Tony Blackburn

Tony Blackburn
Blackburn at the 2008 BAFTA Television Awards
Born	Antony Kenneth Blackburn (1943-01-29) 29 January 1943 (age 74) Guildford, Surrey, England
Occupation	Disc jockey
Years active	1964–present
Spouse(s)	Tessa Wyatt (1972–1977; divorced) Debra (1992–present)
Children	Simon (b.1973) Victoria (b.1997)

Antony Kenneth "Tony" Blackburn (born 29 January 1943) is an English disc jockey who broadcast on the "pirate" stations Radio Caroline and Radio London in the 1960s and was the first disc jockey to broadcast on BBC Radio 1 at its launch at the end of September 1967. In 2002 he was the winner and thus "King of the Jungle" of the ITV reality TV programme I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. On 25 February 2016 Blackburn was sacked by the BBC, but in October 2016 it was announced he would rejoin the BBC in January 2017

Blackburn was born in Guildford, Surrey, but in 1946 his family moved to Bournemouth, then in Hampshire, where his sister, Jacqueline, was born. His sister was born suffering from polio and has been unable to walk since birth. Blackburn's mother, Pauline Cubitt (née Stone), was a nurse, and his father, Kenneth Fleming Blackburn, was a GP. He was educated at Castle Court School in Parkstone, Poole, Dorset. He gained entry to Millfield School in Somerset on a sports scholarship and captained the school's cricket team.

He left before taking any examinations, but gained O-levels, following private tuition, and enrolled for an HND course in Business Studies at Bournemouth Technical College.

After beginning his career as a singer, Blackburn then worked as a DJ for the offshore pirate radio stations Radio Caroline and Radio London (1964–67), before joining the BBC in 1967, initially broadcasting on the Light Programme.