Ray Moore

William Raymond Moore (2 January 1942 – 11 January 1989) was a British broadcaster, best known for hosting the early morning show on BBC Radio 2 between 1982 and 1988.

Early life Born in Liverpool, he attended Waterloo Grammar School, and harboured ambitions to be a BBC announcer from an early age. On leaving school, his first job was at Liverpool docks, and he was subsequently a technician and actor with repertory companies in Oldham, Sidmouth and Swansea.

Broadcasting career He started broadcasting in 1962 as a continuity announcer with Granada Television, later moving to ATV in Birmingham and eventually the BBC in Manchester and London. In his autobiography, written after his cancer diagnosis (for which he refused radical treatment), he said that he strove for years to lose his Liverpool accent so that he could work for the BBC, but by the time he got a job there it no longer mattered. At the BBC he worked on the BBC Light Programme and later BBC Radio 2 as an announcer on radio and television, providing voice-overs for a number of popular shows such as Come Dancing, Miss World and the radio commentary for the Eurovision Song Contest, also presenting the Eurovision Song Contest Previews in 1987.

From 1982, until his last show on 28 January 1988, he hosted the early morning show on BBC Radio 2, developing an idiosyncratic broadcasting style which relied on a highly individual, gentle and sophisticated wit and repartee. As he explained in his autobiography: My theory, if I ever had one, was that this show, broadcast at such a crazy time, could only be successful if it were based on one assumption: that nobody in his or her right mind would choose to be up at such an awful hour. If we both had to be awake so early, I thought, let's agree one thing: that it's you and me against the world. I determined to be cheerful but in a grumpy sort of way, with none of the enforced jollity so beloved of BBC Radio 4.

Personal life and death Moore married Alma Mather in 1969, and referred to her on air as management. A heavy smoker, Moore was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1987, and he died on the night of 11 January 1989, nine days after his 47th birthday.

In 1989, he posthumously won the Outstanding Personal Contribution to Radio award from the Broadcasting Press Guild.