Richard Spendlove MBE (born 16 June 1939) is a retired

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presenter/producer

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Life and work

Spendlove was born in Carlton in

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

. He worked for British Railways for 35 years, and in 1963 was appointed Relief

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. He retired from the railways in 1989 at the age of 50, to pursue a career in broadcasting. With David Croft he wrote and created a BBC TV

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term ori ...

series, ''

Oh, Doctor Beeching! ''Oh, Doctor Beeching!'' is a BBC television sitcom written by David Croft and Richard Spendlove which, after a broadcast pilot on 14 August 1995, ran for two series from 8 July 1996, with the last episode being broadcast on 28 September 1997. ...

'', which ran on

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between 1995 and 1997 The series ran for two series,The series was axed due to unsatisfactory viewing figures and due to this has never been re-shown in the UK as of 2022, but has been released on DVD From 1989 until 2017, Spendlove worked for

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as the host of his long-running Saturday night music and phone-in show, which was simulcast from

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and also broadcast on the Eastern Counties radio stations, Radio Norfolk, Radio Suffolk, Radio Essex,

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, Radio Northampton and Radio Kent. In January 1994, an

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tabled in the

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after a break in its broadcasting received a total of fifteen signatures. It was believed to be the longest running phone-in chat show on British Radio. He also presented in the afternoons on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire until 16 June 2017, his 78th birthday. Since then, the Saturday night show format has returned on and off. From 4 December 2017 to 25 March 2018, Spendlove returned to broadcast the show on

Mildenhall, Suffolk Mildenhall is a market town and civil parish in Suffolk, England. The town is near the A11 and is located north-west of Ipswich, the county town.Ordnance Survey (2006). ''OS Explorer Map 226 - Ely & Newmarket''. . The large Royal Air Force stati ...

based community station Zack FM, on Monday nights and later Sunday nights. From late 2018 to May 2020, the show was broadcast live, on and off, on selected Saturday and later Sunday evenings online, and had a dedicated Facebook page. Spendlove was awarded the MBE for "Services to Regional and Local Radio Broadcasting" in 2000. In 2016, the BBC was critical of his use of his show to gain support for a convicted

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murderer. Spendlove now lives in

Harston Harston is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England, located around 5 miles (8 km) south of Cambridge. In 2011, it had a population of 1,740. Village Sign The village sign was erected in the Queen's Silver Jubilee yea ...

. He and his wife Betty, who sat opposite him in the studio during his Saturday night show's entire run on the BBC, married in November 1960. She died in August 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spendlove, Richard 1939 births BBC radio presenters British radio presenters British Rail people British television writers Living people Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Carlton, Nottinghamshire