Tennis On The Radio
Yesterday, I lay in the sun in the garden and listened to the tennis from Wimbledon.
It’s funny, but tennis is rather a good sport to listen to, rather than watch.
But then, we have a very proud heritage of listening to tennis on the radio, as many times, I’ve heard the superb commentary from the great Max Robertson, perhaps in a car or whilst working in the garden or on my car. Read the Wikipedia entry about Robertson, as he was a truly great all-round broadcaster.
Tennis on Radio 5, is a bit like Test Match Special, in that it is about sport and chat, with some interesting guests during rain and between action. I remember one memorable interview by John Inverdale of Julian Golding. Inverdale was initially surprised that Golding, a black Olympic sprinter was at Wimbledon. Golding said that he had been invited by the LTA, as he was encouraging youngsters in London to take part in sport. Golding disclosed that he had been a promising tennis player, but had found the life very lonely, when travelling to overseas tournaments. So he had turned to his other sporting asset, athletics, mainly because of the cameraderie of his fwllow athletes. When we moan about the lack of decent tennis players in the UK, I hope we take advice from Golding.
But why is it that some sports, like boxing, cricket, horse racing, tennis and football work on the radio and others like rugby don’t?
I suspect that a sport which allows time for chat works. After all, some of the best BBC sports broadcasts are the racing ones from the Cheltenham Festival. Radio allows the characters to shine through.
But then as that late great broadcaster; Brian Redhead once said, if radio had been been invented after television, radio would be the dominant medium.
Fed Up with CNN
I must admit that CNN is very repetitive.If I’ve seen their piece on whaling once, I’ve seen it ten times.
I can get BBC 5 Live on the computer, but the time difference makes getting sensible stuff difficult.
And then there are the inane and repetitive adverts.
Listening to 5 Live
It’s so much better than CNN.
A Friend Across the Ether
i’m lying in bed listening to BBC radio 5 live through the internet. I hope the BBC realises how important a good worldwide feed of the their internet radio staitons is to people like me.
Stuart Hall
There have been some wonderful masters of the English language, who have not trod the boards or written great books, but have entertained us doing sports reports on the radio.
I remember virtually a whole lifetime listening to those great broadcasters, John Arlott, EW Swanton, Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld and others on the BBC’s Test Match Special. Sadly, for whatever reason the use of the more eccentric commentators seems to be on the wane.
I listen to and watch a lot of football on both radio and television and none of the live commentators have either the irreverence or command of the language of say an Arlott or a Johnston. But when it comes to match summaries, there are one or two, who uphold the tradition.
Years ago, Geoffrey Green would enchant everybody with his reports on Sports Report on the BBC every Saturday. He would always do an absolutely wonderful two minutes on the match he had watched. This is the conclusion in this entry in Wikipedia.
It is safe to say that like the FA Cup, Geoffrey Green set the bonfire of football writing alight with his rhapsodic flow of words that were never used before to describe the simple yet beautiful game of football. His career paralleled the rise of football from a restricted and disjointed following in most countries until the arrival of the World Cup and European Cup, to being firmly entrenched as the king of games with such a popularity to rival even the Olympics. English football and its unique history will always remain secure in the knowledge that Geoffrey Green has cached the folklore of its incipient era.
He probably had more effect on my newspaper reading habits, as I still buy The Times, which I first bought to read his football reports, such was their prose. I can remember reading his report of the League Cup Final where Swindon beat Arsenal in the League Cup Final. It’s one of his many classics.
Today we have no Geoffrey Greens on the radio, but we do have Stuart Hall reporting from the School of Science (Everton) and the Theatre of Base Comedy (Manchester City) amongst others. His use of language is to say the least different!
What prompted this entry, is that on Christmas Day, the much-loved Hall is eighty. He was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 this week and gave us all this memorable quote.
Life is a long joke. You don’t get the punchline until you’re six feet under.
We need more Halls, Greens, Arlotts, Johnstons and Blofelds, but I doubt we’ll see their ilk in the future.
The Petticoat Line
The Petticoat Line was a four woman quiz show/discussion program on BBC Radio many years ago. You can’t find many references to it on the Internet, but I remember listening sometimes as it was funny and put different slants on various topics. Panelists included the usual suspects, like Isobel Barnett and Anona Winn.
I think in the end it was discarded because it really wasn’t done thing to have an all-woman show. It was just too patronising for some.
But last night as I was driving back from Manchester and there was a sports discussion program on Radio 5, led by Eleanor Oldroyd. And guess what it was called Ladies’ Night.
Everything goes full circle. I enjoyed it too.
The Anonymous Widower 