Biography

Pete Murray

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At sixteen, Peter was at RADA where he was seen by the casting director of Gainsborough Studios, who, with no mention to Pete arranged for some small West End play parts for him. These were interrupted by war service. After being demobbed, he was cast in a number of films including Caravan, Hungry Hill,The Man Within, Captain Boycott and My Brother Jonathan. In 1948, he appeared on Broadway with Marlon Brando in Power Without Glory. Although he got a lot of rave notices such as 'the performance of the season;' he got nowhere as an actor, so he shortened his name from Peter to Pete and took up disc-jockeying in 1950, starting at £15 a week on Radio Luxembourg. He says, he regards disc jockeying as a hobby and that his main aim is still to be an actor. With that in mind reverted to calling himself Peter again.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5

His fervent support for Margaret Thatcher led to the end of his decades-long career as a BBC radio presenter and personality. On a live radio broadcast immediately prior to the 1983 election (a broadcast which had nothing to do with politics), he waited until his interviewer was just signing off and then quickly said that he just wanted to say that a vote for the Labour Party (then led by Michael Foot) would be, in his opinion, a vote for Communism in Britain. There was, as he knew, no time for anyone to rebut this flagrantly biased "opinion", and there were many protests to the effect that it was, in fact, more of a shameless propaganda slur than a genuine view. The BBC, which always seeks to retain an even-handed approach in such matters, terminated his contract, and his days as a radio star were essentially over.
He was a right-wing Conservative and a keen admirer of Margaret Thatcher.
In the late 1960s he was briefly engaged to Blue Peter (1958) presenter Valerie Singleton.
His son, Michael Murray James, committed suicide at the age of 27.
As well as acting, he became a disc jockey in 1949, working for Pirate Radio, and then BBC Radio from 1958 and Commercial Radio from 1983.