Gary King (radio)
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Gary King (born Stevenage, England, August 4, 1963) is a British radio presenter who has worked for most of the country's best-known stations.
King began his career as a mobile DJ after giving up plans to be an actor and quickly progressed to the London training ground of Radio TopShop. He then joined Radio Luxembourg before becoming the inaugural presenter on the newly-launched Atlantic 252 in 1989 - in a parody of the four-minute warning, his opening words were "mine is the first voice you will ever hear - on Atlantic 252". Within less than a year, he had been poached by BBC Radio 1.
He presented the weekend early show on Radio 1, progressing eventually to the weekday equivalent and becoming a frequent stand-in for presenters on higher profile shows when they took holidays. In 1991, King spent a number of weeks hosting the prestigious Radio 1 breakfast show - the biggest show in UK radio - when regular DJ Simon Mayo took a period of extended paternity leave.
King left Radio 1 in March 1992 and joined Key 103 in Manchester. He then started a round-robin of stations in London - a spell at Virgin Radio (which re-introduced him to a national audience for a third time) made him the first DJ to work for all three national pop and rock stations - Atlantic 252, Radio 1 and Virgin.
This was followed by a spell at Heart 106.2 in London. He then joined Capital FM - achieving a lifetime's ambition - to host the weekend breakfast show and memorably carded a million London listeners on a number of occasions.
King then worked for Magic 105.4 in London, before leaving at the end of 2005. He now divides his time between co-producing a networked 1980s show for commercial radio stations around the UK, entitled Totally 80s, and presenting an hour-long weekday quiz on London's LBC 97.3, where listeners can win cash prizes. In 2006, Totally 80s won the New York Festival's Gold Medal for Best Regularly Scheduled Music Programme - it is produced by Blue Revolution.
Moves into television have been infrequent for King, although he was the voiceover artist on the UK version of 1990s children's gameshow Fun House and currently appears on a sporadic basis as an expert in "consumer electronics" for shopping channel QVC. He also occasionally appears on Sky News to comment on showbiz stories.
King is married to Sue and has a son and daughter.
