Greg Dyke

Greg Dyke was born in 1947, in Hayes, Middlesex, the youngest of three sons in a "stable, lower middle class" family. His father was an insurance salesman. The family lived at 17 Cerne Close until Dyke was nine years old, then moved to Cedars Drive, Hillingdon. He was educated at Yeading Primary School and then Hayes Grammar School, which he left with one grade "E" at A-level mathematics. After school, he was briefly a trainee manager at Marks & Spencer, before leaving to work as a trainee reporter for the Hillingdon Mirror, becoming chief reporter in eight months. He left the Mirror after attempting to stage a union-backed protest against poor pay conditions by the junior staff on the paper. He then got a job at the Slough Evening Mail. Among his colleagues was future music journalist Colin Irwin.

Dyke then went on to study for a degree at the University of York as a mature student, graduating in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in politics. During his time at York, Dyke was active in student politics, and was part of a collective that produced a psychedelic underground student magazine called Nouse. He also met and married his first wife, Christine Taylor, whilst at the university. His contemporaries and friends at York included future journalists Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens, the latter then active in the International Socialists. Dyke was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university in 1999 and was chancellor from 2004 to 2015.

After university, Dyke followed his first wife to Newcastle. He had become disillusioned with newspaper journalism, and tried for a job as a junior reporter at BBC Radio Teesside. He was unsuccessful, apparently because the interviewers felt no-one would understand his accent. Dyke instead found work covering rural affairs for the Newcastle Journal. He moved back to London with Christine in 1974 to become campaign officer for the Wandsworth Community Relations Council. He hated the job and left to campaign to be elected GLC Councillor for Putney. Again he was unsuccessful.

Dyke was given assistance getting a job at London Weekend Television (LWT) by fellow ex-Newcastle journalist Nicholas Evans, who was at the time working on Weekend World. Dyke got a junior position on LWT's local politics programme, in the current affairs department. His bosses there were John Birt and Peter Jay. He attracted attention for trying to give the programmes he worked on a more populist edge. This led to him being given the chance to launch a new early evening current affairs topical news programme. This became The Six O'Clock Show, fronted by Michael Aspel, with co-hosts Danny Baker and Janet Street-Porter. The show is seen by many as the first example of British tabloid TV.

After the success of The Six O' Clock Show, Dyke was brought in by Jonathan Aitken to become programme director at ailing station TV-am in April 1983. The station was doing very badly in the ratings compared to the BBC's popular Breakfast Time magazine style programme. He was instrumental in reviving the breakfast show's fortunes by introducing a new schedule based around popular features including bingo, celebrity gossip and horoscopes.

Dyke left TV-am, in May 1984 after Bruce Gyngell was brought in to enhance and improve the company to allow it to be financially viable. Ten days later, Michael Moor, the TV-am general manager, also left the station. In August 1984, Dyke became director of programmes at Television South (TVS).

In April 1987, Dyke moved from TVS to LWT again to be director of programmes, replacing John Birt, having originally worked at LWT in 1978. At the same time, he helped LWT re-sectioning the company in a bid to cut costs and overhaul the working practices within the company ahead of a new franchise period, which it won. …

In his early years, Dyke was an active supporter of the Labour Party. In 1977, he attempted to win a seat on the Greater London Council (GLC) for Labour at Putney. Until 1999, he was considered "very much part of Tony Blair's New England", attending parties to celebrate Labour's 1997 election victory. He donated £55,000 to the party, which prompted controversy over his subsequent appointment as BBC director-general during the Blair government. He was also asked to write a report on the future of the NHS.

On 2 May 2005, prior to the general election, Dyke went public at a Liberal Democrats press conference and said that "democracy was under threat if Labour was elected for a third term".

On 20 April 2009, it was announced that Dyke was to lead a review of the UK's creative sector for the Conservative Party.

Dyke has been married twice. He met his first wife Christine Taylor at the University of York; they were married for most of the 1970s. He lives in Hampshire, near Stockbridge, with his second wife, Susan Howes, a former sociology teacher and probation officer. Susan is now a trustee of Safe Ground, a charity which works with young offenders. They have four children. The Dykes also own a house on the west coast of County Cork, Ireland.