| Paul Gambaccini | |
| Alias: | The Great Gambo The Professor of Pop |
| Birth Date: | 2 April 1949 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Nationality: | American British |
| Occupation: | Broadcaster, author |
| Years Active: | 1967–present |
| Awards: | Radio Academy Hall of Fame, 2005 |
Paul Matthew Gambaccini (born 2 April 1949) is an American-British radio and television presenter and author. He is a dual citizen of the United States and United Kingdom, having become a British citizen in 2005.
Known as "The Great Gambo"[1] and "The Professor of Pop",[2] Gambaccini was a BBC Radio 1 presenter for 16 years, including 11 years on a weekly show counting down the Billboard Top 30 songs. A regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's long-running arts programme Kaleidoscope, Gambaccini was a long-time TV morning show correspondent for British television, and makes regular appearances on other British TV magazine shows.
Gambaccini was the host of the 12-part Classic FM series Paul Gambaccini's Hall of Heroes, and chairs the Radio 4 music quiz Counterpoint. He was presenter of Pick of the Pops on BBC Radio 2 from 9 July 2016 to 7 October 2023 and America's Greatest Hits on Greatest Hits Radio on Saturday afternoons since February 2020. He now presents the Paul Gambaccini Collection on Radio 2 which began on 29 October 2023. Inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2005, Gambaccini is the author of more than 15 books.
Born in the Bronx, New York City,[3] Gambaccini studied at Dartmouth College, where he obtained a degree in history in 1970.
Gambaccini then migrated to the United Kingdom and attended University College, Oxford, where he read politics, philosophy and economics. He has since returned to Oxford, where he delivered a series of lectures in January and February 2009, as the News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media. In February 2010 he was invited by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Andrew Hamilton to deliver the inaugural LGBT lecture Out on Monday to the university's LGBT staff, students and faculty.
Gambaccini's broadcasting career began at Dartmouth College, where he was music director of the now-defunct WDCR, a college-owned-and-operated Top 40 radio station. Gambaccini may have first achieved wider prominence when his tips for playlisted songs likely to see greater chart action were published in the 11 May 1968 issue of the international trade publication Billboard, alongside similar tips from radio programming talent at major commercial stations across the United States.[4]
Having left Oxford, Gambaccini considered further study in law at Harvard or Yale, but had the opportunity of writing for Rolling Stone magazine, as British correspondent. He attributes his broadcasting career to this post—especially an interview in 1973 with Elton John which brought him to the attention of BBC Radio producer John Walters who arranged for him to host on BBC Radio 1.[5] [6] Gambaccini then started broadcasting in the UK, on BBC Radio 1, from September 1974, first as a music reporter on the John Peel Saturday show Rockspeak and as presenter of All American Heroes.[7] The following year, he started a show focussing on the weeks' music in the US chart which was to continue for over a decade.[8] The show was broadcast every Saturday afternoon until his last show on 8 February 1986. Thereafter, he moved to independent radio to host American Countdown. In 1990, he returned to Radio 1, but left during the tenure of controller Matthew Bannister in 1993.
In 1992 Gambaccini became a founding personality on the UK's classical music station Classic FM, where he hosted the weekly Classical CD Chart show. He left for BBC Radio 3 in 1995, where he broadcast an hour-long morning show, in a slot formerly used for Composer of the Week. He returned to Classic FM in 1997.
Alongside his work in music radio, he contributed regularly to BBC Radio 4's long-running arts programme Kaleidoscope between 1975 and 1998.
For 13 years Gambaccini reviewed films for breakfast television, first on TV-am and then GMTV. In the early 1980s he presented The Other Side of the Tracks on Channel 4, which ran for three series. His other television appearances include Pebble Mill at One, Call My Bluff, Music for the Millennium, and The South Bank Show.
In 1998, he joined BBC Radio 2. His first show was on 18 April 1998, once again opening the first of his weekly shows America's Greatest Hits with "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. In 2002, he quit his role at Classic FM, to present a weekly chart show on London's Jazz FM until 2004. He was also a contributor to the London station LBC when it was taken over by Chrysalis.
He has worked widely across the BBC and the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) as well as contributing to many television shows, mostly related to music, film, and the arts. He narrated the BBC Radio adaptation of Espedair Street, the Iain Banks novel.
Gambaccini has presented the annual Ivor Novello Awards since 1990,[9] the Parliamentary Jazz Awards since 2005, the Music Industry Trust's Man of the Year Dinner since 1999, and the Radio Academy Awards for a ten-year stretch from 1998 to 2008.
In August 2008, Gambaccini returned to Classic FM, to present a 12-part series Paul Gambaccini's Hall of Heroes on Sunday evenings between 9:00 and 10:00. In March 2008, he took over as chairman of the Radio 4 music quiz Counterpoint from Edward Seckerson; he was temporarily replaced in 2013 by Russell Davies and returned to the show in November 2014 after being cleared of allegations of historical sexual offences made against him. He returned to BBC Radio 2 with America's Greatest Hits on 15 November 2014, and hosted it until 2 July 2016, when he took over Pick of the Pops from Tony Blackburn, the following week.
