Simon Mayo Biography

Simon Mayo is an English radio presenter and author who has worked for BBC Radio since 1981. He was the presenter of Simon Mayo Drivetime on BBC Radio 2 between 2010 and 2018. He also presented with Mark Kermode, presenter of Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio 5 Live. He currently presents a revamped drive time show on Radio 2 with Jo Whiley which began on 14 May 2018.

Mayo was recognised as the “Radio Broadcaster of the Year” at the 34th annual Broadcasting Press Guild Awards and the “Speech Broadcaster of the Year” in 2008 at the Sony Radio Academy Awards. His first award was for his ability to paint colorful pictures of location and event. He received another award for his ability to bring the very best out of his guests, encouraging conversation and interaction between them while skillfully nudging and controlling them”. He received another award for being a master of light and shade, handling serious and lighter issues with aplomb.”

He is also an author of several books, including the acclaimed Itch trilogy of thrillers for younger readers. In all of BBC’s radio presenters, he is considered to be one of the highest paid presenters.

Simon Mayo Age

The presenter was born on 21st September 1958 in Southgate, London, United Kingdom. He is 60 years as of 2018.

Simon Mayo Family

He was born as Simon Andrew Hicks Mayo, the son of Derek Mayo and Jill Mayo both of whom were teachers. He has two siblings: Jonathan Mayo (brother) and Sarah Mayo (sister).

Simon Mayo’s Photo

Simon Mayo Wife

Mayo is married to Hilary Bird, an American who is also a former researcher, producer, and editor at BBC radio. They wed on 11 October 1986. The couple has two children: Natasha Mayo and Joe Mayo. Their daughter Natasha Mayo is an actress recognized for her work in Break Down 2016.

Simon Mayo Children

Simon Mayo Daughter

The radio presenter father of three children. Natasha Mayo, his only daughter, sons: Joe Mayo and Ben Mayo. Natasha is an actress known for Break Down 2016.

Simon Mayo Career

Mayo’s mother undertook part-time work in radio, and occasionally his son Mayo experienced it with her as he wanted to work as a studio manager. He had a deficiency in his left ear which resulted to him failing the required hearing test, hence he refocused his career on presenting. He honed his skills at Southlands Hospital Radio, and then worked for five years as a presenter with BBC Radio Nottingham from 10:45 am to 2 pm.

He developed a programme format called Globe Phone and sent it to Johnny Beerling who was the Head of Radio 1. Johnny offered him a job and in 1986 he joined BBC Radio 1 presenting a two-hour Saturday evening show from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. He progressed to the weekend early slots from 6 am to 8 am in October 1987 and then became presenter of the weekday evening show in January 1988, which went out from 7:30 pm to 10 pm.

The most prestigious presentation job in UK radio, the Radio 1 breakfast show, was offered to Mayo five months after he became the presenter of weekday which aired from 7.30 pm to 10 pm.

Simon Mayo Radio 2

Mayo had been hosting the Album Chart show each week for BBC Radio 2 from October 2001 to April 2007 which was in addition to his daily programme on BBC Radio 5 Live. He presented The Ultimate Music Year for BBC on 2 January 2006 alongside his normal presentations on the Radio 2 channel. The Ultimate Music Year would be a competition where listeners got the chance to vote for their favourite music that year.

He has also presented many Sold on Song projects. He presented the Top 100 Albums and provided holiday cover for Johnnie Walker on Sundays. He took over the Radio 2 Music Club from April 2007 to April 2018 doing his show every Monday night from 11:30 pm to 12:30 am.

Simon Mayo Drivetime

Listen to his live shows and stream them online by clicking here

Mayo took over the Drivetime show from Chris Evans in January 2010. It should be noted that it was his second time in the show which many term it as by luck taking fact that it is such a high-profiled slot. The show includes a number of regular daily features including a “Nigel’s Recipes”, “Confessions”, “Homework Sucks” and “The Showstopper”.

