I Should Have Been at Work

But my thoughts about the future, and how I might escape from my routine, slipped way down my list of priorities one day in early 1968. My mother, who had scarcely had a day’s illness in her life, suddenly suffered a brain haemorrhage and was rushed to hospital, where she was operated on. The prognosis was not good. If she made any recovery at all, she would almost certainly have been severely disabled. Day after day for a month, my Dad and I, often with my wife Susan, journeyed the thirty or so miles there and back to visit her in hospital. Day after day we would imagine improvements in her condition: ‘I’m sure I saw a flicker of a smile’ – ‘I thought she moved her fingers ever so slightly’. We were trying desperately to give each other some comfort, some hope. After a month my darling mother passed away at the tragically early age of fifty-four. She had been my rock. I loved her very dearly. She was a sensible, funny and charming woman. A looker in her day who rode motorcycles when young and was the life and soul of any party. And dance! How she loved to dance, twirling round the floor on a fine pair of legs. She was the youngest of eight children, but the first to die apart from a brother who had suffered from tuberculosis before the War. Her other brothers and sisters lived on to healthy old age. I and my father were distraught. I had never seen my Dad cry before. We wept together and could find no consolation. I thought my life had come to an end too. I had recently discovered W. H. Auden’s poem ‘Funeral Blues’, made more famous years later in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. At the time, I certainly felt as though the clocks had all been stopped. Nothing else would worry me ever again. Nothing could be this bad. We hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. I worried that she was going into the unknown without our support. She would be scared. I wouldn’t, at that stage, have minded paving the way for her.

As the weeks went by, I was even surer that security didn’t matter a tinker’s cuss. I needed to grab life by the throat and wring some meaning out of it. I felt I could write something, but what? I had been unable to get my break into journalism, and as time went by the chances were becoming slimmer. Why would any paper take on someone who worked in insurance? I had offered the odd article to the local papers and to football magazines. Sport was my interest, so I contacted a few sportsmen and asked if I could write a profile on them, without being able to guarantee that the article would ever see the light of day.

Amazingly, several agreed. Even more amazingly, one or two were published.

Seeing my by-line in print had given me a thrill and I began to imagine that sooner or later I would get my break.

And it came, not from print journalism, but from radio.

In those days, to get into the BBC was well-nigh impossible, unless you had either exemplary qualifications or connections. I had neither and it hadn’t even occurred to me to try to breach the citadel at Broadcasting House.

But then I saw a notice in the local paper that the BBC was opening up local stations around the country and that one of the first would be Radio Brighton. It registered with me and a little later, when the station was under way, they began advertising for people who might have an interest in broadcasting to get in touch. I didn’t know anything about broadcasting but I rang them up and, to my utter astonishment, I was invited to come and have a look at the station and try my hand, or rather my voice, in front of the microphone.

A gentleman called David Waine, who was probably no older than me but whose face I recognised from regional television, gave me what transpired to be my audition. Years later, David was to become a very senior figure at the BBC but, at this time, he had given up his television job to embark on a new radio adventure.

‘You have a good voice,’ he said. ‘Very fluent.’ He told me that he would get in touch. He knew of my interest in sport.

I now began to think that my dear mother was pulling some strings for me. The feeling was strong. I was gaining some confidence from the thought, or the fantasy, whichever it was, that I was throwing off my shackles of self-doubt, of concern for the future. Not long after, I found myself in the studio on a Saturday afternoon reading football results and other sports news. It was great fun, entirely unpaid.

In no time at all, under the experienced (he had been in the business for weeks) eye of an amiable chap called John Henty, I was presenting the Saturday night sports desk. Soon I was writing a weekly review of the local press, which involved arriving at the studio at 6.30 in the morning; reading through the three local weekly papers and writing, by hand, a three-minute piece to be voiced live just after the 8 a.m. news bulletin. I was amazed that I could do it at all; but I was also apparently making it interesting and funny and getting a terrific response. The local newspaper editors began paying attention to it, occasionally complaining if they thought I was being harsh on them. I was using their copy for flights of fancy into areas that had little to do with the content in their papers. In short, I was using them as an excuse to write a weekly radio essay. Then I branched into comedy – or at least I and my writing partners thought it was comedy.

