Henry Blofeld

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this edition of Desert Island Discs. Whilst we're off air over the summer, we're sharing some of the gems from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:13

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:35

My Castaway this week is a cricket commentator. He should have been playing it rather than writing and talking about it, but an accident at the age of seventeen stopped all that. His family found him a good job in the city, but it bored him rigid, and he turned to sports reporting. He's been a regular contributor to Test Match Special on Radio 3 for more than 30 years. He's written for most newspapers about the game and published more than a dozen books on the subject. In all that time, he's been an itinerant freelance, lord of all he surveys, a unique mixture of the well-connected and the sort of one-off that goes naturally with cricket. When I think about it, he says, much of my life has been as close to the Bertie Worcester experience as I can get. He is Henry Blofeldt, commonly known as Blowers. The Worcester experience one would define then, Henry, as what, sort of lurching about from crisis to crisis.

Henry Blofeld1:25

So, absolutely, and finding crises where they don't exist, too.

Presenter1:29

I'm enjoying it all huge.

Henry Blofeld1:30

Oh, I think so, because I I've always believed you've got to live in the present. There's no point in looking at the past, you can do nothing about it. And you can't do much about the future either. At least I've never been able to do much about the future. But, you know, one way or another, I think I've been jolly lucky. But I have had one or two crises. I mean, I busted under a bus, as it was, when I was seventeen, and I had a sort of heart thing a few years ago where I died eight times one morning or something. And one one got over.

Presenter1:53

And the last rites read to you and the other one.

Henry Blofeld1:54

Oh, by my by my brother by my brother-in-law, who got rather rather rather frisky with the oil and I almost drowned me in it, I think.

Presenter2:03

But what all of that means is that that cricket has been a kind of natural fit for you, as I was trying to say in that introduction really, that that it's a sort of gentlemanly game. It's something that requires decorum and all those things. It just suited you down to the ground.

Henry Blofeld2:17

Well, I was passionate about cricket, I suppose at about the age of seven or eight, and at my prep my private school at Sunningdale in Berkshire. And Miss Paterson, who was to bowl underarm, I remember she probably taught me at the the start of my interest in cricket. I watched a Test match at Lourdes in 1948 and saw Don Bradman play cricket. And it got into me, and I was then lucky and found I could play it quite well. And I played it very seriously, and I mean, I jolly well was going to try and get as far as I could. Then I had this silly accident, and I played a bit of cricket after that, but I wasn't any good.

Presenter2:46

I want to ask you about the silly accident, but just just tell me about what you bring to the wireless comment. I I use the wireless advisedly because I mean I think that's how you must feel. It's not a radio, is it?

Henry Blofeld2:56

Oh good Lord no. No, you can't have awful things like that.

Presenter3:00

So on the wireless, what you bring to it is this this detail. I mean, they say you're obsessed with passing buses and butterflies and birds and

Henry Blofeld3:08

Well, I get, I know, this is the awful thing. It's rather still stuck on me that. When I did my first trial for BBC, this was about 1968, I remember coming to Broadcasting House, where we are now, and talking to Henry Riddle, who was then the assistant head of Outside Broadcast, Bracket Sound Bracket. And we sat in his office. He rather wrong-footed me, because I arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon. He's wearing a black tie. And I thought, oh, I'm rather undressed. Anyhow, I sat there and we listened to the tapes. I've always loathed listening to myself. I always think, what a pompous idiot I sound like. I really do. And if ever I was in a car and hear a recording of myself, I switched the programmes at once. But he did say, you've got to try and make the listeners feel they're there. You've got to try and paint the picture for them. And he said, when I say the picture, he pointed to the picture on the wall and he said the centre of that are the horses, which you would look at. But it wouldn't be a complete composite picture if it wasn't for the grass at their feet and for the trees at their side, the sky above, and then, of course, the mount and the frame. And that is my excuse for mentioning buses and everything else. And I stick to it. And most of our listeners ring in when it's bad light or rain and there's no cricket. They ring in and say how much better we are when there's nothing happening.

Presenter4:23

Okay, let's have your first piece of music for this desert island. What's it to be?

Henry Blofeld4:27

Well, it's the Eaton boating song. I was five years at Eaton. They were probably in some ways the happiest of my life. Power Without Responsibility. I absolutely adored it, and I feel I could almost go back there tomorrow. And I do go back quite often to down there, and I think it's it's a wonderful tune. And it's sitting on my desert island it r would remind me of so many things and so many people.

