| Mike Smith |  |
Mike was one of the founder members of Radio Guy’s way back in 1969. He served on the management committee as Chairman through much of the 1980s and early 1990s, before handing over the reigns to John Pennell. He regularly broadcast from the beginning through to the mid-90s, but retired from shows to concentrate on getting the computerised music database up to date, for what turned out to be the final two years of the station’s life.
Mike worked in the financial services industry, based in the City of London, all his working life, moving from main stream insurance broking into business analysis and support during the early 1980s. He decided to take early retirement in January 2000, and moved down to Highcliffe on the Dorset coast, with his wife Jacky in mid-2000. To keep himself in beer and CDs, he now works three days-a-week for Bournemouth council in their social services department.
He is no longer involved in broadcasting, but is still intensely interested in popular music, and is currently creating a personal collection of number one hits CDs on his computer, from the first in 1952 to the present time (over 900 recordings). He has also created several web sites, two of which in particular have proven very popular (judging by the many e-mails he has received about them). One of those is a listing of British number one hits that uniquely includes comments and artist web site links; the other is dedicated to the work of, the now late, Adam Faith – still the only one on the internet.
Along with Jacky, he takes a keen interest in photography, and they are both members of a local camera club. They mainly use conventional cameras, but employ a negative scanner attached to their PC in order to manipulate and print the photographs. In 2001 they spent six weeks driving along historic Route 66 in the USA from Chicago to Los Angeles (over 2,500 miles), taking hundreds of pictures. These were made into comprehensive slide show, which was presented to eight organisations during 2003/4. They plan to present other slide shows from time to time, and during 2004 will be working on shows about southern Virginia and Fuerteventura.
May 2002, updated April 2004.
Mike’s associated web sites:
Half A Century of British Number Ones
Adam Faith