Tommy Boyd
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Timothy Leslie Boyd (born December 1952), better known as Tommy Boyd is a radio presenter and former children's television presenter.
He grew up in West London and attended university in Brighton. From 1977 to 1980 he was co-presenter of the ITV children's magazine programme Magpie, but he is perhaps better known for having presented the TV-am show Wide Awake Club throughout the 1980s. Between 1991 and 1992 he spent a period as the anchorman for ITV's children's strand, Children's ITV.
He was a radio presenter on the British AM station Talk Radio UK (later Talk Radio) from its inception in February 1995 until November 1998 when he lost his job in a reshuffle at the station when it was taken over by a consortium led by former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. He subsequently worked for BBC Radio Five Live, before being sacked for his argumentative and controversial style of broadcasting, and the local station LBC in London, leaving in 1999. In January 2000 Talk Radio was rebranded as talkSPORT, but with part of its schedules being retained for talk and non-sport phone in. After covering for absent presenters on several occasions, Boyd took up a permanent position in April. Many old fans were delighted to see him back at the station for which he had once been a flagship presenter, and his programmes were an immediate success. In May he began an experiment on his Sunday night slot whereby calls would go straight to air unscreened. This later evolved into the extremely successful Human Zoo. Boyd's career at talkSPORT ended in March 2002 when he was dismissed over an outburst by a caller which he failed to 'dump' from broadcast (see The Human Zoo article for details of the incident).
Boyd now presents a weekly show on BBC Southern Counties Radio. He lives in Havant, Hampshire.
He claims to believe that the television series Star Trek will be responsible for World War III.
External links
- The Tommy Boyd Shrine (http://www.tommyboydshrine.co.uk) - Fan site
- Biography (http://www.geocities.com/thehotw/TommyBoydtracker.htm) at Aircheck Tracker
- The Tommy Boyd Radio Archive (http://www.kayotix.com/Tommy_Boyd/) - An exhaustive collection of complete radio shows archived to date