Brian Matthew
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Brian Matthew (born 17 September 1928) is a veteran British broadcaster, who became well known in the 1960s. As of August 2006 he was still broadcasting on radio for the BBC, having presented Sounds of the Sixties since 1990, often employing the same vocabulary and the same measured delivery he used forty years ago.
Matthew was born in Coventry. He started broadcasting in 1948 in Germany, and trained as an actor at RADA before joining the BBC in 1954. He became popular in the days of the BBC Light Programme, hosting Saturday Club (originally called Saturday Skiffle Club, starting in 1957 and changing to its more familiar name in 1958) and Easy Beat (starting in 1960). At the time, there was little pop music played on BBC Radio, certainly when compared to the huge demand for it among young people, and the shows attracted audiences into the millions. Virtually all the big stars of the era, including The Beatles, appeared on the shows.
On television, he is probably best remembered as presenter of Thank Your Lucky Stars (ITV 1961-66).
The influence of Easy Beat on radio declined due to the rise of offshore radio from 1964 onwards; when BBC Radio 1 launched in 1967, Easy Beat was axed, and Saturday Club was taken over by another presenter, Keith Skues (formerly of the "pirate" Radio London), before it was also axed in 1969. Later, Brian Matthew returned to prominence as the host of BBC Radio 2's arts magazine Round Midnight, from 1978 to 1990. Since April 1990 he has hosted Sounds of the 60s (a programme first presented in 1983 by Keith Fordyce) on the same network on Saturday mornings, playing many of the records he initially played on Saturday Club and Easy Beat.
Brian announced at the end of his show on Saturday 26 August 2006 that due to an undisclosed illness he would be taking several weeks off his Radio 2 show, for the first time in 16 years. Johnnie Walker and Sandie Shaw have filled in for him in his absence, with recordings of Matthew's A to Z of the Beatles feature also being employed to maintain his presence in the programme.
