Richard Keys (born 23 April 1957 in Coventry) is an English sports presenter with a career starting in 1976 when he moved initially to London. He has worked ever since for the BBC, ITV, CHANNEL 4, SKY Sports, talkSPORT, beIN SPORTS, FOX Sports, ESPN Star Sports and has presented well over 4,500 football matches with Premier League games, World Cup Finals, Champions League Finals, FA Cup Finals, UEFA Finals and League Cup Finals in England and Scotland among them. Furthermore he has presented other sports such as Golf, Tennis, Boxing, Rugby, Cricket, Darts, Snooker and Cycling.
Career
1976 - Fleet Street Sports Agency (HAYTER's).
1978 - Radio City Liverpool as a football commentator.
1982 - Piccadilly Radio as Sports editor and Football commentator.
1984 - ITV network as a main anchor of the breakfast show TV-am. Whilst working at TV-am he also commentated on football matches for ITV and cycling for Channel 4 including two Tours de France.
1990 - British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) presenter for the sports channel. When BSB merged with Sky in 1991, the channel was renamed Sky Sports. Among others he presented the very popular Super Sunday and Monday Night Football shows.
2008 - UEFA Euro 2008 for Al Jazeera Sports.
2011 - TalkSport Radio Presenter and Boxnation boxing channel presenter.
2013 - beIN SPORTS presenting among others the Keys and Gray show.
Personal Life
From the age of four, Richard Keys had a passion for football, ever since his father took him to watch Coventry City play Swansea Town in old Third Division South. He went to school at Whitley Abbey comprehensive school, in which he was head boy. He captained Warwickshire boys as well as Coventry school boys.
Awards
In 2003 Richard Keys has received an Honorary title from Coventry University (Honorary Doctor of Letters - Dlitt) for outstanding services to sports broadcasting. In 2012 Richard Keys and Andy Gray received the best sports programme prize for their talkSPORT show at the Sony Radio Academy AwOscars). He has also received a variety of best sports presenter awards from different publications.
Charity Work
Richard Keys and Geoff Shreeves raised over £8,000,000 in 11 years for Nordoff-Robbins (a musical charity for Children with Autism). In addition, Richard Keys is a patron for the Willow Foundation a charity for people with special needs, founded by the former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson, in memory of his late daughter Anna. Also he is a patron to the Surrey based charity Children with Special Needs Foundation. In 2002 Richard Keys and Andy Gray raised £64,000 for charity in the popular ITV show "Who wants to be a millionaire".