Every Friday he hosted a show called All Request Friday where listeners rang the show and had their favourite song played on the radio after a short interview. The show ended 8 years later on 4 May 2018 as Mayo was to begin hosting a revamped drive time show with Jo Whiley from 14 May 2018.

Mayo used the 2003 recording by Jools Holland and Prince Buster of the 1948 song “Enjoy Yourself” by Carl Sigman and by Herb Magidson as his opening theme. Later editions of the show have also used the popular 1950 hit version by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. Incidental music includes “Light My Fire” by Edmundo Ros. Mayo won a Sony Award for “Best Music Show” for his work and that of his team on the BBC Radio 2 drive time slot in May 2011.

Simon Mayo Confessions

Simon Mayo Books

• Confessions- The book is a compilation of the best confessions sent to the show by listeners.
• Itch – The titular protagonist is a fourteen-year-old boy who discovers a previously unknown chemical element.
• Itch Rocks
• Itchcraft
• Blame
• Mad Blood Stirring
• The Movie Doctors

Itch Simon Mayo

Meet Itch – an accidental, accident-prone hero. Science is his weapon. Elements are his gadgets. This is Alex Rider with Geek-Power.

Originally published: 2012
Author: Simon Mayo
Followed by: Itch Rocks
Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Suspense

Mark Kermode And Simon Mayo

Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review is a radio programme with Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo, broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday afternoons between 2 pm and 4 pm.

Host: Simon Mayo
Home station: BBC Radio 5 Live
Produced by: Simon Poole (for Somethin’ Else)
Original release: 2001 (on radio); 2005 (as podcast) – present
Other names: Wittertainment

Simon Mayo Net worth/ Salary

His salary ranges between £350,000 and £400,000. When BBC made a corporation’s policy of publishing its presenters’ earnings Mayo said he was not comfortable with the policy.

“My worry is that it will become like a yearly turkey shoot and I think it’s often used as a stick to hit the BBC with. The critics are saying, ‘Look at this, this isn’t right,’ but actually their broader agenda is dismantling the BBC, so that’s one of the reasons why it’s so uncomfortable.”

Simon Mayo Team

Simon Mayo Facebook

Simon Mayo Twitter

Tweets by simonmayo

Simon Mayo Interview

‘You can’t launch a show and not have the two presenters on the same money’
Tim Lewis

Adopted from: theguardian.com
Published: 15 Apr 2018

The veteran radio presenter on pay, podcasts and being told that his new book, about a forgotten 19th-century conflict, is Hollywood gold

Mad Blood Stirring is set in 1815, at the end of the war of 1812 between Britain and the US. That’s a curiously under-the-radar conflict, isn’t it?

Simon Mayo: No one knows anything about it, even the Americans – and you’d imagine it would be a lot more significant for them, with the burning down of the White House and the writing of The Star-Spangled Banner. For the British it was a trade war really, an extension of the Napoleonic wars, so it’s just been tucked away.

The novel has a cracking – and apparently historically faithful – conceit: it tells the story of a group of American POWs (mostly white, but with a large black minority) housed in the brutal, smallpox-ridden Dartmoor prison. There are illicit affairs, racial tensions, gospel singing and an all-black production of Romeo and Juliet…

Simon Mayo: When I came across the story, my first instinct was: if only I knew someone in period drama in telly… This was an idea for them. And I was going to give it away. I know Amma Asante, the British film director, and I thought: Amma would be interested in this. And my wife said: “You’re an idiot, you don’t give stuff like this away.”

And the film rights have already been optioned to Tessa Ross, executive producer on Slumdog Millionaire and 12 Years a Slave, haven’t they?

Simon Mayo: Yes, the film rights were sold before I’d written a word. They were sold on a four-page synopsis. The agent said it was the easiest sale she’d ever had. I had breakfast with Abi Morgan, the screenwriter, and she said: “Simon, you have to understand, there isn’t a Hollywood studio that would say no to this idea.”

There’s a memorable character called King Dick. Have you daydreamed who would play him in a film?

