Everything about Wes Butters totally explained
Wes Butters (born
Wesley Lee-Butters in
Salford, Greater Manchester,
4 May 1979), is a radio broadcaster, formerly of
BBC Radio 1, and writer.
Early life
Butters attended Buile Hill High School in
Salford, and studied at the
University of Salford between 1995 and 1997 where he gained a National Diploma in Design & Media Communications, followed by a BA (Hons) Television and Radio between 1997 and 1999.
Radio career
Upon joining AA Roadwatch he shortened his name to Wes Butters and after a year's reading traffic and travel bulletins on local North West radio stations and stints on The Wave (Blackpool), Wish FM (Wigan) and Century 105, he was offered the evening show on Century 106 in Nottingham. He left in 2000 to host the mid-morning show and become Head of Music for Galaxy 105-106 in Newcastle.
Radio 1
In February
2003, after massive speculation, he took over the Official UK
Top 40 show on
BBC Radio 1, and it was renamed
The Official Chart Show with Wes. It changed its format to include more coverage of the album charts and ceased playing all the Top 40 singles to address the chart relevancy debate.
He regularly stood in for
Scott Mills - first on early breakfast, then on drive-time. He also deputised for
Chris Moyles on the prestigious Radio 1 breakfast show on Bank and Christmas Holidays.
Working closely with
Top of the Pops he interviewed hundreds of popstars including
Kylie Minogue,
Destiny's Child,
George Michael and
The Black Eyed Peas.
In November
2004 it was revealed that Butters would leave Radio 1 the following February and the chart would under go more massive changes to its format.
Butters was regularly heard on the
BBC World Service too. He sporadically presented Top of the Pops, Wright Round the World (sitting in for
Steve Wright) and was used as their voice for
Live 8.
After Radio 1
Soon after his final chart rundown on January 30th 2005 the press announced the launch of podshows.com, a joint venture by Butters and fellow broadcaster
Daryl Denham. It was the world's first professional pod-casting company using household names such as
Tony Blackburn,
Paul Gambaccini,
Gary Davies and
Terry Christian to record tailor-made programmes for MP3 players.
This coincided with the release of his
Crazy Frog record (that he'd premiered on an early breakfast show the previous November). Under the guise of Pondlife the record went in at Number 11 and remained in the UK Top 40 for 5 weeks.
Wes@Breakfast
In October 2005 it was revealed that Butters had agreed a deal with Galaxy and returned to the airwaves at
Galaxy Manchester, immediately boosting figures to their highest ever level, winning a Silver Sony award for Best Breakfast Show and an Arqiva nomination for Best UK Presenter in 2006.
In May 2007 he was voted North West England Presenter of the Year in the radio industry magazine
X-Trax.
It was announced in June 2007 that Wes had "had enough of early starts" and that he wanted more time to focus on his other projects. Keen to keep him on the station he agreed with Galaxy to do a short afternoon show but in April 2008 he revealed that he'd leave the group completely.
Television and writing
Wes has appeared on many TV programmes such as
Never Mind the Buzzcocks,
Top of the Pops, Record of the Year,
Liquid News,
Celebrity Fame Academy, BBC1 news, and numerous talking-heads and children's shows.
For voice-overs he did the Top of the Pops rundown, An Audience with Take That, An Audience with Lionel Ritchie, Asda and
The Brit Awards.
He's written for
The Guardian newspaper.
His first book is entitled
Kenneth Williams Unseen and is due out in October 2008, through
HarperCollins.
He wrote the acclaimed two-part documentary The Pain of Laughter - The Last Days of Kenneth Williams for
BBC Radio 4, broadcast in April 2008.
Trivia
Further Information
Get more info on 'Wes Butters'.
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