Dickin started out as a musician in the 1960s: he was a bass player and singer who found he preferred playing records to making them when he joined the
BBC in 1970 as the first presenter on air at
Radio Oxford. Dickin liked motor racing. He was a stunt driver in the 1969 film
The Italian Job. The same year, Dickin moved to
Australia where he worked for
Sydney's biggest radio station,
2UE. Upon returning to Britain in the late 1970s, he spent 17 years working for
BBC Radio 4,
LBC, and
Capital Radio. He started at Talksport (then Talk Radio UK) in 1995. Dickin used to present the 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. slot at weekends on
Talk Radio from 1995 to 2001. He returned, filling in for
James Whale during Whale's battle with
kidney cancer. He was given the morning show slot soon afterwards, and then moved to the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. show on weekends before his death. Dickin was on air in the UK overnight when news was broken of the car crash that subsequently killed
Diana, Princess of Wales, and he was still on air to make the announcement of her death as a newsflash. He won a Golden Rose award for his coverage of the
Lockerbie disaster in 1988. and "You don't have two brain cells to rub together". Some of his shows were broadcast from a studio in Bodmin, Cornwall, a few miles from his home. A staunch atheist, Dickin's last show was about the
afterlife and the existence of God; famous atheist and author of
The God Delusion,
Richard Dawkins, was Dickin's guest on his last show. Mike Dickin was killed in a car crash while driving on the
A30 near his home in
Cornwall, on 18 December 2006, at the age of 63. James Whale presented his tribute show. Dickin left a wife (second marriage) and 5 children, including two from his first marriage. ==External links==