Radio and Television.

A household name in Britain for twenty-five years, Mike has been voted National Broadcaster of the Year ten times and has made history by being the only person to have presented the breakfast show on three national radio stations.  As well as being phenomenally successful on Radio Luxembourg, Radio One, Classic FM, Jazz FM and Capital Gold, he has fronted such long-running and top-rated TV programmes as Pop Quiz, Pop Quest, Disney Time, Saturday Superstore and Top of the Pops and Goldmaster among others.

Into the new millennium, he has been very involved in TV shows for the BBC, ITV Channel Four and Sky, including Paradise Found, Life Laundry, Private Passions, and many of the popular "Top Ten" and "I Love" programmes as well as specials on Queen, Cliff Richard and Diana, Princess of Wales and the Open University. Mike co-presented the last-ever Top of the Pops in July 2006. He wrote all the questions for the first series of Barrymore"s My Kind of Music and won the TV Theme of the year award for "More To Life" the theme to the TV series "Trainer". 2004 saw him in I"m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, after which he recorded Jungle Rock as The Jungle Boys with Lord Charlie Brocket and Razor Ruddock, the single becoming a top thirty hit. The follow-up, In The Summertime also charted, giving them two hit singes in the last six months. In the last two years Mike has also appeared on many other top TV shows, including Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, Top Of The Pops, The History of Light Entertainment, Star Sale, This Morning, Swag, Ant & Dec"s Saturday Night Takeaway, Life Laundry, The Hall of Fame, Duran Duran"s Millions, BBC Breakfast Time, GMTV, Richard & Judy, 18 Doughty Street and Bo Selecta . He regularly reviews the papers on Sky News.

In May 2005 Mike began a daily radio show (9.00am-1.00pm) on the re-born Radio London International (Big L) the station covering Britain, Europe and beyond on SKY 0190, the World on the web (bigl.co.uk and the eastern half of Britain and the whole of Holland on AM.
In 2009 he is the driving force behind a new station One Gold,  a station that will feature almost twenty former radio One voices.
2006 saw him co-presenting the last-ever Top of the Pops and he now presents ""An Hour With" for various Sky Channels. These have included much-acclaimed interviews with the likes of Status Quo, Robin Gibb, Donovan, Paul Carrack, The Blues Band, Joe Brown, Peter Noone, Andy Fairweather Low and Neil Sedaka.
He has conceived and is involved with launch a new channel called The Games on Sky.
In December 2009 Mike received the prestigious Services To Music award at The Malta Music Awards.




Musicals.

Mike has written several successful stage musicals, including Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Oscar, Young Apollo, Ricky Nelson Teenage Idol and more recently Oh Puck! and "Cliff." The latter toured to much acclaim ending with a good run in the West End at The Prince of Wales during 2003 with Mike himself starring in the show.  Many distinguished actors and actresses have been involved in his musicals including Nyree Dawn Porter, Anton Rogers, Brian Glover, Darren Day, Colin Baker, Don Gallagher and Alex Hanson. His producers include Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bill Kenwright, That"ll Be The Day and Apollo Leisure.

Mike began treading the boards at the age of eight as Lysander in Midsummer Night"s Dream going on to perform in dozens more whilst studying,, including Little Women, Dear Octopus and I Capture the Castle, until going into radio and television. In the spring of 2004 he starred in a new Glenn Miller musical American Patrol and in the summer of 2004 directed a new 80"s musical, White Wedding, following which the press referred to him as "a skilled and prolific director."  Mike was recently commissioned to write a new musical about the Village People, entitled YMCA The Musical.
2006/7 saw his musical/poetry show, The Dead Poet"s Society in workshop at The Gatehouse Theatre, Highgate, The Frinton Literary Festival and Home House, Portman Square, London. The show includes Mike collaborations with such wordsmiths as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, Kipling, WH Auden, Betjeman and Rupert Brooke amongst others. From this emerged the much-played single, England My England.



Songwriting.

Mike has written songs that have been recorded by dozens of different artists, including Cliff Richard, David Essex, Leo Sayer, Gene Pitney, Paul Young, Justin Hayward, Alvin Stardust, Steve Harley, The Cheeky Girls, Donovan, Colin Blunstone, Kym Mazelle, Jon Anderson, Marc Almond, Don McLean, Captain Sensible, Cantabile, Darren Day, Annie Haslam, Elliott Frisby and Matchbox.
He has also had his material recorded by The Kings College Choir, The Eton College Choir, The Rodolfus Choir and the London Community Gospel Choir.
His Morning March recorded by HM Band of the Royal Marines was included on two best-selling albums alongside many legendary classical composers such as Beethoven, Strauss, Tchaikowsky and Schubert.

His concept album "Songs," featuring Mike"s music and the words of Sir John Betjeman the former Poet Laureate.  As well having written the hit singles More To Life for Cliff Richard and Myfanwy for David Essex, he also contributed to the lyrics and featured on one of Slade"s big hits, Radio Wall Of Sound and in 2004 had one of his songs, I Know What You Did Last Summer, in the chart on one of the Jungle Boys hit singles.
Sir Tim Rice selected Mike"s song Myfanwy as one of his choices on  Desert Island Discs.
More To Life earned Mike and Simon May the TV Theme of the Year Award in 1991.

