Noel Edmonds

Noel Ernest Edmonds (born 22 December 1948) is an English broadcaster and executive, who made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio One in the UK. He has presented light entertainment television programmes, including Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Top of the Pops, The Late, Late Breakfast Show and Telly Addicts. He presented the Channel 4 game show Deal or No Deal between 2012 and 2016, and formerly the Sunday edition of Sky1's Are You Smarter than a Ten Year Old? and the topical Sky1 show, Noel's HQ. In 2015, Edmonds received an award from the Atlantic Award Group for his extensive contributions to broadcasting.

Links to Peel[]

The relationship between Peel and Edmonds was similar to the one he had with Tony Blackburn: John characterised the DJ as a man whose main aim of life was showbiz celebrity rather than music. This was ironic, as Edmonds, like Peel, had first attracted attention as presenter of a late night programme, in his case on Radio Luxembourg. In February 1969, a report on the station in Melody Maker stated that Edmonds "who does the late show...has a big broadcasting future ahead of him"[1]. Indeed Edmonds was signed by the BBC at the age of 21 and soon established himself on Radio 1, in 1970 hosting a Saturday afternoon show which preceded Top Gear. In that year he was interviewed by Record Mirror and remarked, "I hate the music that he features, but I admire John Peel".[2] In 1973 he succeeded Tony Blackburn as host of Radio 1's breakfast show, but in the meantime he also steadily built a career as a TV show presenter, which Peel followed with a kind of horrified fascination.

According to Robert Chapman's Selling the Sixties (p. 274) Peel's first appearance on Round Table as a guest reviewer was alongside Noel Edmonds on an early edition of the programme, and this was "consciously promoted as the meeting of two worlds". But despite a few "controversial observations" from Edmonds, Peel "refused to rise to the bait, finding merit in everything and offering a tolerant counterpoint to the mock provocation which was positively encouraged by Round Table's fomat".

JP rarely missed an opportunity for sarcastic digs at his colleague, on one occasion calling him a TV compere with a ludicrous haircut [3]. On My Top Ten (Transcript) he saw Edmonds as one whose only talent lay in constantly hogging the limelight:

"... People do think DJs are millionaires because they see someone like Noel Edmonds, who has actually achieved that wonderful thing we all want to achieve, where you actually just become famous for being famous, you know what I mean. You don’t actually have to do anything except be Noel Edmonds, you know, which is just a wonderful state of affairs in a way. So you have to get the balance right, you know. And I’d sooner – I like my children, I like my wife, I like where I live."

Noel_Edmonds_Stunt_Crash-0 — Noel Edmonds Stunt Crash-0

A stunt crash from The Late, Late Breakfast Show in the 80's with John Peel reporting who almost gets his head taken off!

Peel was among the presenters when the TV programme for The Noel Edmonds Late, Late Breakfast Show (1982-1986), kicked off its early Saturday evening run in 1982, hosting outside broadcast segments. Peel mentioned his appearance on an early programme on his own regular 06 September 1982 show on Radio One:

"On Saturday I took part in the Late, Late Breakfast Show and was I thought rather embarrassing. I hope you didn't actually see it. I was so panic stricken that I read through my little piece in about half the time allocated to me and then cleared off in despair and afterwards was reassured actually by an affable woman who was working on Grandstand who'd travelled with me on the tube."

Peel's association with prime time early Saturday night TV was not to be a long or happy one. In Margrave Of The Marshes (Bantam Press, hardback edition, pg 322-3) wife Sheila Ravenscroft recalled:

"John was introducing a stunt in which the driver Richard Smith attempted to break the world car-leap record live on air, only to flip the car over. For some bizarre reason, John seemed to get the blame for the incident and was subsequently dropped from the show; possibly he was thought to be a jinx."

In the 2004 Channel 4 documentay Who Killed Saturday Night TV? Peel makes an appearance during archive footage of himself with Edmonds on Noel Edmond's Late, Late Breakfast Show. In the doumentary Edmonds admits that he did not 'gel' with Peel.

