The journalist, acclaimed author, music historian and broadcaster Spencer Leigh was born in Liverpool, England, and is an acknowledged authority on popular music. He has been broadcasting his weekly show, On the Beat, on BBC Radio Merseyside for more than 25 years. He has written over twenty-five books, hundreds of album sleeve notes and he writes obituaries of musicians for The Independent and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is an Honoured Friend at Sir Paul McCartney s Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts(LIPA).