I Should Have Been at Work. Des Lynam

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СКАЧАТЬ that Angus would be making the decisions and was the man to work to. I knew I had hit it off with him because I made him laugh, not the easiest of tasks. Bob Burrows told me later that Angus thought he might make something of me. He told Burrows he had found a new Sports Report presenter. Having been a military man, he had also liked the fact that I was neatly dressed and my shoes were polished. Angus was to change my life.

      In a short space of time, I had gone from being an insurance inspector, to a freelance local radio broadcaster, to a member of the staff in national broadcasting at the BBC on a starting salary of £2,030 per annum.

      I could not have been happier. Three other hopefuls were appointed with me: Chris Martin-Jenkins, the cricket writer and Test Match Special commentator; Bill Hamilton, who went on to be a television news man; and Dick Scales, who left broadcasting after a few years for jobs with Coca-Cola, Adidas and other businesses connected with sport. Dick and I hit it off straight away. He had a great sense of humour, an eye for the ladies, and was tough as you like – he had spent a few years in the military police before entering journalism. In fact, all of us new boys became good friends. Among those already in the department were Peter Jones, the then presenter of Sports Report and an outstanding football commentator; Bryon Butler, a man with a deep baritone voice and a clever wordsmith; and John Motson, who was younger than all of us.

      After my first morning in the department I went off to lunch with Roger McDonald, one of my new colleagues, in the BBC canteen on the top floor at Broadcasting House. After lunch we got separated and I made my way down in the lift back to the office. I duly sat at the desk I thought I had left an hour or so before. After a while a chap came over to me and asked if he could help in any way.

      ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m just waiting to see how the afternoon sports desk is put together.’

      ‘Then perhaps you should go down one more floor,’ he said. ‘That’s where the sports department lives. At the moment you’re in documentary features.’

      Wrong floor. Idiot.

      After a couple of days I was asked to read the racing results live on air. Although I had done a good amount of far more difficult tasks in local radio, I was actually quite nervous imagining the enormity of the national audience at 6.45 in the evening.

      Soon I was writing and presenting the fifteen-minute sports desk on some evenings, or else I was producing the programme, putting the recorded or live pieces together, briefing whoever was the presenter of the day, and getting the timing spot on so as not to trample all over the news at 7 o’clock. I was also occasionally producing the department’s half-hour weekly sports programme for the World Service called Sports Review. I found the voice work much easier than the production and gradually that part of my role fell into the hands of others who were more adept at it.

      Just after I joined the department Angus told us that a new slot was to be our responsibility. The Today programme, the early morning current affairs show on Radio 4, was about to introduce a sports section that would go out live twice every morning – it is still part of the programme today. It would entail a reporter from Angus’ department coming in the night before to put the broadcasts together and then present them live the following morning. If you could grab a few hours sleep, a room was provided at the Langham Building, across the road from Broadcasting House.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