Spencer Leigh (radio presenter)

His history of British pop before the Beatles, Halfway To Paradise (1996), has been expanded and issued in two volumes as British Pop Before The Beatles, available only on Kindle. He has written a series of musical biographies for McNidder & Grace - Frank Sinatra (updated with 50 pages of lists in 2022), Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Simon and Garfunkel.

His first book was Paul Simon - Now and Then, published in 1973, the first biography of the American singer-songwriter Paul Simon. Since then, he has written, or collaborated on, over two dozen books. Many of his books relate to The Beatles or Merseybeat and he has interviewed many people connected to the Liverpool 1960s scene. There have been several one-off series on BBC Radio Merseyside, the best known being 'Let's Go Down the Cavern' in 1981, which was also broadcast on local BBC stations throughout the UK.

He started broadcasting on BBC Radio Merseyside in the early 1970s. His first series, No Holds Bard was based around the Mersey poets. His music programme On the Beat was running continuously from 1985 to 2020 on BBC Radio Merseyside since 1985. Over the years, Leigh interviewed thousands of musicians on the show. The entire collection of 2,027 programmes has been given to Liverpool's Central Library and there is an on-going project to archive them. Some one-off series have been given to the British Library.

For the sixtieth anniversary of the Beatles' first Parlophone single, Love Me Do, he and Mike Jones have been working on The Road to Love Me Do. It tells the story of Merseybeat through the Liverpool artists who came before the Beatles and details numerous private recordings made by local bands prior to October 1962. The music is highlighted with QR codes, the first music book to use QR codes in this way.

Spencer Leigh (born 1 February 1945) is a BBC radio presenter and author, with particular expertise in the development of pop and rock music and culture in Britain.