Speaker / Host
Mike Bushell
Mike Bushell is a former actor and rock musician and one of the two main BBC Breakfast sports presenters and the presenter of Bushell's Best. This is where he puts on his shorts and profiles an alternative sport or activity that doesn't usually get the limelight. He is also very popular as a corporate event host and entertaining after dinner speaker.
About Mike Bushell
Mike Bushell is an impressive raconteur and his anecdotes come from his many experiences working with the BBC. As well as reporting from around the world, from Malaysia to the United Arab Emirates and at a number of World cups and Olympics, his Bushell’s Best’ slots have provided a vast number of hugely entertaining stories. In 2019, he participated in Strictly Come Dancing and became the seventh contestant to be eliminated.
Mike Bushell has made his Bushell’s Best slots a massive hit with Breakfast fans. Astonishingly he has tried 560 different sports or activities, and the highlights included sailing up the Thames with Ben Ainslie, learning backhand with Serena Williams, zorbing, husky racing in Berkshire and joining the Indian Kabbaddi team at the Asian games in Doha. Furthermore he tried his hand at indoor sky diving, thundercat racing, bobsleighing, air-racing, ice cricket, polo, shinty, swamp soccer and shin kicking!
He also used to look at stories of dedication and sacrifice at grassroots sport – tales of unsung heroes, like the parents who give up their entire weekends ferrying their children to matches and training.
Mike’s background was in acting, including four years in the National Youth Theatre. A degree in theatre and television followed, but while trying to make ends meet as an actor, he broke into journalism on a local newspaper in Winchester and the rest is history.
After a break from his journalism course (to tour Europe as lead singer in a rock band) he returned to newspapers in Derby and Windsor before joining the BBC in 1990 as a reporter with Radio Solent.
His big TV break came with a job on the Isle of Wight – and having always been a keen long-distance runner, footballer, cricketer and supporter of Leeds United, his move into sport was almost inevitable.
As well as presenting the sport on South Today, he had his own entertainment slot and fronted a 40-part history series to mark the Millennium.
