Frank Bough

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Frank Bough : biography

15 January 1933 –

Bough left breakfast television at the end of 1987 to concentrate on the Holiday programme where, having been a roving holidaymaker, he took over as the main presenter when Cliff Michelmore left the series in 1986.

Sex and drugs scandal

In 1988, Bough 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.Platell, Amanda , New Statesman, 28 October 2002, accessed 12 June 2008 "Frank Bough: I Took Drugs with Vice Girls" said the News of the World’s front-page headline in 1988. The newspaper’s former deputy editor Paul Connew later 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."

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.

Bough spoke of his regret for taking drugs and said: "It was a brief but appalling period in my life. Don’t condemn my entire career for a brief episode I regret."

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 front-page 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. Daily Mail, 17 January 2008, accessed 12 June 2008

A photograph emerged in a newspaper of Bough leaving the S&M prostitute’s flat. During a visit he was reported to have spent 50 minutes in a ‘torture chamber’ featuring a slave cage and school canes. The following day he appeared on television with his wife and said: "I am feeling exceedingly stupid. I bitterly regret many of the things in my life, and if only I could undo them I would."

Late career and retirement

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, with whom she had worked 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?"