Bruno Brookes

Bruno Brookes (born Trevor Neil Brookes in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire 24 April 1959) is an English radio presenter who became prominent on British radio in the 1980s.

Brookes attended Bradwell and Seabridge secondary schools. He became a disc jockey through youth club discos in his home town before he sent a successful audition tape to his local station, BBC Radio Stoke. He used to wash cars to raise money for buying equipment. He spent three years there before being recruited by BBC Radio 1, the national pop network, where he worked as a stand-in presenter for Steve Wright before taking over the teatime show from Peter Powell.

In addition to this show, Brookes presented a rundown of the UK Top 40 singles chart on Sunday evenings between 1986 and 1990 and between 1992 and 1995.

In 1989, Brookes moved to the weekend breakfast show, co-hosting with Liz Kershaw, and also regularly deputised for Simon Mayo on the weekday breakfast show. Three years later he moved to the weekday early breakfast slot, where he remained until he was sacked in 1995 by Trevor Dann, who said "...why is Bruno on? you know, he seems to have a charmed life, because if the view was 'we must get rid of the dinosaurs', you know we've got this behemoth striding the airwaves of dawn" in the BBC TV documentary Blood on the Carpet: Walking with Disc Jockeys in 2001.

Bruno, along with another former chart show presenter Mark Goodier, returned to the station for a one-off Top 40 countdown show on Sunday 30 September 2007, providing new pre-recorded inserts into the show, which was hosted by the then-current (but outgoing) presenters JK and Joel. This special show formed part of the station's celebrations of the 40th birthday of BBC Radio 1.

Brookes was also an early supporter of the fledgling acid house scene by championing Stakker Humanoid, a November 1988 hit for Humanoid (AKA Brian Dougans). In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Brookes explained that he was given a white label of the record and immediately fell under its spell. "It just got to me. I remember listening to it and thinking it was one step ahead of everything techno that was coming out. It wasn't copying anything else; it was just fabulous." As a result, he played the record twice in one show – a very unusual step for a prime-time radio DJ.

...
Wikipedia