Michael Aspel

Michael Terence Aspel (born 12 January 1933) is a retired English television newsreader and host of programmes such as Crackerjack, Ask Aspel, Aspel & Company, Give Us a Clue, This is Your Life, Strange but True? and Antiques Roadshow. Early life Aspel was born on 12 January 1933 in Battersea in London. 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 during his National Service, in the ranks of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, from 1951 to 1953. Career Aspel worked as a drainpipe-layer and gardener and sold advertising space for the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff. He worked as a teaboy at William Collins publishers in London and then entered National Service. He took up a job at the David Morgan department store in 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. Aspel played "Rocky" Mountain, a Canadian. 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, Aspel 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), which was shown every day (except Sunday) on BBC2 between 14 October 1967 and 8 January 1971. He also provided narration for the BBC nuclear war drama documentary The War Game, which won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1966, but was not shown on British television until 1985.