Together with Ivan Howlett, still a radio broadcaster, the aforementioned John Henty, Peter Vincent (who went on to be a top comedy writer for The Two Ronnies and others), and a girl singer called Amaryllis, I began putting together and performing in a Sunday half-hour show called How Lunchtime It Is – there was a TV series called How Late It Is that had prompted the idea for the title.

I could do passable imitations of the two leading politicians of the time, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Actually they were impersonations of Mike Yarwood doing Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, and ‘they’ appeared in every show. Incidentally, years later I was invited to lunch at Edward Heath’s majestic home in Salisbury. On entering, Ted wondered if I ‘could abide champagne’ – a curious way of posing the question, but I answered ‘Yes, and plenty of it.’ I asked him who had been the most impressive leader he had met down the years. Unhesitatingly, he said, ‘Mao-Tse-Tung.’ ‘But he was a mass murderer,’ I ventured. ‘You’re typically falling into the trap of misunderstanding his position,’ said Ted, an acknowledged Sinophile.

I loved being involved in How Lunchtime It Is. We went into the studio on Sunday mornings to record our offerings, having roped our friends in to be the audience. They laughed more at our attempts at being satirists than at the quality of the content, but these were some of the happiest days of my life. I was becoming fulfilled at last. I was a broadcaster. Unpaid, but I was a broadcaster. My hobby was now interfering with my career.

So, naturally enough, I gave up my career.

Sue and I had rented a small terraced house owned by her father, a local funeral director. He knew I was not overly enthusiastic about my job in insurance and one day he had sat me down and offered me a junior partnership in his business. I think he was mostly thinking about his daughter’s future quality of life, but it was a very generous offer to make. But ‘Des the Funeral Director’ was never going to be, and I politely refused, with much gratitude for his consideration.

Soon after this, I bought my first house for £3,750 (the vast majority of it paid for by mortgage). For that I got a four-bedroom Victorian terraced property with a garden in an old but decent part of town. My move into insurance had been yet another career change, but it was only postponing the inevitable and the shocking death of my mother made me realise that there was no longer anything left to lose. Her passing spurred me on to leave the conventions of a nine-to-five profession. I had been helped in my decision by a veteran local journalist and friend, Jack Arlidge. ‘Fortune favours the brave, Des,’ he had said to me. And so it seemed that everything was telling me to pursue my dream of becoming a journalist.

I discussed it with Sue. I wanted to give up the security of my job, my company car, my preferential mortgage deal and my pension rights, not to mention my income, for a tilt at the windmill of broadcasting. Sue, good girl that she was, was all for it. ‘Time to have a go,’ she said.

It was a brilliant response, and so I gave in my notice, bought a twelve-year-old Volkswagen Beetle from my new colleague, John Henty, for £140 and turned up each day at my new job at Radio Brighton. I got paid per item in guineas. After a few months, my income had slumped to about a tenth of what it had been. Sue was now paying most of the bills from her job as a librarian.

Soon I was expecting reasonable broadcasting standards of myself and others around me. One day, a colleague, fed up with my criticism of the poor quality of a sports item, turned on me: ‘Who do you bloody well think you are, David Coleman?’ he bellowed. ‘No, but the listeners have a right to expect professionalism from any broadcaster they have tuned in to hear or watch,’ I pompously replied. I was crossed off this chap’s Christmas card list straight away, but I knew I was right. What I could not have envisaged was that one day I would take over from David Coleman as the main presenter of Grandstand, a decision about which he was none too pleased.

In the early Eighties I began sharing the programme with Coleman. His period on the show coincided with most of the major events, like the Five Nations Rugby Championship (as it then was), the Grand National and the FA Cup Final. Then I would take over, allowing him to commentate on the athletics championships, his speciality. I had mentioned once or twice that I wouldn’t mind trying one or two of the major outside broadcast events. I had made no firm requests or stipulations. However, after the 1984 Olympics, it was decided that I should be the number one presenter. Coleman remained the athletics commentator and presented A Question of Sport.

But all that was a long time in the future. For the time being I was happy just simply being in local radio. After a couple of months I had managed to get one or two reports sent up to the network in London and they had been well received. Soon after that, I spotted an advert in the BBC in-house magazine. The sports department in London were seeking ‘Sports News Assistants’. Despite my limited experience, I applied. It would be the last job I ever applied for at the BBC.

