Richard Witts

Richard "Dick" Witts (born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire) is an English musicologist, music historian, and ex leader of 1980s band the Passage. He attended Clee Grammar School for Boys. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music and briefly at Manchester University. During this time he was a member of the Hallé Orchestra as a percussionist. During the mid-1970s he wrote for the contemporary classical music magazine Contact. At that time, he was also involved in starting a Manchester Musicians Collective (on the model of the recently established London Musicians Collective). This led into contact with the growing punk scene and he formed the Passage, producing their recordings and singing on many of their releases. He presented television programme Oxford Road Show in the early 1980s for the BBC from Oxford Road Studios, Manchester and was also a reporter for BBC Radio 3.