Tony Moorey

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Tony Moorey on the top of the Rock observation deck in the GE Building, Rockefeller Centre, NYC
Tony Moorey on the top of the Rock observation deck in the GE Building, Rockefeller Centre, NYC

Tony Moorey (Born 26th September) was the producer of The Geoff Show on Virgin Radio (Mon - Thu 10pm - 1am) and he, Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port made up the 'Symposium', until friday the 21th December 2007.

The new symposium member is Nelson Kumah.

Tony had his own feature on the show called 'The Dead of the Night' where he, as the most historically-inclined and learned member of the symposium, told the life story of someone from history and then invited Geoff, Annabel and the listeners to guess how this person met their end. He also had a feature called 'Night Fever' where Tony described the symptoms of a medical ailment and people rung in trying to guess what that ailment was. If they got it right they won a first aid kit and another prize.

Tony also came up with a featured phone-in topic for the listeners to join in with by calling the radio station on 08707 30 1215, texting on 81215 and e-mailing in through the website at www.virginradio.co.uk. Those topics were often very intellectual.Geoff Lloyd, Annabel Port and Nelson (the presenters of the show) also come up with topics.

[edit] Biography

This is the biography featured on the Geoff section of the Virgin Radio website;

Born in the glorious Wythenshawe Hospital in 1974, Tony actually prefers his full name Anthony, but nobody else cares enough to use it.

Childhood highlights included summers at the Pigeon House Caravan Park on Anglesey and being chosen for a British Telecom promotional photoshoot with a baby chimpanzee. Though he now realises it is wrong to treat wild animals as mere objects.

It was after listening to the genius broadcaster James H Reeve that Tony decided he wanted to work in radio.

His first step on this career was at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, where he would fend off suicidal callers on a phone-in programme listened to by the elderly and infirm. This he did on a voluntary basis at the weekends, whilst supporting himself by organising the fake Christmas trees, children's clothes and pick'n'mix deliveries at Woolworths in Hyde.

In 1998, after various production jobs at Piccadilly and years of scouring Ceefax page 696, Tony finally found a job at the BBC in London. There he made trails for Edwina Currie, Dominik Diamond, David Mellor and other programmes on Radio Five Live. He also commissioned music from, among others, New Order.

Tony will tell you he left the Corporation because after two World Cups and four league seasons, the thought of mixing one more football trailer was sending him insane. In fact he departed under a cloud after the BBC Gramophone Library carried out an audit of their overdue discs.

So, in the summer of 2002, Tony came back through the iron curtain to work at Virgin Radio, producing the Pete & Geoff Drivetime show. Since then his highlights have included outside broadcasts in Las Vegas, on the London Eye and in Lisbon for Euro 2004.

Now, as producer of The Geoff Show, Tony is hoping to further his knowledge of comedy and music, whilst in his spare time find out everything there is to know about Victorian engineering.

Tony left The Geoff Show on 21st December 2007, to pursue a furthering career opportunity behind a desk at Virgin Radio. His replacement (Nelson Kumah) started on the 5th January 2008 and appears on the show as the new producer. You can hear this message on the podcast here (41.4mb)

We all miss him dearly and mourn for his presence.