Johnny Vaughan
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Johnny Randall Vaughan (born July 16 1966) is an English writer and broadcaster. Vaughan has become well known as a television and radio personality and has also built a reputation as a film critic. He is currently the presenter of the weekday breakfast show on London radio station Capital Radio and also writes a weekly column in The Sun newspaper reviewing recent film releases.
Upon finishing his private school education as a boarder at Uppingham School, Rutland, Vaughan worked as a video-shop assistant and drug dealer. The latter activity led to Vaughan's spending 25 months in prison in the latter half of the 1980s after unsuccessfully trying to sell cocaine to detectives at a hotel close to the M1 motorway.
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[edit] Career
Vaughan's big break into television was on Channel 4 in 1993 when the public first saw his blend of quick-fire humour and impressions on the movie review show Moviewatch. Channel producers decided he was a natural in front of the camera and he fronted The Big Breakfast from 1997 until 2001, forming a partnership with Denise van Outen which proved very successful in terms of audience figures. In parallel he presented another movie show, The Johnny Vaughan Film Show. In 2001 he transferred to the BBC to present a late-night talk show, Johnny Vaughan Tonight in the same vein of American shows by Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. Viewing figures were not good, especially considering the wonders Vaughan had worked on The Big Breakfast, and commentators suggested that the format was not best suited to the free-wheeling Vaughan. A sitcom vehicle 'Orrible was even more poorly received by the critics.
In April 2004 he returned to the "zoo" format when he replaced Chris Tarrant as the presenter of the Capital FM breakfast show, and has since seen the listening figures for his show drop from over 1.3 million to only 980,000 listeners, according to official Rajar statistics . The show is now the 3rd most popular in London, behind the Today programme (BBC Radio 4), and Wake Up To Wogan (Radio 2) respectively.
Vaughan has also been heavily involved with telethon charity drives such as Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief. In 2004 the BBC ran "a search to find the nation's best-loved sitcom" with a format that aped that of the 100 Greatest Britons. One celebrity championed each of the top ten sitcoms, presenting an hour-long special on why their In favourite was the best. Vaughan was the presenter of the segment on prison-based sitcom Porridge.
In 2005, Vaughan became the host of the American reality/game show My Kind of Town on ABC. The show was cancelled after four episodes. He was also featured in the 2005 film Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, playing an awards ceremony host.
Vaughan presented the controversial hoax "reality" show Space Cadets for Channel 4.
In June 2006, Vaughan appeared as a guest on TV Heaven, Telly Hell.
He is a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show called Best of the Worst that also features team captain David Mitchell (Peep Show), and chairman Alexander Armstrong. They and their guests celebrate the very best of the very bad. The first show aired on 1 September 2006 on Channel 4 in the UK.
In December 2006, he made a guest appearance on the BBC comedy panel game QI (Series D, Episode 10, "Divination").
[edit] Personal life
Vaughan is an avid supporter of Chelsea F.C. He is married and has two children (one of which he made a joke about calling Siobhan) with Antonia Davies, for whom he converted to Roman Catholicism; they met while he was working in a video store at age 19.
He has had thinning hair for a number of years. On Best of the Worst, he expressed jealousy of those with "long fly away locks".
[edit] References
- Vaughan's interview with Ian Burrell in The Independent, 13th April 2004.
- Recent television trailers have shown a marked decrease in the quantity of Vaughan's hair and he also appears to have gained a few pounds.
