Michael Barratt (television presenter) Michael Barratt (television presenter) Michael Fieldhouse Barratt (born 3 January 1928) is an English television presenter and announcer. He is mainly known for his lengthy period as the main presenter on "Nationwide". Michael Barratt was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a civil servant. Barratt was educated at Rossall School, an independent boys' school near Fleetwood, Lancashire, and at Paisley Grammar School in Scotland. After leaving school, he became a journalist for Kemsley newspapers, before moving to Nigeria to be editor of the "Nigerian Citizen" and to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service. Following his return
The World at One news and comment] on air". In his history of radio news and current affairs, "Public Issue Radio", Hugh Chignell pointed out that "The World at One" was a highly successful but also a profoundly controversial innovation. It provided a successful approach to news and current affairs which would be cloned elsewhere but at the same time it horrified the more Reithian wing of the BBC who reacted in the 1970s by creating single subject current affairs programmes ("Analysis" and "File on Four") in reaction to "The World at One's" vulgar journalism. That vulgarity was personified by its first presenter, William