Presenter5:14

That was the Eton College Musical Society in Orchestra performing the Eton boating song, or part of it anyway. Memories for you, Henry Blofeld, of School of Eton, where your prowess was cricket, much, much more than your academic prowess.

Henry Blofeld5:27

Well, I started off in sort of Lohr Sixpenny and for two years. Loh Sixpenny. Lur Sixpenny was the name of the under-15 sort of side, the school under 15 side, rather romantic name, I was thinking. Sweet. Presided over by a splendid chap called Claude Taylor, who taught me more about cricket than anyone else. And I went straight, as it so happened, from Loh's expenny into the 11. I prayed for the 11 when I was 15. First 11.

Presenter5:48

First eleven. First eleven. You played it at Lords, I think, didn't you?

Henry Blofeld5:50

I did play at laws when I was fifteen, yes.

Presenter5:56

Against whom?

Henry Blofeld5:56

A tarot.

Presenter5:57

I see.

Presenter5:59

And you scored a century at Lord's at some point as well when you were seventeen?

Henry Blofeld6:03

I scored a no, I scored 100 at Lords, well I scored 200 Lords, in fact, just to show off. When I was 16, I was selected very luckily for the public schools against Combined Services and went in when I'm taking I'm going to have to really stretch my luck here when the score was 71 for six and I finished I think 104 not out against mostly first-class greeters and so this got me a little bit of a perhaps a spurious reputation I don't know but what it didn't take into account was my lack of navigational ability and the following year you see I had this accident.

Presenter6:34

Well, I want I want to hear about the accent. You keep advertising it to us as it were. 1957, you were 17 years old. You were captain by then of the E1st Eleven.

Henry Blofeld6:41

Yes it was 11 minutes.

Presenter6:43

What happened?

Henry Blofeld6:44

Well, it was I mean I don't really know what happened. I've only been told because I can't remember anything but it was after boys' dinner one day which was what we called something that wasn't really a feast but when we all had chewed chewed the cud at midday and I bicycled up I was one of the little boys allowed a bicycle because I was Captain Eleven and we went up to Nett's on Agos Plough talking over my shoulder to a very friend of mine, Edward Scott.

Presenter7:06

Talking backwards.

Henry Blofeld7:08

Yes, looking backwards and I wasn't looking and then I went straight over the road and into a bus that was coming rather fast from right to left from the village of Datchet, carrying a a group, I've always been told, of French Women's Institute ladies. And they all jumped out and said ze talo and there was I sort of was a j rather bleeding jam roll in the gutter and I got um carted off to one of those hospitals in Windsor where I stayed for quite a long time and I didn't really sort of come to

Presenter7:31

But how badly injured were you?

Henry Blofeld7:33

Oh, I think I was pretty badly injured. I my I believe my skull was cracked all the way round, except for an inch at the back. I mean, I was really quite lucky to well, anyhow, it was nastily cracked. Uh my limbs w w well, such as they were, were not too badly off. Um but I had to have uh quite a number of brain operations, I suppose, to remove flakes of bone out of my grey matter.

Presenter7:42

Yeah.

Henry Blofeld7:54

Also, eventually I had to have a lot of plastic surgery done too, or quite a lot of plastic surgery.

Presenter7:58

Surgery.

Henry Blofeld8:00

It was yes, and of course what I really suffered from. I mean I got back quite quickly when you think about it. I mean I was playing cricket before the end of the season, playing minor county cricket too for Norfolk, which I shouldn't have done because my reflexes had gone. I mean I couldn't signal from eye to feet. I couldn't move my legs. And I never played cricket as well again.

Presenter8:17

I couldn't

Presenter8:20

So it it robbed you of your instinctive

Henry Blofeld8:22

Yes.

Presenter8:23

Ability to play.

Henry Blofeld8:24

I mean, I was lucky and went on and played for Cambridge as the worst opening battle since the Crimean War, I think probably, and made very little contribution against the old enemy of Oxford when I scored 2-1. But I did manage to get to slog 100 against MCC at Lords, so that does count as the first class 100. So that rather pleased me.

Presenter8:37

Load.

Presenter8:39

So that rather pleased me.

