Richard Baker (broadcaster)
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Richard Baker OBE is a British broadcaster, born in Willesden, North London, on 15 June 1925 and best known as newsreader for the BBC News from 1954 to 1982. He was a contemporary of Kenneth Kendall and Robert Dougall and was the first person to read the BBC Television News (in voiceover) in 1954. At one time he lived in Barnet, North London. He and his wife Margaret have two sons; Andrew a sports columnist at the Daily Telegraph and James, a senior executive at Sky TV.
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[edit] Early life
The son of a plasterer, Baker was educated at the former Kilburn Grammar School and at Peterhouse, Cambridge University. After graduation, he was an actor at Birmingham rep and a teacher at Wilson's School, Camberwell. He served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and was awarded the Royal Navy Reserve decoration.
[edit] Broadcasting career
He started at the BBC as an announcer and he has also presented many classical music programmes on both television and radio, including for many years the annual live broadcast from the Last Night of the Proms, and made occasional cameo appearances on Monty Python's Flying Circus. He also narrated Mary, Mungo and Midge, a children's cartoon produced by the BBC in 1969 and Teddy Edward for the BBC in 1973 as well as Prokofiev's composition for children Peter and the Wolf. On radio he presented Bakers Dozen, Start the Week on Radio 4, Mozart and the long-running Your Hundred Best Tunes for BBC Radio 2 on Sunday nights, taking over from Alan Keith, who died in 2003, before retiring in January 2007 when the programme ended.
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