Brian Hayes, the Australian-born broadcaster who brought a confrontational style to British radio phone-ins, has died at the age of 87. He was best known for his mid-morning show on LBC, where he earned the nickname 'the rudest man on radio' for his abrasive treatment of callers.
Hayes insisted he was not rude but assertive. He saw his interactions with callers as a 'game of verbal chess', playing devil's advocate to explore different views. His LBC programme ran from 1976 to 1990, attracting up to 500,000 listeners and featuring interviews with politicians and cultural figures such as Joseph Heller and Lawrence Durrell.
After leaving LBC, Hayes joined BBC Radio 2, standing in for holidaying presenters in 1991 before taking over the breakfast show Good Morning UK! the following year, a role he handed to Terry Wogan after 12 months. He later presented Hayes Over Britain on Radio 2, winning a Gold Sony award for a phone-in on euthanasia, and continued on Radio 5 Live with shows including The Magazine and a late-night programme. He received another Sony award for leading the station's coverage of the 1999 Soho nail bombing.
Born in Perth, Western Australia, Hayes grew up in mining towns and left school at 14. He began in radio in 1955 in Kalgoorlie, later working in Bunbury and Perth. After emigrating to Britain in 1971, he worked as a theatre usher and copytaker before joining Capital Radio as a phone-in producer and presenter. He moved to LBC in 1976, with Margaret Thatcher as his first guest.