3 (#ulink_199a4502-5aa1-51ff-8128-1187630ac6e3)

TAKING THE MIKE (#ulink_199a4502-5aa1-51ff-8128-1187630ac6e3)

It was one morning in the late autumn of 1969 that I caught the train from Brighton to Victoria Station in London, hopped on the tube to Oxford Circus, and duly presented myself at the reception desk at Broadcasting House as requested. I was excited and nervous. I sensed that a few very important hours lay ahead.

Somebody took me up the three floors to the offices of the radio sports news department, and there I was introduced to a slim dapper man with a thin moustache and slicked-back grey hair. I thought he was pretty old. He was about fifty-eight years of age. He greeted me with a firm handshake and a smile.

‘So you want to come and join the big boys,’ he said. His speech pattern and Scots accent seemed to produce a slight menace in the words as he said them. He was Angus McKay, a legend in BBC Radio. Shortly after the Second World War he had begun a programme called Sports Report, the five o’clock show that is still going today on Radio 5 Live and which is the longest running sports programme in the world. Its familiar signature tune, ‘Out of the Blue’, remains to this day as well. Angus had started with Raymond Glendenning, the most famous sports commentator of his day before television got into its stride, as his presenter, but soon found a young Irishman with a mid-Atlantic style of speech whom he would mould into a star. That young man was Eamonn Andrews, who of course went on to television fame with This is Your Life.

I noticed that Angus worked from an easy chair and in front of him was just a low coffee table. I learned later that he didn’t like desks. ‘If you have a desk, people put bits of paper on it,’ he would say. For Angus, everything was dealt with there and then.

He had heard one or two of my reports from Radio Brighton and apparently thought that my voice was OK and that if he put me through my paces I might make the grade. ‘First though,’ he said, ‘you’re a bit old to join the department [I was just twenty-seven]. We normally catch them younger. I want to make sure you know your sport, so we have worked out a little quiz for you.’

I was put in the hands of his number two, Vincent Duggelby, and asked to fill in the answers to a list of thirty-six sports questions. I got thirty-five right. I must have been a bit of an anorak. Anyway, things went pretty well and I was allowed to apply formally for one of the vacancies as a sports news assistant. The job might involve some broadcasting or production work or writing, or most likely all three. Some weeks went by before I was back at Broadcasting House for a voice test conducted by Bob Burrows, who in due course would take over as boss of the radio sports news department. I passed that test as well, and now came the appointments board. There were four people on the board, but I had figured out that Angus would be making the decisions and was the man to work to. I knew I had hit it off with him because I made him laugh, not the easiest of tasks. Bob Burrows told me later that Angus thought he might make something of me. He told Burrows he had found a new Sports Report presenter. Having been a military man, he had also liked the fact that I was neatly dressed and my shoes were polished. Angus was to change my life.

In a short space of time, I had gone from being an insurance inspector, to a freelance local radio broadcaster, to a member of the staff in national broadcasting at the BBC on a starting salary of £2,030 per annum.

I could not have been happier. Three other hopefuls were appointed with me: Chris Martin-Jenkins, the cricket writer and Test Match Special commentator; Bill Hamilton, who went on to be a television news man; and Dick Scales, who left broadcasting after a few years for jobs with Coca-Cola, Adidas and other businesses connected with sport. Dick and I hit it off straight away. He had a great sense of humour, an eye for the ladies, and was tough as you like – he had spent a few years in the military police before entering journalism. In fact, all of us new boys became good friends. Among those already in the department were Peter Jones, the then presenter of Sports Report and an outstanding football commentator; Bryon Butler, a man with a deep baritone voice and a clever wordsmith; and John Motson, who was younger than all of us.

After my first morning in the department I went off to lunch with Roger McDonald, one of my new colleagues, in the BBC canteen on the top floor at Broadcasting House. After lunch we got separated and I made my way down in the lift back to the office. I duly sat at the desk I thought I had left an hour or so before. After a while a chap came over to me and asked if he could help in any way.

‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m just waiting to see how the afternoon sports desk is put together.’

‘Then perhaps you should go down one more floor,’ he said. ‘That’s where the sports department lives. At the moment you’re in documentary features.’

