured to have chased a group of youth of the same Hampshire golf course who were apparently hanging around the in the rough, abusing golfers. Another suggestion linked with the crazy variety of the sport, suggested he was planning to open a Crazy Golf course in a Sussex seaside resort!
As March 2004 came around, Chichester-based commercial radio station Spirit FM 96.6 & 102.3 announced that Tommy would be presenting their weekday 10:00am-2:00pm slot from Thursday 11th to Friday 19th March.
Boyd-bits:
Having consumed one too many beers on a pub crawl, he was once dragged out of the sea;
He was once the producer and promoter of a show for UK Wrestling Federation FWA where he cited himself as being 'The British Vince McMahon' - Vince being the owner of the American WWF;
Comedian Bernard Manning has told jokes written by Tommy;
Blame Tommy for the silly rumour that it was Blockbusters host Bob Holness that played the Saxophone on Gerry's Rafferty's classic 'Baker Street'.
He once trained dolphins - one bit him once, and he still has the scar on his mouth to prove it;
As well as a radio jockey, he's also been a racing jockey - known for competitive horse riding, on one occasion, coming third at Cheltenham racecourse;
The Police once pulled him over and found a Turtle in the boot of his car;
Madonna accompanied him on a visit to McDonalds;
Tommy led an expedition up the Congo River;
He spent a period of time teaching Soccer to girls in America;
He's planted rice in Thailand's paddy fields region;
He's spent some quiet reflection time meditating in Machu Pechu and watched the Sun rise from behind Mount Kilamanjaro;
He once visited 10 Downing Street for a drinks reception with the Prime Minister;
Movie-star and American political party candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is counted as a friend of the family;
Search the net and you'll find loads of reference to his namesake, the Scottish international footballer. Once he was mistaken for the footballer and interviewed about his football life. He actually supports Portsmouth!
Whereabouts: After early indications that it would be the 11th, Tommy Boyd returned once more to his roots from Saturday 18th September 2004, presenting the Saturday night show from 9:00pm-1:00am on BBC Southern Counties Radio. Although it's rumoured to be another of Tommy's gags, his first show featured attempts to fix the broadcast desk which ended up setting off the smoke alarm and sprinkler system. You can listen on line though this link or locally on AM 1368khz in Surrey & North Sussex, 1161 in East Sussex, 1485 in and around Brighton plus 95.0 (Eest), 95.1 (West), 95.3 (Central South West Sussex), 104.0 (East Surrey and North Sussex), 104.5 (East), 104.6 (West Surrey) and 104.8 FM (West Sussex).
Thanks go to Vincent Lo who detailed that Tommy also appeared on Chichester's Spirit FM from w/c 18/10/2004 deputising for Duncan Barkes on the morning show 10:00-13:00.
AIRCHECK acknowledges the following link for some of the information contained on this page: http://www.btinternet.com/~bbkuk/tbshrine/mainmenu.htm