Frank Bough - Career

Career

He joined the BBC as an anchorman and reporter, presenting a new Newcastle upon Tyne based-show called "Home at Six", soon renamed "North at Six" and then in 1963 becoming BBC Look North (North East and Cumbria). In 1964, he began presenting the BBC Sports Review of the Year, which he would host for eighteen years. He also presented Sportsview, and in 1968 the BBC's flagship Saturday afternoon sports programme Grandstand. He was one of the BBC's football commentators for the 1966 World Cup and covered the match where North Korea infamously defeated Italy 1–0. He went on to present the early evening magazine programme, Nationwide. This made him one of the most familiar faces on British television throughout the 1970s.

In 1977, Bough was memorably a guest on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, performing a song and dance routine in a sailor's outfit with the likes of Eddie Waring and Barry Norman, among others. The programme's 21.3 million viewers remain a British record. He was the main presenter of the BBC's coverage of the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina, and was the BBC correspondent at Guildford for the Election '79 programme.

His popularity surged again when he become the first presenter of the BBC's inaugural breakfast television programme, Breakfast Time along with Selina Scott and Nick Ross. He left at the end of 1987 to concentrate on the Holiday where, having been a roving holidaymaker, he took over as the main presenter when Cliff Michelmore left the series in 1986. However, within a few months he was sacked by the BBC when he became mired in a sex and drugs scandal, which involved taking cocaine and wearing lingerie at sex parties.

Former News Of The World deputy editor Paul Connew said of the scandal: "It caused a sensation at the time, given Bough's public image as the squeaky clean frontman of breakfast and sports television."

The News Of The World's front-page headline at the time of the scandal was: "Frank Bough: I Took Drugs with Vice Girls". Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism at City University London, said that Bough made a "terrible mistake" by agreeing to speak to newspapers prior to publication of personal allegations, worsening the story.

In 1989, Bough was hired by LWT where he fronted Six O'clock live until it was axed in 1992 and in 1991 he presented ITV's coverage of the Rugby World Cup. He also presented the "Frank Bough interview" for Sky TV for two series. However he made headlines again in 1992 when his visits to an S&M prostitute's Welbeck Street flat were made known to the tabloid press by one of the women employed there as a receptionist.

In 1993, after his activities were regularly ridiculed in monologues by Angus Deayton on Have I Got News For You, Bough agreed to appear as a guest on the programme. In the early 1990s he was a presenter on London's LBC radio, staying on for the launch of London News Talk and moving to the News 97.3 service where he remained until 1996. He then presented Travel Live for the cable channel Travel.

From 1994 he was a regular member of the Windsor based choir, The Royal Free Singers. Bough had a liver transplant in 2001 after cancer was found, and now lives in retirement in Holyport, Berkshire. In 2009, he contributed to a programme looking back on Nationwide, broadcast on BBC Four.

In Fern Britton's autobiography, she criticised Bough, who she had worked with on BBC's "Breakfast Time" in the 1980s. Britton said that during her first meeting with Bough, he whispered in her ear: "How long will it be before I'm having an affair with you?"