Following the Tsunami disaster he put together a single for the charity, enlisting the likes of The Bee Gees, Cliff Richard, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Boy George, Steve Winwood, Russell Watson and Jon Anderson to sing on it. He also pulled in an all-star backing group in former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman on bass, Rick Wakeman on synth, Kenney Jones from the Who on percussion, Gary Moore on guitar and members of The Beach Boys and America on backing vocals. The song, Grief Never Grows  Old, which Mike wrote, reached No 4 in the chart and is still featured on some 2,000,000 web sites.
 January 2005 saw the release in Japan of a 24 track CD of Mike"s record releases from the late 70"s and 80"s, featuring seventeen of his own songs. The album was released in the UK on Angel Air in 2008.
Mike has recorded a demonstration album of his The Dead Poets" Society with singer/songwriter Elliott Frisby, an album of Mike"s collaborations with some of history"s greatest lyricists, including Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Kipling, Brooke and WH Auden.
Words & Music, Mike"s album collaboration with Sir John Betjeman, was released for Betjeman"s centenary. It contains 30 songs, including the single, released on the same day, Farewell, by Don Mclean. This was also released on Angel Air in 2008.
Mike and Elliott have written some forty songs together.
Christmas 2009 saw the release of My Christmas Card To You by The Shooting Stars. The song, written by Mike, Elliot Frisby and Roy Wood was also released in Malta and Italy with Mike undertaking live TV performances for those countries.




Books.

As co-author of the Guinness Book of Hit Singles and subsequent titles, he had a number one best-selling book whose sales went on to total millions. He has written 35 books in all, including biographies, music, and poetry. His currently available tomes include Forever England, a biography of Rupert Brooke, Hodder"s best-selling 100 Favourite Poems and 100 Favourite Humorous Poems, Major to Minor [The history of the songwriter in Britain and America over the last 200 years], Inspirations, the uniquely conceptual poetry collection New Poems for Old Paintings, Read"s Musical Reciter  and The South Coast Beat Scene of the 1960"s.
His first novel, Fly Me To The Moon is still unpublished but his second  Drift Down the Darkness has just been completed and he"s working on a third, From Matthew To Revelation..
 He"s also working, when he has time, on a book of British Poets, and The History of the FA Cup Final.





Films.

During the 90"s, Mike was commissioned to write the music for the Children"s Film Unit Film, How"s Business, and with Simon May wrote the title song for Midsummer Films release Caught In The Act, which received the Jury award of Excellence at the Laguna Festival in the USA in 1996.  He has also written several film scripts, including Forever England, about the life and times of Rupert Brooke, a film on pirate radio, Radio Cool, which is and packed with great 60"s music, a comedy Fly Me To The Moon, Wenceslas, and Great Expectations. The latter is now funded and the search is on for a director.
 In 2007 he appeared as himself in Midsomer Murders and as Mickey Taylor in the psychological thriller Inside Out, also co-writing several songs for the soundtrack.
                                         

Art


In October 2007 Mike had his first art exhibition at the Karen Taylor Gallery, St Margarets, Near Richmond, featuring his "Choc Art," a totally new concept using the medium of chocolate in various forms. The interest has been incredible and three more exhibitions have been staged since.




Miscellaneous








For the last six years Mike has been the Chairman of the Rupert Brooke Literary Society which he co-founded in 1999 and is now a vice president of the Society. He has created the country"s first Brooke museum at Grantchester and edited two Brooke magazines a year from 1999-2007.
He is extremely busy as vice-president of The Heritage Foundation and has helped raise almost one and a half million pounds towards a permanent memorial in London to Bomber Command. This year (2009) the Foundation has erected plaques to Comedian Peter Cook, Who drummer Keith Moon, actress Wendy Richard and comedian Kenneth Williams.

Having spoken at various Conservative Party Conferences he was asked to stand as a candidate for London Mayor. After five months training and experience at The House of Commons, Portcullis House, on the road, acclaimed TV interviews and working with the media, he stepped down when Boris Johnson threw his hat into the ring at the eleventh hour.

He has worked for many other different charities over the years including The Variety Club of Great Britain, The Shooting Star Children"s Hospice, Nordoff Robins and The Red Cross, as well as raising money from his stage shows for Children with Leukaemia and The Royal Marsden.

A long-time patron of The Cliff Richard Tennis Foundation Mike also raised £70,000 for them in one hit with his money from I"m A Celebrity.


An ambassador abroad, he has recently spoken on such topics as Politics, The Olympics, Songwriting and Literature in such places as Hawaii, New York, San Francisco, Acapulco, Norway, Jamaica and many other Caribbean Islands and various Mediterranean countries.



A Tennis fanatic, he plays in the Sussex league as well as in dozens of pro-celebrity tournaments and has won several trophies as he also has for cricket.
Mike"s many other passions include Music, Archaeology, British History, Literature, Walking, Having Creative Ideas, Sport and traveling around Britain.

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