Hethersett – perhaps still crushed by the death of his mother or father – never returned to Saxon Radio. And they wouldn’t have wanted him anyway. I’d shown my mettle and taken to it like a duck to water. (Or, as former Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew says, ‘like a Dunc to water’, which isn’t that funny but forgivable as Duncan continues to be an inspiration to hairless children nationwide.)50
Sports reporting was a dizzying but exhilarating slog.51 I was spending my Saturday and Sunday afternoons at horse trials, football matches, squash tournaments … I was becoming a familiar voice on radio and, yes, people wanted a piece of me.
I ascended the career ladder like a shaven Jesus ascending to his rightful place in the kingdom of Heaven. I was poached by Radio Broadland (Great Yarmouth), Hereward Radio (Peterborough), Radio Orwell (Ipswich) and eventually Radio Norwich.
There, my brief extended beyond sport to a bi-monthly52 magazine show called Scoutabout, which I took over from amateur DJ and Scout obsessive Peter Flint.
‘Fall in, Troop! Fall in!’ I’d shout into the microphone. And then as the specially commissioned theme music ended with a rom-po-pom-pom, I’d say, ‘Aaaaaaaat ease.’ And the show – a high-spirited hour aimed at Boy Scouts and to a smaller extent Girl Guides – would begin.
It was great, great fun, but my sports reporting was obviously my top priority. As such, I became a valuable and well-known asset to Radio Norwich. The controller there, Bett Snook, was a chain-smoking woman who sounded like a chain-smoking man whose chain smoking had called for an emergency laryngectomy.
She gave me some solid gold advice. ‘Dickie Davies, Barry Davies, Elton Welsby, Jimmy Hill, David Coleman, Tony Gubba, Ron Pickering, Ron Atkinson, Bob Greaves, Stuart Hall, Gerald Sinstadt. What do they have in common?’
‘They’re all sports broadcasters,’ I said. ‘Some more successful53 than others.’54
‘And what’s the difference between them?’ She sat back in her chair, smoking her cigarette using her mouth.
‘Some are more successful55 than others,’56 I repeated.
‘No, more than that. Think about it. They’re different types of sports broadcaster. Some are anchors, others commentators, some are analysts, some are reporters.’
I realised what she was getting at.
‘Alan, it’s all very well being Norwich’s Mr Sport [which I was]. But you’re spreading yourself too thin. Work out what it is in sport you want to be, and then be the best at it.’
So I did. And I was. I became the best sports-interviewer-cum-reporter/anchor on British terrestrial television.
In 1990, I was fortunate enough to see a steward badly hurt at an archery competition. In a funny kind of way – and at first, it was very funny – this single mishap provided the springboard to a career at what was, in my view, the biggest publicly funded broadcasting corporation in the United Kingdom. The BBC.
I’d been extremely reluctant to report on the contest, but had agreed to cover it live as Taverham Archery Club was playing host to the British Archery Championships that year and this was apparently a big deal for Norfolk.
‘Whether you regard it as an ancient art form, a woodland hunting technique or just a big version of darts, this is archery,’ I boomed. ‘And we’ll be following every twang, whoosh and gadoyng of what is shaping up to be a classic British Archery Championships.’
It was sports broadcasting with real panache, that much should be obvious, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. That was until, mid-way through the event, second favourite Chris Curtis accidentally discharged his bow and it issued a rod of arrow into the arm of a female steward. (And for the billionth time, I didn’t accuse Curtis of being drunk, I merely speculated that he might be drunk.)
Suddenly, I was hurled into the middle of a breaking news story. This was live radio and all ears were literally on me.
‘The poor woman’s wailing like a banshee over there and, as concerned officials gather round her to stem the flow of blood and presumably discuss what, if any, rule has been broken, I’ll do my best to describe the scene.
‘Basically, archers are standing round chatting – none of them have approached the stricken victim, but that’s what archers do. If this was in the wild, the archers would stand there high-fiving each other while the carcass was retrieved by a young bushwacker or loyal gun dog.
‘Not that she’s dead. She’s hit in her upper arm, which must come as some relief. If it’d been her neck, it would have been curtains for both her and the rest of the afternoon’s archery action, coming to you live from Taverham.
‘And while the lady steward squeals like an impaled but quiet pig, I can tell you she’s gone into shock – you can see that from here. The colour’s drained from her and she’s all a-quiver. And actually … like “a quiver”, she has an arrow in her.
‘Erm … it’s an unusual sight, certainly. A person lying there with a big rod coming out of them, like a human kebab or – if you prefer – some kind of lady lolly. And a not unattractive lady lolly, I must say. One that I’m sure every man here would dearly like to lick.
‘But that’s not to in any way trivialise what is clearly a distressing situation.
‘Er … St John’s ambulance are nearby. Not doing anything, of course, but I’m not sure they’re trained to administer medical care. They’re to a real paramedic what the Salvation Army is to a special forces soldier. Still, they look smart enough.
‘And the arrow’s out! The arrow is out! It’s been plucked from the woman like a pointy Excalibur. Well done that man …
‘Right. Next to shoot is Mark Allen …’
When I played the tape back to Carol the next morning, she agreed (in an uncharacteristically effusive show of support) that it had been ‘a powerful and moving broadcasting tour de force’.57
And she wasn’t the only one impressed. With my commentary played out on BBC radio news bulletins up and down the land, I was thrust into the national limelight. Suddenly, I was hot property.
And so it was that, six months later, I was included on a round-robin circular memo to BBC reporters, asking for applications to join the team of a new Radio 4 current affairs show. I was a wanted man!
45 Press play on Track 10.
46 Listen to.
47 Biographical shorthand for: alcoholic.
48 I just did a click with my fingers.
49 He explained that this was ‘radio tradition’, and