I was posted to the Isle of Wight to be the correspondent there, running the office in Newport where I produced my radio and TV reports for BBC South. On the Island, getting the stories was all about mixing with as many people as possible – at the quaint, quirky pubs, at the supermarket, or on the bus. The more people I talked to, the more stories I would hear about. The Isle of Wight had so many tales to tell, and it was here that I had my first introduction to the more bizarre stories that now I love telling. There were the escaped prairie gods tunnelling under farmers’ fields, the shire horse that drank at its local pub, and come to think of it, there was a fox that liked a pint in Ventnor as well. There he was sat on the bar stool, sipping a pint of real ale. I am sure there was a broadsheet newspaper and packet of pork scratchings as well.
What I realised manning that office, day in, day out, was how important the BBC is to people at a local level. I was front of house, their first port of call, and people would come in to talk about all sorts of television and radio matters, or sometimes just to share their problems. There was one elderly gentleman who always announced his arrival with raucous, smoke-grated laughter. Did I want to meet his friends, Barbara and Ken, who couldn’t agree about the 1992 general election? Barbara was a conservative, but Ken was a liberal democrat. It was only later that I discovered they were both snakes. I saw from my little window on the world the company that BBC local tv and radio provide people. They feel it belongs to them.
Having covered news on the Isle of Wight and then in Reading for BBC South, my natural interest in sport was calling, so I joined the BBC’s sport department. This eventually led me to joining the BBC News channel and going to the World Cup in France in 1998 and the Athens Olympics in 2004.
But my passion went beyond just being a spectator and reporting on what was happening. My 180-mile marathon from Harrogate to Ashwell had shown me what an average person could achieve with a bit of training. I thought that if we could push the boundaries of people’s self belief and get more involved, we would bring a whole new audience into the sporting family.
The BBC and in particular Breakfast has given me the creative freedom to explore the world beyond mainstream sport. Since 2006 as well as presenting sport bulletins on BBC Breakfast, the BBC News channel, and BBC World, I have been on a mission to broaden the audience and to entice in viewers who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves to be sports fans. So each week I profile a different sport or activity which doesn’t normally get much exposure and which sometimes people won’t have even heard of. Or, I might also take a different look at a high-profile sporting event or do a feature showing another side of a well-known sports star. Or sometimes it’s a report on a new initiative by a mainstream sport to get more people involved.
I have lost count of the number of people who have said ‘I didn’t used to watch the sport, I would go and make a cup of tea, but now I wait for your feature to come on’. Imagine the feeling I had when I got a letter from Susan Tilford, received over a year after I did a feature on Horse Trek – orienteering on horseback. She wrote: ‘I was smitten by a thunderbolt! You opened a whole new world to us. It has been fun and exciting, and educational, a tremendous confidence-booster. This is such a wonderful, no-pressure sport, but then at the end of last year, I decided it was high time for me to take on a real challenge, and seriously compete. I’m 64, and my pony is 27. I cannot find words to adequately express my appreciation for doing this feature.’
It makes every ounce of effort worthwhile. I do believe the Saturday features have a very important role. It’s not just getting people more active, joining in and having a go; it’s about getting people playing. The word ‘play’ is sometimes tarred with the notion that you are not taking a sport seriously. Yet all sport begins with play, with the time and space to experiment and make mistakes, to do something just for fun.
There are leading academics who believe that play has been schooled out of children, and that as a result they not interacting with others and stretching their imaginations as they used to. Times have changed. Whether it’s because of more traffic on the roads, the perception that our streets are now not as safe, or due to the rise in computer games and hand consoles, play has been in decline over the last generation.
So on Saturday mornings, I have been trying to get people playing again, trying something new for themselves. Some are more extreme for the adrenalin seekers, but others are simply activities that get people of all ages interacting together. What’s more, if Bushell can do it, then nearly all of us can. The features have opened doors for me and the programme as well, with many top sportsmen and women telling me they like taking part because it brings variety to their training – or because they like seeing a sports reporter suffer! More importantly, though, many of the professionals like giving something back.
It’s been a wonderful seven-year journey, and I am so grateful to the BBC, to the Saturday Breakfast team – including for a long time Julia Barry and Katie McDougall – for running with the idea and helping me broaden the sporting spectrum. I am also grateful to sports news editors, like Nick Dickson and Richard Burgess, and to David Kermode and Alison Ford on Breakfast, for giving me the space, time and freedom to continue this mission: to carry on this campaign to get play, back into the heart of our communities, and our society.
Over the last seven years the number of school sports on offer to students has more than doubled, and beyond the school gates the opportunities to go out there to find the sport for you, have never been greater.
By increasing the number of people participating in sport, we might well find the next Dame Kelly Holmes, but above all else it’s not about making the first team, it’s about enriching your lives with the enormous benefits taking part brings, in physical, mental and social development. So even if it’s worm charming, don’t knock it, because like any activity, it will have changed some people’s lives, and this book is about finding the sport that can do it for you.
Before you get stuck into this book, test your knowledge of some of the lesser known sports out there. Get everyone in the room to put up their hands. Then read out the various sports or spoofs below. If people think they are genuine activities, it’s hands on heads. If they think it’s completely made up, it’s hands on behinds. Those who guess correctly stay in the game. The winner is the last person standing. The record when I have tested this out in the past has been 15 – no one in my experience has ever got past that point. Good luck and no cheating!
1: Horse-boarding
2: Oofball
3: Stool heron
4: Aunt Sally
5: Worm grunting
6: Husband dragging
7: Haggle ball
8: Sid Heslop ‘in the net’
9: Rolf
10: Nurdling
11: Pole climbing
12: Floorball
13: Bat and ball
14: Singobat
15: Tambournelli
16: Rabbit showjumping
17: Udder-ball
18: Finger jousting
19: Shin kicking
20: Mantis Secto
(ANSWERS: 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19 are organised sports and activities with governing bodies and rules. Numbers 2, 3, 7, 8, 14, 17 and 20 are as far as I know completely made up)
HOW IT ALL STARTED – A SHAGGY DOG STORY