Henry Blofeld8:41

Well, I know. I think probably it was. I think the Almi the Almighty was looking either looking the other way or something when I had this accident. I mean, I was lucky, obviously, to live. But so where I was really lucky was not to end up as a cabbage.

Henry Blofeld8:52

You I mean, there are some people of course who say that perhaps I have, but there we are.

Henry Blofeld8:58

Record number two. Record number two, I'm Gilbert and Sullivan, I've loved all my life. I was taken to see the first one I ever saw, The Pirates of Penzance, by my mother and father at the Theatre Royal in Norwich when I was still at Sunningdale. And this, I love the Patter songs from Gilbert and Sullivan. And this is, if you're anxious for Deshine, from Patience, which I think is my favourite of all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Speaker 29:19

If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare, you must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms and plant them everywhere. You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind. One meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

Henry Blofeld9:24

Yeah.

Speaker 29:43

And everyone will say, As you walk your mystic way, If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be.

Speaker 210:05

Be eloquent in praise Of the very dull old days Which have long since passed away And convince them, if you can, that the reign of Gookinan Was culture's palmiest day. Of course you will rep

Presenter10:18

If you're anxious for to shine from Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience or Bunthorne's Bride, that was sung by John Reed as Reginald Bunthorne with the new Symphony Orchestra of London. It was conducted by Isidore Godfrey at Doily Carte Opera Production. Memories of your childhood then, Henry Blairfeld. Going to see such productions. Your father liked them, he read stories to you, it it all sounds quite jolly, but apparently you were rather frightened of him, he was a bit of a stickler.

Henry Blofeld10:43

My father was a yes, he was a a formidable chap. He stood six foot six inches tall in his cotton his stocking feet. Uh he had a moustache, a small moustache, he wore an eyeglass, which is a little bit intimidating. He used to put it in and just drop it out, you know, to it relax the muzzles. I think I was frightened of him. Certainly, and I think it was the age, you see, when I was young and had all my meals in the nursery with Nanny, and I was made to look respectable at about sort of half past five in the evening and went into the drawing-room for an hour or forty-five minutes. And my papa did one thing he did for me. He read to me. He had a wonderful voice. I know hunting's not exactly the thing these days, but he read to me Mr. Dorrick's Handley Cross, and I can almost it's a huge book, and I loved it. Of course, he read Winnie the Pooh and all those A. A. Milne things, which I again absolutely loved.

Henry Blofeld11:30

Nanny was absolutely special in all the tantrums. Nanny actually was I taught Nanny to bowl under our map at me too on the Croaky lawn. And that didn't get done very well for he took all the croaky hoops out, but she and I used to slog her into the bramble bushes, and poor old Nanny used to go and I would r I'd run about twenty three for a single hit while she was trying to find the creed ball.

Presenter11:45

What about

Presenter11:47

What about your mother? Because you were the youngest of three and actually much the youngest. You were sort of after were you a mistake?

Henry Blofeld11:52

Well, it was absolutely no mistake. Good Hemsi.

Presenter11:53

Names.

Presenter11:54

But I read a very sweet story that she prepared you for going away to school to your prep school at Sunningdale at age seven by calling you by your surname.

Henry Blofeld12:01

Yes, she thought she said, you must get used to this. She said, she was tough. My mother took no prisoners at all. She was very tough and absolutely uncompromising. She said, now, for the next fortnight, she said, I'm going to call you what you're called, you'll be called a signed, you'll call Blofeld. So I was, you know, Blofeld, you know, summoned. There was a lovely story of my mother, too, once, which is not about me, but about my brother. My brother, John, at some stage, you wouldn't think High Court judges got up to things like this, but he used to bite people occasionally. And my mother told Nanny and said, Look, if John bites again, will you thrust him out and into the passage, outside the nursery door? And I shall hear screams and yells and I shall come out and bite him. So the next time, they suddenly heard a slam of the nursery door and my brother making a lot of noise in the passage. And so my mother bared her teeth and went running out of the passage and dug her teeth deep into him. And of course, Nanny had completely forgotten and ejected him for something entirely different and much, much less serious.

Presenter12:55

Record number three.