Wrong floor. Idiot.

After a couple of days I was asked to read the racing results live on air. Although I had done a good amount of far more difficult tasks in local radio, I was actually quite nervous imagining the enormity of the national audience at 6.45 in the evening.

Soon I was writing and presenting the fifteen-minute sports desk on some evenings, or else I was producing the programme, putting the recorded or live pieces together, briefing whoever was the presenter of the day, and getting the timing spot on so as not to trample all over the news at 7 o’clock. I was also occasionally producing the department’s half-hour weekly sports programme for the World Service called Sports Review. I found the voice work much easier than the production and gradually that part of my role fell into the hands of others who were more adept at it.

Just after I joined the department Angus told us that a new slot was to be our responsibility. The Today programme, the early morning current affairs show on Radio 4, was about to introduce a sports section that would go out live twice every morning – it is still part of the programme today. It would entail a reporter from Angus’ department coming in the night before to put the broadcasts together and then present them live the following morning. If you could grab a few hours sleep, a room was provided at the Langham Building, across the road from Broadcasting House.

Angus had selected me to do the very first one. ‘Vitally important you get it right, old son,’ he said. ‘Big audience. Don’t let me down.’

So on Grand National day 1970, the late Jack de Manio linked over to yours truly to look ahead to the nation’s big race.

After my second broadcast of that morning, Angus telephoned me.

‘An outstanding start,’ he said. ‘You have maintained the reputation of my department as top-notch.’ I thought my chest would burst with pride.

A few months later, after another early morning broadcast, Angus phoned me again. ‘I want you in my office in an hour,’ he said. ‘And you’d better have a very good reason for me not to sack you.’

I had transgressed simply by using in one of my pieces a journalist who was on Angus’ ‘black list’. Apparently he had warned me never to use this individual. I had either forgotten or not listened properly, and Angus was fuming with anger that this person should have made his way, at my invitation, on to one of ‘his’ programmes. After wiping the floor with me, he forgave this mortal sin of mine and I continued to be one of his boys. Angus put the fear of God into all of us who worked for him; but he disciplined us, taught us how to be proper broadcasters, and we had the utmost respect for him.

One of the problems with grabbing a few hours’ sleep in the Langham was that you had to remember to wake up. It was the job of the security man to call you at the appropriate time, but not all of them were reliable. One morning there was no call and I woke up at 7.15 – ten minutes before I was due to broadcast. I threw on a shirt and trousers, dashed across the road to Broadcasting House, grabbed my unfinished script from the sports room, and ran down the corridor to the Today studio.

‘Ah, here he comes’, said the presenter. ‘Desmond Lynam with the sports news.’ I could hardly breathe. I read my first line or two, stopped, and tried to catch my breath. ‘What’s the matter?’ enquired the presenter. ‘Well, I’ve just come from the bedroom,’ I replied.

The other problem for some staying at the Langham was the ghost. Eminent broadcasters like the late Ray Moore and James Alexander Gordon would not stay in a certain room there for all the money in the world. The story went that an old actor-manager had thrown himself from the window of this room when the Langham had been a hotel before the war (it has now reverted to being a five-star hotel). I stayed in the said room several times and had no spiritual experiences, but Ray and James were adamant that they had seen the ghost and that it had frightened them out of their wits.

In amongst all of this, in August of that year, my son Patrick was born. My wife Sue had an easy and uneventful pregnancy and had looked her most beautiful during this time. What a year we were having! New career, new baby, it was all going too swimmingly.

After just a few months, and by the time the football season was getting under way again, Angus decided I was ready to have a go at presenting Sports Report. Peter Jones, who wanted to spend more of his time commentating, would be a hard act to follow. He had a wonderful lilting voice, with just a slight trace of his Welshness, and had considerable style on air. Also, his pedigree was light years better than mine. He was a Cambridge graduate, a soccer blue, a fluent linguist in French and Spanish, and hugely literate. Robert Hudson, the Head of Outside Broadcasts and a rather dour traditionalist, was very much against my quick promotion. He felt I did not have the appropriate experience. He was right, but Angus saw my potential and was all for throwing me in at the deep end. Angus won the day and I did a few programmes not too badly, after one of which, Angus told me that I had appeared disingenuous during one interview. I had to look the word up.