And they turned, perhaps surprisingly, to Mayo. When he decided to concentrate on telly, again, after a meagre two years, Radio 1 needed, well, a radio one. It wasn’t imperfect entirely, but it felt a bit like he was phoning it in, coincidentally at a stage when he reintroduced the funny phone call shtick that his telly chum Noel Edmonds had been doing more methodically a decade before. He never became a household name via the spoken word and upon his elevation in 1986, was the first example of something that has become an epidemic of the BBC in recent years the TV star shoehorned into a radio slot in the hope it would fit. Read’s wish to be playing on the records rather than just playing them was no secret but Smith was really enigmatic, something you can’t be at breakfast. The 1980s had been dominated of a morn by Mikes Read and Smith, and while both were communicators of expertise, there was always a nagging doubt they were yearning for something else. There was something quite touching, generous even, about handing the biggest gig in UK radio to someone who wasn’t especially well known, but evidently had an extra sparkle that Radio 1’s flagship programme required all over again. When Simon Mayo took over the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1988, it felt like a warm blanket had been wrapped around the nation’s favourite. Get your motor spinning, there’s so much to do The breakfast show’s here to start your day
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