On leaving school, his first job was at Liverpool docks, and he was subsequently a technician and actor with repertory companies in Oldham, Sidmouth and Swansea.
[1] He started broadcasting in 1962 as a continuity announcer with Granada Television, later moving to ATV in Birmingham and eventually the BBC in Manchester and London.
[2] In his autobiography, written after his cancer diagnosis (for which he refused radical treatment), he said that he strove for years to lose his Liverpool accent so that he could work for the BBC, but by the time he got a job there it no longer mattered.
As he explained in his autobiography: My theory, if I ever had one, was that this show, broadcast at such a crazy time, could only be successful if it were based on one assumption: that nobody in his or her right mind would choose to be up at such an awful hour.
Moore's show brought him a dedicated following of listeners, evidenced in 1986 and 1987 by the turn-out of thousands of early-morning joggers for the two 'Bog-eyed Jog' events held in sporting stadia across the UK in aid of Children in Need.