The Capital Radio roster at the time included Roger Scott, Kenny Everett, Alan Freeman, Chris Tarrant and David "Kid" Jensen.

It was while standing in for Tarrant and also Jensen that the Head of Music at BBC Radio 1, Doreen Davis, poached him from Capital, and he joined the network in October 1987.

In 1997 he joined the news and sport network BBC Radio 5 Live, when offered the job by Roger Mosey, the station's head.

He presented the mid-morning phone in show for five years before replacing Julian Worricker in the breakfast slot in January 2003, co-presenting initially with Victoria Derbyshire.

However, the BBC later said that Campbell had initiated the meetings himself, and his public revelations about private negotiations was criticised by Director General Greg Dyke.

In his time at Radio 5 Live, Campbell has covered four Olympic Games, three Football World Cups and three European Championships and every general election and referendum since 1997.

The audience discussion programme addressed the implications of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev and the effects of Glasnost and Perestroika on ordinary Soviet citizens.

The Travelling Talk Show also went to Bogotá to hear from ordinary Colombians about Pablo Escobar, the Medellín and Cali cartels, and the country's narcotics wars.

When the British rights to the Wheel of Fortune were secured by Scottish Television, Campbell got the presenting job after piloting against Eamonn Holmes, and he hosted the show from 1988 to 1996.

The UK broadcast rights for the old episodes have in recent years been secured by Challenge TV, and all eight series he presented are regularly shown on the free-to-air network.

This was a World Cup-based football quiz featuring teams comprising Geoff Hurst, Martin O'Neill and Terry Yorath and in which Campbell posed questions on footage from previous tournaments.

In 1995, he made the Nicky Campbell Show, a short-lived chat and entertainment programme for BBC Scotland, and in 1996, was a presenter/reporter on Ride On, the Channel 4 motoring magazine.

He made a film for the BBC Two documentary series Leviathan in 1998 entitled Braveheart, in which he looked at Edward I of England and William Wallace and explored the historical roots of Scottish antipathy, real or imagined, towards the English.

Known for the confrontational nature of its studio audience and provocative topics, Campbell was the main presenter but over the years co-presenters on the debate show included Anna Soubry, Adrian Mills, Sue Jay, Claudia Winkleman, Kaye Adams, John Stapleton, Roger Cook, Paul Ross and Sheila Ferguson.

In 2001, days after the September 11 attacks, Campbell went to New York to host a discussion on the aftermath for Panorama, and that year, he also presented some episodes of Newsnight.

In each game, a couple tried to win a prize consisting of a series of monthly cheques whose length and value were determined by random choices of which squares on the studio floor to light up.

Campbell hosted The Big Questions, an ethical and religious debate show which ran on BBC One on Sunday morning for 14 series between 2007 and 2021.

[25] In June 2023, Campbell's documentary made by Summer Film, Secrets of the Bay City Rollers, was released on ITV, STV and ITVX.

Guests have included Ricky Gervais, Gary Lineker, Robbie Savage, Jeremy Paxman, Lorraine Kelly, Chris Packham, Sara Cox, Kevin Bridges and Deborah Meaden.

His many guests have included David MacMillan, the only Westerner to escape Bangkok's infamous Klong Prem Prison, a Scottish witch, journalist Paul Salopek who has been walking the route of human evolution for a decade and broadcaster Iain Lee on his experiences with ADHD – an episode also featuring Campbell's daughter Kirsty, who has ADHD.

After the podcast was released dozens more men came forward and the police opened an investigation solely relating to the Edinburgh Academy, Operation Tree Frog.

Renton reported that because of the publicity ex-pupils of Edinburgh Academy had named 17 other staff members, employed between the 1950s and 1980s, as physical and sexual abusers.

[39] In September 2022 Campbell and Renton were asked to appear on the South African current affairs programme Carte Blanche to talk about "Edgar", who was living in a comfortable retirement village near Cape Town.

[41] On 7 March 2023, Lady Smith, chair of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, passed down the judgement that Wares could be widely named.

[43] He appeared in Michael Fenton Stevens' podcast My Time Capsule in June 2021, on which talked about Charlie Brooker attacking him in the press and television over a number of years, including an expletive-laden monologue in 2009 which put him in bed for two days.

In 2009, after meeting the actor Mark Moraghan, Campbell wrote a swing album for him, Moonlight's Back in Style, which was released by Linn Records.

In 2017 Campbell was asked to write the song "Sacred Eyes" for the 40th anniversary of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and a video about the famous elephant orphanage.

He described his emotional breakdown and late diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and how his beloved Labrador Maxwell's unconditional love had helped him.

Campbell met his first wife Linda Larnach, a divorcee eight years his senior with two sons, whilst working at Northsound Radio in Aberdeen.

[68] They moved to North London where he would later nurse her through a health scare and encouraged his young stepsons in their footballing endeavours, hosting auctions to raise funds for their local amateur club.