Henry Blofeld12:56

Record number three, Noel Card, who's always been a tremendous favourite of mine. I first heard Noel Card on record when I was very young. I think again my father probably enjoyed him very much. I love the stately homes of England. I think on my desert island it'll remind me of so much. Not least when I met the great man Noel Card with Ian Fleming in Jamaica. Lord Elderly, Lord Borromeer, Lord Sickett and Lord Kemp. With every virtue, every grace, Ah, what avails the scepter race. Here you see the four of us, and there are so many more of us, eldest sons that must succeed. We know how Caesar conquered Gaul and how to whack a cricket ball. Apart from this, our education lacks coordination.

Henry Blofeld13:44

Though we're young

Henry Blofeld13:46

Uh

Presenter13:46

Part of the Stately Homes of England, sung by Noel Card, with His Majesty's Theatre Orchestra conducted by Francis Collinson, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty eight. And you met him, Noel Card, on honeymoon well, your honeymoon, I don't think he went on one in Jamaica in nineteen sixty one, yes.

Henry Blofeld14:00

If if it if it was his animal, he wasn't admitting anything.

Presenter14:03

Uh

Presenter14:05

But he was apparently incredibly modest.

Henry Blofeld14:07

Oh, he was incredibly modest. He never stopped talking. And I remember we went to GoldenEye, Ian Fleming's house at Orocabassa with the Banana Port, where that lovely song of Bellavantes was produced originally. And we went there, and there were a number of people there. And Nell Card was in effervescent form. Dear boy, he said, I'm so enchanted to have met you and your beautiful lady bride. He said, you must do me the great privilege and honor of coming down the road to my little house at Port Port Maria. He said, where are you staying? And I said, the Jamaica Inn. And he said, oh, he said, don't worry. He said, I'll ring you. He said, you've got better things to do than ring dirty old men like me on your honeymoon. When the telephone went the next day, it must have been hours 9, 10. I said hello, and a voice said, Can I speak to Henry Blofeld? And I said, speaking, he said, this is Nel Card. He said, I don't know if you'll remember, but we met at lunch at Ian Fleming's place yesterday, which I thought a throwaway was just about the best.

Presenter14:57

There's no

Presenter15:00

But the Iain Fleming connection is interesting because of course the name Blofelt is one that we all know from his books, Ernst Stavro Blofelt, his real villain. Is that connected with you?

Henry Blofeld15:09

He's part of the castle we don't normally show to visitors. Yes, Ian and my father were at school together at Eton. I don't know that they particularly got on very well, I'm not sure. Anyway, the story is that when Ian was writing Thunderball and he wanted an evil name, he was obviously in chapter two or chapter three, he got into a taxi and went to Boodles, which I mean his club, and he opened the membership list which was at hand. And when he got to the B's and saw three blowfelds, my brother, my father, and myself, he didn't look any further. And he thought it sounded suitably spooky.

Presenter15:38

He thought it sounded suitably spooky, did he?

Henry Blofeld15:40

I mean he jumped up, pressed the bell, ordered a glass of champagne, did a buck and wing dance, and then went home and never looked back. And, as you say, Ernst Tabro Blofeld is the chap who's always seen on the screen stroking the white pussy.

Presenter15:50

Now, how soon did it become obvious, going back to your boyhood, that you weren't really a chip off the old block in the sense that I think the family tradition was Eton followed by King's Cambridge and a Double First, and you weren't going to do that? You went to both, but you weren't going to get near the Double First, were you?

Henry Blofeld16:06

Well, it took me two years to teach them the folly of their ways before I got really shown the door. But I had a great piece of luck in that although I was nothing like the cricketer I had been, I was good enough or bad enough to scrape into a side, the Cambridge side in 1959 and get a blue, which gave me which is very lucky, and it gave me a little bit of experience of first-class cricket. So I suppose, looking back on my life, you could say that I got the only degree that I needed. I mean, ironically.

Presenter16:30

But at the time it wouldn't have felt like that, and I'm sure your family were indeed in despair of

Henry Blofeld16:33

Oh, absolutely.

Presenter16:35

Do you feel inferior?

Henry Blofeld16:36

Uh

Henry Blofeld16:37

I did. I think I had an enormous inferiority complex. And you have. And I think I behaved rather wetly, too.

Presenter16:39

And you have to go to the

Presenter16:42

Do you?

Henry Blofeld16:43

Well, I think I I I didn't really come to terms with it, and I sort of thought life would go on, you know, in the same way that it had. I don't think I ever really, at that stage of my life, rationalized my actions.

Presenter16:52

So you had to get a job. There was Henry, no qualifications, no degree, no nothing, and not as good at cricket at cricket as he used to be. What did you do?