John_Peel's_I,_Ludicrous_-_Stuck_In_A_Lift_With_Noel_Edmonds — John Peel's I, Ludicrous - Stuck In A Lift With Noel Edmonds

In 1989, Peel played a track from I, Ludicrous called Stuck In A Lift With Noel Edmonds, but found himself comparing Edmonds favourably with another celebrity:

"I think I'd find that preferable to being stuck in a lift with Jimmy Tarbuck: that I really couldn't cope with, to be honest. I'd ritually disembowel meself all over him." [4]

Mentioned On Shows[]

The list comes from the database of this site and may be incomplete. Please add further information if known.

20 June 1970: Peel introduces show and namechecks Edmonds, whose show has just finished.
04 July 1970: "I get more like Noel Edmonds each week"
11 July 1970: Handover from Edmonds, whose super cheeriness attracts some comment from Peel.
14 June 1977: Peel gives Noel Edmonds' Dave Mason's Rock Me Baby single of the week 6/10,
07 November 1978: "What a cutie pie that Noel is eh? And modest?! Humble is the word that I would use."
27 March 1979: (in Leeds) ".. a couple of young women rushed excitedly up to me and told me they wanted to see Noel Edmonds and they'd got a bottle of wine for him. [..] that's one bottle of wine that Noel's not going to get, I can tell you that."
21 November 1979: ".. look what happened to him (Edmonds). So, if you see any signs of me starting to colour my hair strangely and wear it in the style of a third division footballer of about eight years ago, then you'll know that whatever happened to him is happening to me"
08 January 1980: "I'd really like to have a good, old secondhand British motorbike. If I was Noel Edmonds there'd be somebody at this very moment on the phone, sorting it out. As it is, I just buy records."
09 May 1983: discussing 1000th edition of Top Of The Pops on 05 May 1983 (TOTP) Edmonds et al had around five minutes of the programme while Peel appeared for, "about eight seconds"
29 September 1987: "... tomorrow morning (Radio 1's 20th birthday) Mike Smith at 7 o'clock plays host to all of the Radio 1 breakfast show DJ's: That's Tony Blackburn, Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee Travis and Mike Read. And they get together around the toast and coffee for a chat and a trip down memory lane."
09 June 1995: first broadcast, live from Peel Acres: "This isn't some kind of Noel Edmonds fantasy either, I want you to know that."
05 March 1997: Mary Anne Hobbs mentions a sketch on Brass Eye, where she saw Edmonds killing Clive Anderson. Peel says Noel Edmonds can be irritating when he does prank jokes.
31 July 1989: 'Many millions of young people have written in and said how about playing that tribute to Noel Edmonds again, oh alright!' (Track is Dawson: Noel Edmonds (7"))
09 December 1989 (BFBS): 'The song that I'd intended to play to you was Stuck In A Lift With Noel Edmonds, and obviously some kind of divine spirit intervened, some kind of god that oversees TV comperes with ludicrous haircuts.' (also Peel 126 (BFBS))
03 September 1990: 'You can't get on the television if you're bald, sooner Noel Edmonds loses his hair, happier I shall be, just kidding, Noel is a great geezer, we all just love him (sarcastic voice)')
16 October 2002: " .. he (DLT) took over from Noel Edmonds and he started his programme with something along the lines of, 'this is the hairy cornflake from up the M6 in Manchester'..."
30 October 2002: ""Historically, these Radio One events used at one time to be called Radio One Fun Weeks... you'd go all the way to somewhere like Glasgow or Edinburgh with Dave Lee Travis and Simon Bates, Noel Edmonds, all of the guys, you know."
30 September 2003: "Noel Edmonds invited me to his house once and we went - that's when he lived near here. Not since."
21 April 2004 & 04 May 2004: Extract from a Noel Edmonds phone prank.
10 August 2004: programme opens with a brief extract from a Noel Edmonds prank phone call.

Noel Edmonds

Contents

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