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.
Normally in broadcasting, the editor will be in the gallery or booth outside the actual studio. This wouldn’t do for Angus, who insisted on sitting next to his presenter and whispering instructions in his ear, often while the presenter was talking to the nation. Instruction through a talkback system is commonplace in broadcasting and it becomes second nature to react while still speaking, but it was most disconcerting to have Angus’ lips in contact with your earhole, and if you didn’t react immediately to his instruction, for the very valid reason that you couldn’t actually hear it, he would become apoplectic with rage.
Before one such programme, he and I were sitting in the office putting the final touches to the script for the evening show. At the time, a well-known Daily Mail journalist called J. L. (‘Jim’) Manning used to come in to the show on Saturday nights and do his ‘final word’ piece. Jim was quite a contentious individual and his three minutes were worth listening to.
The phone rang and it was for Angus. I obviously only heard his end of the conversation, the abridged version of which went like this.
‘Hello, Amy [Manning’s wife]. Oh no. A heart attack. In the small hours. Intensive care. Our love goes out to you, Amy. We’ll be thinking of Jim. Call you later.’
Then Angus turned to his number two, Bob Burrows. ‘Bob,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a problem. Manning’s fucking let us down.’
A couple of years after I joined the department, a young Alan Parry came for an interview. If he was lucky enough to get the job, Angus asked him, what did he think his ultimate ambition in broadcasting would be? Alan thought for a moment and, probably struggling for a response, said: ‘I suppose, in the long term, I would like to have a go at television.’ There was a long silence and then much sucking in of air and glances round the room. ‘Don’t you think, Alan, that if television was important Mr Burrows [his assistant] and I would be in television?’
That was Angus: a man with little self-doubt and possessing a consummate belief in his standing in the great world of radio. Alan, of course, has gone on to forge a highly successful career in television.
If I wasn’t doing Sports Report, then I usually presented Sports Session, which went out at 6.30 in the evening on Radio 4. Chris Martin-Jenkins sometimes filled this role as well. One evening, I had finished a stint on Angus’ programme and was listening to ‘Jenko’ doing his bit on Sports Session. It was a half-hour show. At about 6.50 I heard him say, ‘That’s all for this week. Good night.’ We couldn’t believe it. There followed about a minute of nothing, then much shuffling of papers, and then came Jenko’s voice again. ‘I’m afraid that wasn’t the end of Sports Session. And now the rugby.’ One producer had got his timings a bit wrong. We were hysterical with laughter and gave the future much-respected cricket correspondent plenty of stick when he appeared in the office later.
A fairly regular guest on Sports Report at the time was Eric Morecambe who was a director of Luton Town Football Club. I interviewed him several times at their Kenilworth Road ground and once at the BBC Television Centre where he and Ernie Wise were in rehearsals for one of their shows. He always gave his time, no matter how busy he was.
On one occasion I was presenting the programme from London and was talking to him ‘down the line’ during one of Luton’s games.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a penalty. Whey hey!’
‘Tell us about it then,’ I said and Eric proceeded to do a perfect commentary on the build up, the spot kick and the celebrations. It’s a much replayed piece of radio history. Eric was such a huge star at the time, I couldn’t believe how down to earth and how kind he was to this unknown radio reporter.
My first really big adventure with BBC Radio came in the summer of 1972, when I learned that I had been selected for the team to cover the Munich Olympic Games.
Peter Jones had gone out to Germany early to do some preview reports and he phoned me in typically upbeat fashion. ‘When you arrive on Thursday, old son,’ he said, ‘call me straight away. I have fixed up two beauties who are going to join us for dinner.’ I was already greatly excited about going to the Games anyway. Now I had an extra incentive. I was of course married at the time, but I thought a little innocent flirtation would not go amiss.
When I arrived I met Jonesy for a drink and was told that