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Profile: Tony Lyman. Many a boy-broadcaster has 'cut his teeth' in Hospital Radio and Tony is no exception. Working for Radio Nene Valley in Northampton gave him the opportunity to launch his career on an unsuspecting and rather poorly public!  One of his tasks was to visit the wards each week and replace various parts of the patients' headphones .These headphones were stethoscope-type affairs, made up of bits of plastic tubing ,which fell apart with amazing ease and the most common components to go missing from these Heath Robinson contraptions were the tiny foam-rubber pads, which fitted into the patients' ears. Just how many people had left hospital feeling fully recovered, but with sub-standard hearing?!

Tony's first taste of 'real' radio was onboard the M.V.Peace in Israel. This was a Top 40 radio station anchored about 6 miles off the coast of Tel -Aviv and called The Voice of Peace. He presented the Breakfast Show at one end of the day and the Classical Programme at the other; the bit in between was mostly spent eating, sleeping, sunbathing and waiting for the tender to arrive with a fresh supply of food, sun lotion, new records to play and letters from home!  A vivid memory of his brief life on the high seas was sitting alone on deck each morning, waiting for the Breakfast Show to start and watching the impressive sunrises over the hills of Tel-Aviv. With this heavenly, golden glow came the most amazing perfume from the orange and lemon groves on shore and he still maintains that this was the closest he has ever been to paradise.

After a brief career as a postman in Northampton, about seven months, he joined Radio Trent in Nottingham to present 'Sounds Across Midnight' and looks back on this period with great fondness.  He has been quoted as saying 'Working on the radio at night is very intimate, because people have the time to actually listen and be involved, without the pressures of the day, instead of simply having to use you as entertaining wallpaper.'  Tony then spent a year presenting the Trent Breakfast Show before moving south to Leicester Sound for three years, presenting an afternoon show, which was a music/chat programme and amongst many broadcasting milestones, he learned how to play the keyboard and how to speak French on the air!  Guests included Bonnie Langford, Les Dennis, Natasha Richardson, Hinge and Bracket, Sooty, a cow, the Brook Bond chimps and a knight in shining armour who rode up to the radio station on his charger.

Tony then returned to Radio Trent where he presented the mid-morning show for a year and this was followed by a move to the sister station, GEM AM, to host mornings and then breakfast across Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire & Leicestershire, this being prior to the dumbing down of GEM to the shoot-off of the UBC-owned Classic Gold network. 

Also between 1993 and 1998, Tony's voice appeared on Central Television, working alongside Andy Marriott on off-screen continuity.   

Upon the arrival of David Lloyd at regional station Century 106, Tony spent a short time with ex-Trent colleagues, David himself, Colin Woolley & Andy Marriott.  The acquisition of the same by Capital Radio saw an 'out with the old, in with the new' policy.

Whereabouts: Tony is now working for Ron Coles and Peter Tomlinson on SAGA 105.7FM in the West Midlands.  He is set to make a dramatic return to the East Midlands in 2003 when he starts presenting the afternoon show for the recently won East Midlands licence to broadcast on SAGA 106.6. (101.4 for Derbyshire) which launches on February 11th 2003 in the same slot, afternoons.  

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