His father was a manager with Midland Bank (which became HSBC in 1999) in Lincolnshire (Horncastle and Gainsborough).

[5][6] Day studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford from October 1964, when only 17.

In 1983, he left the BBC to join TV-am as their economics and industrial correspondent, appearing as a reporter on the first day of broadcast - 1 February 1983.

On the World Service he presented its sister programme, Global Business, on weekends from 2000.

[14][15] Day won the Harold Wincott Award for broadcast business journalism three times, in 1989, 2000 and 2002.