Surrey's iconic TV host Michael Aspel shares his career highlights on Rewind TV
In a one-hour programme for Rewind TV airing on 26th October at 7:00pm, the last of the iconic TV chat show hosts, Surrey's Michael Aspel, talks through his career as a news reader and presenter.
His anecdotes will resonate with audiences who remember the golden era of television, as well as raising a few eyebrows.
Aspel, who will be 92 in January, became a household name during the classic years of TV from the 1960s through to the 1990s, retiring in 2008. During that time, he presented many popular TV and radio shows, from Crackerjack and Ask Aspel to This Is Your Life and The Antiques Roadshow.
In the interview, Aspel talks about his disappointment in having to “fall on his sword” when the BBC replaced him with the much younger Fiona Bruce in 2008 and has famously said that it’s ironic being eased out of an antiques show because of your age.
He also spills the tea on his disappointment over the interview that effectively ended his highly popular show Aspel & Company, after producers insisted he host Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Objecting to the way the megastars went overboard with plugs for their new restaurant, Planet Hollywood, Aspel felt he’d had enough and left the show.
The interview with Aspel is part of a new series of fresh commissions featuring exclusive profiles of some of the nation’s most beloved TV icons on Rewind TV, broadcasting on Freeview 95 and Sky 182.
Launched in September, Rewind TV was founded by Oscar Beuselinck and Jonathan Moore and celebrates the best of classic British TV, with everything from Whicker’s World and Jason King to Drop The Dead Donkey.
"From children's television to the news and everything in between, Michael was Britain's original 'TV Smoothie', and his face graced our screens from the '60s all the way to the new millennium.” said Alex Dyke, presenter, “A true gentleman with a wealth of stories, it was a real treat to spend an hour with him hearing them first-hand.”
Aspel admits that as a presenter he rather liked it when things went wrong because “that’s when you really come into your full potential”, and reveals he often found stars disappointing in the flesh.
Despite this, he wasn’t prepared to put up with the hype that Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger brought to Aspel & Company and he explains how he was effectively ‘terminated by the Terminator’.