Kevin Crease

Who was Kevin Crease?

Kevin John Crease was a South Australian television presenter and news presenter. He was most noted for presenting South Australian edition of the Nine Network's National Nine News with Rob Kelvin between 1987 and 2007.

Born in North Adelaide and raised in the working class seaside suburb of Semaphore, Crease was the eldest of four children. He was a prodigious public speaker from a young age and won the Year 7 senior school debating championship.

He started his working life as a clerical worker in 1952 with Shell before becoming a copy boy and later cadet at Adelaide's The News newspaper, where he quickly "fell foul of the chief-of-staff" and was sacked. Crease completed his national service, but resigned from the army following an incident where he used an armored car to attend a party with his girlfriend.

Crease started his radio career at radio station 5DN in 1957 after being noticed as a spruiker selling plastic raincoats in Adelaide's city streets. On 17 July 1959, Channel 9 began its first broadcast in Adelaide. Crease was chosen to compere the station's first program - Clarkson's TV Hostess Quest. During the 1960s, he worked on a variety of different projects, from reading commercials and news, to performing on Adelaide Tonight as compere from 1962 to 1975. In 1969, he accidentally became the first on-air personality to say "f*ck" on Australian television when he said "fucking hell" after a late-night mishap. In the early 1970s, he hosted the news program News Beat.