Henry Blofeld17:00

Well, it wasn't really what I did. I had a splendid uncle, a man called Mark Turner, who was then one of the principal directors of Robert Benson Lonsale Merchant Bank in the city. And I went there and started in 1959, in October 1959, as a trainee. And I absolutely loathed it. I mean, I had, gosh, it was amazing. I had a waistcoat, a bowler hat, a rolled umbrella. I looked a real turkey, I can promise you. And I think I bought the Financial Times, too, probably. In the end, I thought, well, you know, a lot of my friends write about cricket. Why shouldn't I? And I met at a party, Johnny Woodcock, who was the famous Times cricket correspondent, and I talked to him about it. And he said, well, if he could do anything, he would, but he didn't have any great high hopes. And I got back from the city about two days later, or maybe even the next day, to find someone at the Times was ill or broken a leg or something like that. And they wanted someone to go and do two days' cricket at Gravesend for the next two days. And if I wanted to, and yippee, I did, would I go around to the Times sports center and collect a press ticket, which I did.

Presenter18:02

Which I did. If you wanted to, yes. And the rest is history. Record number four.

Henry Blofeld18:07

Record number four is Thank Heaven for Little Girls, and it very much reminds me of the excitement of the sixties, and also of the fact that I saw Murray Chevalier in person at his last performance in England at the time of the twist, and the old boy of eighty something was twisting better than anyone.

Henry Blofeld18:22

Thank heaven for little girls.

Henry Blofeld18:27

Thank heaven for them all, no matter where, no matter who, Without them what would little boys do?

Presenter18:35

Uh

Henry Blofeld18:37

Thank Heaven.

Henry Blofeld18:39

Thank Heaven.

Henry Blofeld18:41

Thank Heaven for Leater.

Presenter18:51

Thank Heaven for Little Girls from the film Gigi, sung by Maurice Chevalier, with the MGM studio orchestra conducted by Andre Previn. So, Henry, you spent the sixties writing for various newspapers and then you got your feet under the table really at Test Match special in the early seventies. But commentating I mean it is a very specific skill. It's a fine line, isn't it, between talking enough but not talking too much.

Henry Blofeld19:13

Yes, I I dare say there are those who would say I've never learnt the value of the pause.

Presenter19:16

Balls.

Presenter19:18

Well difficult on the radio.

Henry Blofeld19:19

Well, it is difficult, but some people did. I mean, John Arlert was masterful at at his timing which involved the pause. I think I'd rather go at it like a bull in a china shop. But I suppose I can get away with it, so I go very quick I talk very quickly, but I think because I probably enunciate reasonably clearly, which enables one, I think, probably to go and

Presenter19:33

Hmm, which

Henry Blofeld19:36

Exactly.

Presenter19:36

Exactly. But you do need nerve to keep going and to fill all these gaps. And I mean that was often uh fueled by booze, was it not, in John Arlett's time. I mean, a lot of alcohol was taken.

Henry Blofeld19:46

Goodbye, Bob.

Presenter19:51

He's harlo as in genres and aggressive. Yes.

Henry Blofeld19:53

Yes, Arlo. He was a he was a legend in his own lunchtime, I think one has to say. And a good deal of booze did flow under the bridge, but I think we kept it generally in proportion in the box. Trevor Bailly al we always got fed on champagne by our listeners.

Presenter19:56

Thing one

Presenter20:06

Champagne before lunch.

Henry Blofeld20:06

Yeah.

Presenter20:07

Uh

Henry Blofeld20:07

And Trevor always used to say, oh, the medicine has arrived when a cork was taken out. But there was the lovely occasion once of after an evening when we had dinner in Broadcasting House with the Director General. It was rather heavy going the next day, and I helped Arlo up the stairs, up to the top of the house, so to speak, when we were gloriously in the pavilion and not when we were in that new thing over the other side of the ground. And I took his two big leather briefcases. I thought, picked up the first one. I thought, well, learned wisdoms, learned tomes about cricket, more so with the second, which are even heavier. And we got to the top of the stairs, three flights of stairs, into the box. And they were there. Brian Johnners was there in his brown and white correspondent's shoes, giggling away. And I put them down on the Green Bay's table. And Arlette waited and then advanced upon the table, smiling the sort of smile I dare say the Duke of Wellington smiled when he left Waterloo for the last time. He opened the first briefcase and took out six bottles of claret, opened the second one, took out five bottles of claret, a couple of glasses and sundry bits and pieces and two corkscrews. And he was always a belt and braces man. One of his earliest pieces of advice to me, Henry, he said, when you go to the cricket, he said, and you take a bottle or two of wine, always take two corkscrews, because he said, if you take one and it breaks, you're buggered.