He started his final America's Greatest Hits on the BBC with "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, and ended it with Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop The Feeling!".[10] Trevor Nelson took over the Saturday timeslot with his Rhythm Nation programme, that was allocated to Gambaccini's America's Greatest Hits programme for seven years. The show was revived on Greatest Hits Radio from February 2020 airing 5-7pm on Saturdays, with the first show starting off with "Born to Run", just like the final BBC Radio episode, and ending with "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" by Stevie Wonder. Gambaccini has also presented special shows on Greatest Hits Radio on bank holidays and over the Christmas holidays. On Boxing Day 2021, he co-presented a special show on Greatest Hits Radio paying tribute to Janice Long, whom he had discovered in 1982.
On 10 August 2023, it was announced that Gambaccini would leave Pick of the Pops on 7 October 2023 after seven & half years at the helm, to host a new live Sunday evening show for Radio 2, titled The Paul Gambaccini Collection, which will begin on 29 October. He announced the news on the show on 12 August, and he was replaced by the late Steve Wright.
On 22 October 2023, Gambaccini was interviewed by Wright in a special programme on Radio 2 to celebrate his 50 years of broadcasting on UK radio.
Gambaccini was co-author of The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and related titles, with Tim and Jo Rice, alongside Radio 1 colleague at that time, Mike Read, between 1977 and 1996. Gambaccini's own books include Love Letters, Radio Boy, Top 100 Albums and Track Records. The Ultimate Man, a musical about a comic book superhero, was co-written with Alastair King and Jane Edith Wilson, and produced at the Bridewell Theatre in London in 2000.[11]
Gambaccini was active in the realm of comic book fandom. As an American teenager in the 1960s his missives were regularly published in the letter columns of titles such as Justice League of America and The Amazing Spider-Man. Gambaccini claims to have invented the term "Brand Echh", which later became widely used by Stan Lee.
While still in high school, Gambaccini began contributing to comics fanzines, including the publication Rocket's Blast Comicollector. In 1964 he succeeded Jerry Bails (the so-called "father of comic book fandom") as executive secretary of the Academy of Comic-Book Fans and Collectors,[12] an umbrella organization for the burgeoning world of comics fandom [13] During 1964-65, he also published eight issues of Forum which was an Academy newsletter for ex-board members. As part of his involvement with the academy, Gambaccini helped organize the comics industry's first awards, the Alley Awards.
Gambaccini and television presenter Jonathan Ross co-owned Top 10 Comics, a comic shop in London which opened in 1989 and closed in 1995.[14] [15] Gambaccini has been an official guest at many British comic conventions, including the United Kingdom Comic Art Convention (where he co-presented the 1990 Eagle Awards and the 1997 National Comics Awards), and Comics Festival UK.
A character introduced in The Flash #141 named Paul Gambi, a tailor specializing in super-villain outfits, is an homage to Paul Gambaccini,[16] who had written a letter to the Flash editor, later published in the letter column, asking the question, "Where do all these super-villains get their costumes?".
Gambaccini has been a supporter of gay-related charities. In 1995, he was named Philanthropist of the Year by the National Charity Fundraisers for his work on behalf of the Terrence Higgins Trust. He is a patron of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra. In 2010, he won an episode of celebrity Mastermind, with his chosen beneficiary charity being Stonewall.[17]
Gambaccini has been openly gay for many years, claiming in 2013: "I was never 'in'."[18] In June 2012, he entered into a civil partnership with Christopher Sherwood.[19] One week later, they married in the New York Botanical Garden. In 2013, Gambaccini claimed that he had been highlighted as a potential security risk by the BBC earlier in his career due to his sexuality, with a symbol resembling a Christmas tree on the cover of his personnel file: "It meant you were 'as camp as Christmas' and thus a potential security risk."[20] In fact, the symbol was a general indication that the subject should not be promoted or transferred without reference to the department responsible for security vetting, due to left-leaning sympathies (see: "Christmas tree" files). He lives in the Kennington area of London.[21]
On 1 November 2013, it was reported that Gambaccini had been arrested on suspicion of historical sexual offences as part of an investigation by Operation Yewtree in the United Kingdom. He was released on bail and his spokesman said that he denied the allegations.[22] It was announced on 10 October 2014 that no charges would be brought.[23] Giving evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on 3 March 2015, Gambaccini said he believed he was used as "human fly paper" to encourage other people to come forward and make allegations against him.[24]
The BBC reported that he also said he suspected his bail was repeatedly extended until the end of high-profile cases involving other celebrities because "police did not want juries to hear a former Radio 1 DJ had been cleared of sexual wrongdoing". Gambaccini also argued in favour of a 28-day bail limit; Home Secretary Theresa May had announced in December 2014 that she was consulting on such a limit in all but exceptional cases. However, Gambaccini's allegations of a "witch-hunt" were denied by the Director of Public Prosecutions.[25] The 28-day limit came into effect in April 2017.[26]
Gambaccini wrote an account of his experience in his book Love, Paul Gambaccini: My Year Under the Yewtree, which was published in 2015.[27] [28] In February 2016, Irish Supreme Court Judge Adrian Hardiman used a review of the book to criticize what he described as the radical undermining of the presumption of innocence, especially in sex cases, including Gambaccini's, by the methods used in Operation Yewtree (among other instances).[29]
In February 2017, Gambaccini sued the Metropolitan Police, citing a loss of £200,000 during his time under investigation.[30] In November 2018, he settled a claim against the Crown Prosecution Service, who agreed to pay him damages; the amount was not disclosed due to confidentiality clauses in the settlement agreement.[31] [32]