I Should Have Been at Work. Des Lynam

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      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 the ladies in question would be joining us shortly. A few minutes later I looked up the long staircase adjoining the bar, and one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen was descending in our direction. I nudged Jonesy. ‘Have a look at that,’ I said. ‘Ah, that’s Heidi,’ he said. ‘She’s my partner for the evening.’ Heidi turned out to be the daughter of a baron, twenty-four years of age, and a multi-linguist who would be working as a translator at the Games but who would not have looked out of place in a Miss World competition. Her friend arrived a few minutes later. I used to tell the story afterwards that Jonesy tucked me up and the friend was hideously ugly. In truth she wasn’t a bad-looking girl and we had some fun for a few days before the Games began.

      One day we hired a car so that ‘Marguerite’ could show me a little of the Bavarian countryside and its wonderful castles. I had forgotten to bring my driving licence, so the car had to be hired in her name and she had to be seen driving it away. Only then did she inform me that she had passed her driving test just a few weeks before. Result: first big roundabout, a Munich taxi hit our Ford Taunus amidships. Cue much screaming and yelling in a foreign tongue. Our car now had a mighty dent in it but was drivable and I took over, despite having no valid licence or insurance. The rest of the day went without mishap. In fact it turned out to be idyllic.

      When Dick Scales arrived at the Games, he spent the first few days in Munich moaning about everything. He didn’t like the place, hated the food and had been given an impossible task, etc. Then we went to the Games village and as we entered, a group of female interpreters approached. ‘I think I may get to like it here after all,’ said Scalesy. He certainly did. He married one of them a year or two later and I was his best man.

      The story of the Munich Olympics is well documented. Mary Peters won her marvellous gold medal in what was then the women’s pentathlon. I remember Alan Minter being cheated out of a potential gold medal in the boxing when he was on the receiving end of a dreadful decision in his semi-final; and of course these were the Games of Olga Korbut, who charmed the world with her gymnastics. Then there were the seven swimming gold medals of Mark Spitz. But, most of all, the Munich Games will be remembered for the tragic killing of several members of the Israeli team by terrorists.

      On the morning it happened I found myself the reporter on duty. In the course of that day I became a news correspondent, answering the questions of London-based presenters on the Today programme and World at One. Did I think the Black September movement was responsible? I was being asked by William Hardcastle, doyen of radio news presenters. It could have been the Green October movement for all I knew, but I waffled my way through and came to realise very quickly that it was more important to sound fluent than to produce any real facts. To this day I never put too much weight on those incessant two-ways by which television news programmes are mesmerised.

      When I returned from the Games I was hauled before the Head of BBC Radio News. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you handled the terrorist story pretty well in Munich. I think you should stop messing about with sport and join the news team as a reporter. In a couple of years we’ll make you a correspondent and you’ll be off round the world covering proper stories.’

      ‘Like wars?’ I asked.

      ‘Well, that might be part of it,’ he said.

      ‘Thank you for the compliment,’ I said. ‘But I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing.’

      ‘I think you’re making a mistake,’ he said. In the ensuing years, not for one moment have I ever thought he was correct.

      Twenty-five years later I returned to Munich for a television programme and reported from the very apartment where the tragedy had taken place. It all came back and I shuddered at both the memory and at the rapid passage of time.

      I telephoned home fairly regularly from the Games but there was one period lasting about a week when my home phone was not being answered. Whenever I rang, at whatever time of the day, there was no reply. This was worrying. I telephoned my wife’s parents. What was going on, I wondered? I was told that Susan was just taking a little break and that they were looking after Patrick. This was most odd. Why had I not been told about this? When I got home I subsequently learned СКАЧАТЬ