Paul Phear
Having started his broadcasting career on Plymouth Sound, Paul made his debut on Radio West on the Sunday Late Show, taking over from Trevor Fry in the summer of 1983. When West’s hours were cut back in October, Paul moved to a Sunday afternoon Top Thirty, which had a rather odd format: the records were played from No.1 to No.30, rather than the more usual countdown! Soon, he took over the afternoon show from John Hayes and, when West’s hours were extended again, this became “Afternoon-Drive” which ran from 3 p.m. (later 2 p.m.) to 5:30 p.m. Although a very young member of the Radio West team, Paul was, and is, a professional sounding broadcaster and, of course, has an excellent voice for radio.
When West became GWR Paul kept his 2 o’clock start time – unfortunately it was 2 a.m. rather than 2 p.m.! Fortunately this sad state of affairs did not last long. When Mark Baddeley left in 1986, Paul took over the GWR evening show from 7-10, and soon found his way back to drive-time, first from 3:30-5:30 and later from his old start time of 2 p.m. By this stage most of the networked output of GWR was being presented by ex-Radio West presenters. But fame beckoned and Paul left the West Country, first to join Chiltern Radio 97.6 in Dunstable as weekday breakfast presenter. Then after a few years he joined London’s Capital FM as an overnight presenter, later taking on weekend breakfast where he remained for several years until becoming the launch presenter for the now-defunct Capital Group’s DAB service Life. Paul now works for London’s Magic 105.4, presenting weekday afternoons (1-5) and a weekend show. He has recently made his stage debut, as Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Show in the excellent production Spamalot.
When I was presenting on student radio station W963 at Warwick University, Paul was kind enough to record a whole series of voiceovers for me and for the station. I like to think that I started him off in the voiceover business as since then his voice has been heard on Sky TV, on various TV commercials and in sweepers on radio stations such as Choice FM, Radio Caroline and of course Trevor Fry’s RSL Cabot FM.
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A useful voiceover from Paul, although the words belong to Dave Glass
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Paul goes into the news with Des Fahy, on the Sunday afternoon Top 30, 18 March 1984
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Paul comes out
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