Mike Osman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mike Osman is an English radio presenter, impressionist and entertainer.
He was born in Millbrook, Southampton, England in August 1959, the fourth of seven brothers. After leaving Millbrook Community Secondary School at 16, he was briefly an apprentice metal-worker before joining the Royal Navy as a marine engineer and mechanic.
He left the Navy in 1982, shortly before the Falkland Islands conflict, and became a salesman briefly before joining the family roof tiling business. In his spare time he started working in holiday camps and clubs as a semi-professional entertainer, turning full-time in 1984.
In 1985, he joined ITV’s “Copy Cats” as an impressionist, working alongside Gary Wilmot and Bobby Davro. Over the next few years he had roles in Gloria Hunniford's “Sunday Sunday” show, The Generation Game, Noel's House Party and Big Break, and also as a guest on Sky Sports. He also did summer tours with Jim Davidson and Russ Abbott.
In the early 1990s he moved into the after-dinner speaker market. At a boxing function at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, London in 1996 he was spotted by Capital Radio programme controller Richard Park, who invited Osman to do a Saturday football, music and comedy show on Capital Gold, called “Home and Away with Mike and the Dugout Crew” with his brothers David and Tony and friend Dave, for a fee of £50 a show. Within a few weeks, they were offered the 10am to 1pm weekday show, and Osman and his colleagues, now renamed as “Mike and the Naughty Boys” were reputed to be earning £125,000 a year. After 2 years at Capital Gold they replaced Tony Blackburn on the prime breakfast show.
After 6 years, Osman quit the show in 2002 as the early morning starts were taking their toll on his health. Since then he has had a variety of short-term roles in television.
In 2005 he was one of the founding directors of troubled channel Sound TV which was only on air for about 10 months.
In 2006-07 he was employed by Southampton Football Club to warm up the crowd before their matches at St. Mary's Stadium. Since then he has presented a Sunday morning show on BBC Radio Solent.
He is married to Jill and they have a daughter Katie, aged 16.
