Mike Neville (newsreader)

Born as James Armstrong Briggs in Willington Quay, Northumberland on 17 October 1936[1][2] – to James Briggs, a labourer, and Mary[3] – he attended the Addison Potter Infant and Junior School in Willington Quay and Stephenson Memorial Secondary School in Howdon.

His first job at the age of 15 was at the Northern Guild of Commerce and Chamber of Trade. He was subsequently a junior editorial assistant at the Daily Mail's Newcastle offices. In 1955, he began two years of National Service in Cyprus, where he rose to the rank of Corporal in the Wiltshire Regiment.[4] After a short time as an insurance agent, he joined the repertory company of Newcastle Playhouse full-time in 1957 and changed his name to Michael Neville.[5][4]

While Neville was working as an actor, the North East's independent television station – Tyne Tees Television – began broadcasting in January 1959.[5][6] A few months later, Neville made his television debut, playing a policeman in Tyne Tees' children's programme Happy Go Lucky.[7] He later appeared in a similar role in Under New Management, a locally produced pub sitcom produced by future Dad's Army co-creator David Croft and written by Johnny Speight.[8]

After five years working in the theatre, Neville switched permanently to television in 1962 and joined Tyne Tees full-time as a continuity announcer, newsreader and reporter. In March 1964, he became the anchorman of the station's nightly news magazine programme, North East Newsview, but within a short time, he was approached by BBC North East to replace Frank Bough as the anchor of its rival news programme Look North.[1]

Neville went onto anchor Look North for 32 years, becoming the longest serving main anchor of any BBC regional news programme. From 1969 to 1983, he became well known nationally for his contributions to the early evening magazine programme Nationwide – a programme he would go onto present occasionally. Despite achieving national fame, he turned down offers to move to London, preferring to stay in the North East of England.[1]

At Look North, Neville and co-presenter George House (one of the BBC's first North East TV newsreaders) regularly incorporated Geordie into the programme, usually in comedy pieces pointing out the gulf between ordinary Geordies and officials speaking Standard English. They were also responsible for a series of recordings and theatre shows, beginning with Larn Yersel' Geordie, which attempted, not always seriously, to bring the Geordie dialect to the rest of the UK. The pair went on to compere the annual Geordierama shows at the Newcastle Festival, later televised locally by BBC North East and broadcast nationally on BBC Radio 4.

Away from the nightly regional news, Neville featured on a host of regional and networked programmes for the BBC – one such series, The Mike Neville Show (1975), was based on his experiences whilst completing National Service, in repertory theatre and on television.[5] At a national level in the mid-1960s, he presented Come Dancing and the annual Miss United Kingdom contest. Other regional programmes included A Likely Story (1974), Friday North (1977), Mike on Friday (1980) and Phone in Now (1981). He also featured on A Song for Europe and the annual Children in Need telethon.

In 1989, Neville was caught by Noel Edmonds with a Gotcha on his BBC1 programme Noel's Saturday Roadshow. He was tricked into thinking he was filling seven minutes of airtime because there was a technical fault with the network feed screening Wogan. He was easily able to adapt to the situation and stay professional and was the only local anchorman in the UK to ever receive a Gotcha.

Nicholas Owen, a former Look North reporter who moved onto ITN, described Neville as his mentor in a 2004 newspaper article, remarking that, "He is a Geordie legend and has a towering reputation, in a way that no-one in national television does".[9] Neville was appointed an MBE in the 1991 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.[5]

He lived in Whickham with his wife Pamela Edwards, whom he married in 1962 after they met in repertory theatre in Blyth. They had a daughter, Carolyn.[5][16]

On 6 September 2017, Neville's family announced he had died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, following a short illness caused by cancer.[17][18]

• Mike Neville at IMDb
• Unofficial biography of Mike Neville