Last updated: August 2026
Umberto Saoncella died in December 2020, after an illness. He was the voice that got Manchester out of bed — breakfast on Piccadilly Radio and Piccadilly Gold, and more than four years of weekend breakfast on Piccadilly 1152 alongside Dave Ward. Tributes came from across the North West when the news broke.
Just Umberto
On air he never needed a surname. He was Umberto, and in Greater Manchester that was enough — the sort of one-name recognition that takes years of turning up at half past five in the morning and sounding pleased about it.
The Umberto Breakfast Show made his name at Piccadilly. Breakfast radio is the hardest shift there is: you are talking to people who are late, cold and not yet fully awake, and you have to be good company without being exhausting. He was very good at it.
Umberto and Dave Ward
The pairing Manchester remembers best is Umberto and Dave Ward on weekend breakfast on Piccadilly 1152, which ran for more than four years through the 1990s.
Double acts on radio either work immediately or never, and there is no way to manufacture the difference. That one worked. People planned their Saturday mornings around it, which is about the highest compliment a radio programme can be paid.
Beyond Manchester
He went on from Piccadilly to Century Radio in the North West, and later to Real Radio in Wales and then Yorkshire.
In 2006, while at Real Radio Yorkshire, he was nominated for Speech Broadcaster of the Year at the Radio Academy Awards — a reminder that behind the easy breakfast manner was a broadcaster his own industry rated seriously.
What people actually said about him
When he died, the tributes were striking for what they focused on. Not the ratings, not the awards — the kindness, and the charity work he quietly kept doing throughout his career.
Plenty of broadcasters are remembered as good on air. Rather fewer are remembered, first and foremost, as good people. He was one of them.
Tell us what you remember
We are a heritage project, not a newsroom, and we would rather this page became something more than a summary of publicly available facts.
If Umberto got you up on a Saturday morning, or you worked alongside him, send us your memory and we will add it here with your name, or without it if you would rather. The people who listened know things no archive holds.
You can also read what happened to Piccadilly Radio, what happened to James Stannage, or listen to our live channels.
Sources
This page draws on publicly reported accounts of Umberto Saoncella's career and death, including RadioToday and North West news coverage, together with documented radio history. We have no connection to his family or estate. If anything here is wrong, or if you knew him and would like something added or removed, please contact us and we will act on it.