Classic After-Dinner Sports Tales
Compiled by
Jonathan Rice
Table of Contents
By Mike Gatting President of The Lord’s Taverners
Becoming well known as a sportsman has many advantages. When you play well, or your team wins something, people will stop you in the street to say, ‘Well done’, or give you the thumbs up or their half of a high five as they drive by. Sometimes their appreciation will be more practical, as with the Northamptonshire butcher who gave David Steele a lamb chop (or was it pork?) for every one of the 365 Test runs he scored against the Australians in 1975. Nobody ever offered me anything as good as that.
And then there’s the hero worship. I’m not saying that sportsmen are worthy of the treatment we get from the fans, but not many people outside films or rock and roll get to have their photos stuck up on teenage bedroom walls, especially with my basic shape and looks. All the same, it’s great to know that there’s a whole lot of people out there who have put their faith in you, and believe you can score those runs, that goal, that try or hole that putt. It makes you believe that little bit more in yourself.
But there is, inevitably, a downside to fame. Everybody who becomes a ‘personality’ seems to be expected to give speeches at business gatherings, at supermarket openings or, most frequently, after dinners where, as the late Willie Rushton used to say, it was an achievement to be able to stand up, let alone speak. Politicians and actors have the advantage over sportsmen here, because speaking is their livelihood: that’s how they make their money. But for sportsmen and women, it can be much more frightening. After all, the most we speak in public while we are actually earning our living is to shout, ‘Howzat!’ or ‘Oi, ref!’, which is not too difficult to learn to say without forgetting the words or dropping the sheet of paper they were written on.
Some people are good at speaking in public – people like Richie Benaud, Henry Cooper, Fred Trueman and JPR Williams, all of whom feature in this book – but most of us have to learn the hard way. We’ve all had the experience of telling the wrong joke to the wrong audience, or of having to follow another speaker who has turned out to be so good that there is no chance that any of the diners will want to listen to our feeble effort – assuming that is, they haven’t got up to go to the loo at the end of his speech.
Fortunately, sport is a rich goldmine of funny stories and almost everybody has got at least one to tell. Many of them have found their way into this book. I suppose it’s because sportsmen and women at the top of their sports are so very good at what they do that any failure, any lapse in the perfection of their play, gives those who could never hope to be that good a chance to realise that even a Muhammad Ali, a Garry Sobers or a Bobby Charlton is still a human being. And it helps if you can laugh at yourself, whatever you do in life. A sense of humour is probably more important in sport than in most other professions. The life can be so unreal sometimes that we all need a way of keeping our feet on the ground.
This book has been put together in aid of The Lord’s Taverners, the charity that is also a club, whose aim is ‘to give young people, particularly those with special needs, a sporting chance’. We raise money in all sorts of ways and for various causes: to provide funds for youth cricket; to purchase minibuses to provide transportation to recreational and sporting activities for disabled young people; to provide sports wheelchairs for young people; and to finance specialised equipment for young people with special needs. Events are held all around the country throughout the year, raising about £2 million each year to help young people have greater access to sport.
The charity has been in existence since 1950, when it was formed by a group of actors who used to enjoy the cricket from outside the old Lord’s Tavern, and thought it would be good to give something back to the game that had given them so much pleasure. You will see from the list of contributors how close the links are between cricket and acting: there’s Donald Sinden, William Franklyn, Burt Kwouk, Wendy Richard and June Whitfield to name but some, and our first President, Sir John Mills, is still involved with the charity. It is a huge thrill to be the President in 2004, following in such exalted footsteps.
I hope you enjoy this book. We very much appreciate the time and trouble a whole lot of well-known and busy people took to help us put it together. And next time I have to stand up to speak to a crowd of eager or inebriated people, I will have a whole hoard of new stories to make use of.
Mike Gatting
2004