(one of the BBC's first North East TV newsreaders) regularly incorporated Geordie into the programme, usually in comedy pieces pointing out the gulf between ordinary Geordies and officials speaking Standard English. They were also responsible for a series of recordings and theatre shows, beginning with Larn Yersel' Geordie, which attempted, not always seriously, to bring the Geordie dialect to the rest of the UK. The pair went on to compere the annual Geordierama shows at the Newcastle Festival, later televised locally by BBC North East and broadcast nationally on BBC Radio 4. Away from the nightly regional news, Neville featured on a host of regional and networked programmes for the BBC – one such series, The Mike Neville Show (1975), was based on his experiences whilst completing National Service, in repertory theatre and on television. At a national level in the mid-1960s, he presented Come Dancing and the annual Miss United Kingdom contest. Other regional programmes included A Likely Story (1974), Friday North (1977), Mike on Friday (1980) and Phone in Now (1981). He also featured on A Song for Europe and the annual Children in Need telethon. In 1989, Neville was caught by Noel Edmonds with a Gotcha on his BBC1 programme Noel's Saturday Roadshow. He was tricked into thinking he was filling seven minutes of airtime because there was a technical fault with the network feed screening Wogan. He was easily able to adapt to the situation and stay professional, and was the only local anchorman in the UK to ever receive a Gotcha. Nicholas Owen, a former Look North reporter who moved onto ITN, described Neville as his mentor in a 2004 newspaper article, remarking that, He is a Geordie legend and has a towering reputation, in a way that no-one in national television does. Neville was appointed an MBE in the 1991 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting. Return to Tyne Tees In 1996, Neville was approached by Tyne Tees Television and offered a chance to return to the commercial station. Tyne Tees offered him his own hour long news programme, North East Tonight with Mike Neville. Neville made the switch back to Tyne Tees, which coincided with a short-lived station rebrand from Tyne Tees to Channel 3 North East. Shortly after its launch, North East Tonight won the Royal Television Society's award for best regional news programme. In 1998, it won a World Service