Simon Mayo: My hunch is that King Dick should be someone we’ve never seen before. That’s going to be quite tough, because he’s black and he’s 6ft 7in, so that narrows it down. But he’s such an extraordinary character, my concern was to not make him cartoony. Because the facts are: we know his height, we know he wore a bearskin and carried a club, we know that he ran the place, we know that he was a gangster, we know that he was a theatre impresario and we know that he went everywhere with two white boys. So there you go! I wouldn’t have had the guts to create that character. Who would?

Do you wish you’d started writing earlier?

Simon Mayo: Yes, it would be great for this to be my 15th book rather than my fifth, but I’m absolutely not complaining. To be in your 50s and to be doing something you’ve never done before, that’s thrilling. I heartily recommend it.

From May, you are going to be joined on Drivetime by Jo Whiley as part of a shake-up at Radio 2. How do you feel about the change?

Simon Mayo: I think I’ve been doing this job every day since 1986, and that’s a long time to be a daily show on a national network. So most of me thinks it’s fairly extraordinary that I’m being given a chance to keep on going. I mean, I don’t think anyone else has been on for that amount of time unbroken. And Jo does a fantastic show and she’s way cooler than me, so how bad can that be?

You are one of the best-paid presenters at the BBC, earning £350,000 last year; she earns much less, around £150,000. Will there be parity now?

Simon Mayo: I’m sure that’s been discussed, because you can’t launch a show and have two presenters starting if they are not on the same money. I’m sure that we’ll be on the same otherwise there would be a lot of embarrassment for a lot of people.

Jane Garvey, host of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, described Radio 2 as “extraordinarily male, entirely pale and big salaries”. Do you think the station has been guilty of not being diverse enough?

Simon Mayo: I’ve never thought that particularly. Radio 2 has been and still is an extraordinary success story. The share [of listeners] that our shows get is unbelievable. Over the next few years there will be a lot of changes, and it might be that it’s lagged behind a bit, but when you look at the success of Chris Evans, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, Drivetime… Astonishing.

Does the BBC feel like an embattled organisation?

Simon Mayo: It feels like a difficult time to have a book out. I understand all the reasons for the questions – because if I was you I’d be asking the same questions – but that doesn’t mean I can speak on behalf of the BBC. I can say I’m very proud of the show I do, I can say I’m very proud of the traditions of the BBC, and that it’s been a difficult period for everybody. But I think a period of silence from radio presenters might be a useful thing for everybody.

With the rise of streamed music and podcasts, does it feel that the golden age of radio is over?

Simon Mayo: The podcast revolution is amazing, because it’s old-fashioned radio, it’s like a concentrated form of radio. It’s people discovering radio but just delivered by a different format. I grew up recording the top 40 with a microphone into a cassette recorder, so the idea of just having all this at the press of a button is like nirvana. So it seems to me like this is a golden age for broadcasters.

Simon Mayo News

Jo Wiley plans to stay put with Simon Mayo on drivetime show despite listener revolt.

Updated on: 3 JUL 2018

Jo Whiley has urged listeners to let her “bed in” after her new Radio 2 drivetime show with Simon Mayo was branded a disaster. Some 20,000 fans signed petitions for the BBC to revert to the old format with just Mayo. But Jo, 52, said: “A new show needs to bed in. You have to give a show time. You can’t cast judgment on the first listen. It’s been six weeks. The show is going all right. I’m enjoying it.

“Obviously it’s nerve-racking when you begin something. We haven’t done a show before so you have to work out who speaks when, how the other reacts.”

Speaking at the RHS Royal Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, which she is co-presenting this week with Joe Swift on BBC2, Jo also shrugged off claims that she and Mayo, 59, have no chemistry.

Jo said: “I’ve known Simon for ever, we both worked on Radio 1 and our kids are the same ages so we used to hang out and go on holiday.”

Mayo had hosted the drivetime slot since 2010 and had more than six million listeners. The BBC admitted some listeners are “unhappy with the changes”. Whiley is the first woman to present a primetime weekday show on Radio 2 for 20 years. As part of the shake-up at the BBC, Sara Cox and Cerys Matthews have also been handed new Radio 2 shows

Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk