Andy Crane

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Andy Crane (born February 24, 1964) is a English television and radio host, best known for his stint in the Children's BBC "The Broom Cupboard" in the 1980s.

Crane shot to fame when he took over from Phillip Schofield as the onscreen continuity announcer during the late afternoon children's programming on the BBC in 1987. Crane introduced - and actually started - each programme while also reading out viewer letters and indulging in banter with puppet co-host Edd the Duck - a duck with punk overtones who could communicate with Crane purely through quacking noises. Another frequent co-host was a butler called Wilson - effectively just an arm on a hidden and unidentified body with black jacket sleeve and white glove.

The presentation venue was known as the "broom cupboard" as the studio was a tiny booth where offscreen continuity communicators would sit during the rest of the broadcasting day and make their announcements. Crane once got through an appalling seven-minute technical breakdown by slowly reading out the UK singles charts.

During this time Crane also presented some episodes of Top Of The Pops before leaving the BBC in 1990 - subsequent "broom cupboard" hosts were not regarded as highly as Schofield and Crane by critics - to join ITV to co-host their Saturday morning show Motormouth. He spent two years on this programme and then hosted Bad Influence! and What's Up Doc! on the same channel.

He presented quiz show Say the Word on Challenge TV in 1997 before concentrating predominantly on radio work. He hosted the nightly show Lovelines on 105.4 Century FM in the north west of England - coincidentally, the presenter on before him was Pat Sharp, one of his co-presenters on What's Up Doc!. From October 2005 to July 2006 Crane also presented a Sunday morning phone-in show in London on LBC 97.3.

Crane is married with three daughters.

He is now primarily the news anchor on Channel m, a local TV station in Manchester, and is to be seen around the streets most days conducting interviews. He can also be heard as the Narrator on late night ITV1 reality show Redcoats

[edit] Trivia

Crane's legacy has been assured by the fact that he is referred to in the 1988 song by A Tribe of Toffs - a Sunderland pop group who had a successful novelty song, which became a hit, with the splendidly named 'John Kettley is a Weatherman'. In it, they listed a range of then famous C-list celebrities with dodgy rhyming that went from the just about believable to the clearly bizarre.

The song starts:

John Kettley is a weatherman

A weatherman, a weatherman

John Kettley is a weatherman

And so is Michael Fish

Crane is then immortalised with the line "Andy Crane has got no brain"

The BBC's H2G2 site, while filling us in on the rest of the famous song, memorably described Crane thus:

"After Simon Parkin's departure ... the job fell to loveable floppy-haired buffoon Andy Crane. Crane was mostly notable for foisting noisy puppet Edd The Duck onto an unwilling public."

After leaving Century FM listeners to 'Lovelines' were so outraged they were not happy with his replacements, this lost the show a hefty amount of listeners and regular text messages and phone ins were to ask where had Andy gone as his successors were not as good.

Crane's LBC Sunday morning show became known as one which relied heavily on his detailed reminiscing of any given subject. This was not overlooked by Iain Lee on the station's afternoon show who aired an MP3 created by a listener which reflected this by setting new lyrics to the song 'Kayleigh' by Marillion, the main hook of which is a sample of Andy saying 'Do you remember?'. Crane replayed the track on his own show, immediately after which he began to reminisce about elements within the song itself.