Presenter20:08

Yeah.

Henry Blofeld21:18

And um and there he was with eleven bolts of carrot, and he faced the audience, we were there like goldfish, with our mouths open, gaping at him. And he said, Well, he said, With any good fortune, he said, that little lot should see us through until the lunch interval. In point of fact, they were they were meant for another destination. I think we may have got one or two

Presenter21:33

Don't spoil the story. I'm sure a lot of claret was taken, but there we are. Record number five.

Henry Blofeld21:40

Record number five is Brian Johnston and John Arlott, really, not together. John Arlott heralded the first ever streaker at Lourdes, which was in the Test match in 1975. As you will hear in a moment, the freaker. But first of all, I would love to listen to, and on Desdau, these bring back so many memories, to the famous giggle, Johnners and Aggers at the Oval in 1991, when Botham was out. He tried to get his leg over the wicket and knocked off a bale. He just didn't quite get his leg over.

Presenter21:40

Yeah.

Henry Blofeld22:10

Anyhow,

Henry Blofeld22:11

He did very well indeed, batting 131 minutes and hit three fours. And then we had Lewis playing extremely well for his forty-seven not out. Agas, do stop him.

Henry Blofeld22:24

And he was joined by DeFreitas who was in for 40 minutes, a useful little part ship there. They put on thirty-five in forty minutes and then he was caught by Dujan Falsch. Lawrence, always entertaining, badly for thir thirty-five.

Henry Blofeld22:42

But

Henry Blofeld22:44

Thirty-five minutes, hit a four of the weeky position.

Speaker 222:52

And a free copy.

Henry Blofeld22:52

Three companies.

Speaker 222:54

We've got a freaker down the wicket now, not very shapely, and it's masculine.

Speaker 223:00

And I would think it's seen the last of its cricket for the day. Uh

Speaker 223:05

The police are mustered, so are the cameramen, and Greg Chappell, and now he's had his load, he's being embraced by a blonde policeman. 8,000 people in the man stand, some of whom perhaps have never seen anything quite like this before.

Presenter23:21

That was John Arlett commentating on the first ever streaker at Lords, or Freaker, as he put it in 1975, and before that, of course, Brian Johnson and Jonathan Agney rendered speechless during a Test match in 1991. You've been, Henry, at the sharp end of so many big cricketing stories over the decades, but none bigger, I suspect, than when Kerry Packer invented his World Series cricket back in 1977. He brought up all the best players in the world, didn't he?

Henry Blofeld23:46

Yes, he did, all because of a battle over television rights in Australia, which the Australian board weren't prepared to give to him, although he was prepared to pay a great deal more money than the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Presenter23:50

Yeah.

Presenter23:56

So he bought up all these players some of the he bankrolled matches, didn't he? Put them on his own Channel Nine. But did it rob I think the fear was that it would rob the sport of its decorum, really, that sportsmanship would go by the board, that it would cease to be

Henry Blofeld23:58

As in the

Presenter24:10

amateurish really, as it became more professional in terms of its commercialism. Is did that happen?

Henry Blofeld24:15

Well, yes, it did and I think it would have happened anyway, Zoo, because uh as more money i g uh comes into a game habits tend to become rather more unpleasant and I think

Presenter24:23

Well chaps don't behave so well.

Henry Blofeld24:25

Yeah, and I think this has happened in cricket, certainly it's happened as the money is, you know, when I takes takes all, you know, I mean it's all based on that, isn't it?

Presenter24:30

Eliminate

Presenter24:32

And is that part of our problem today? I mean, as we know, the perception is despite certain successes earlier this year, I think people the view is that England is not as good as it was. It is being surpassed all of the time by Australia. We just don't do it like we used to.

Henry Blofeld24:47

I'm not quite certain if it's that. It may be the other way round. When we used to win fairly consistently, England was the only country who played it professionally. Now everyone plays it professionally and has left England far behind. We have not adapted our game at all. They have adapted theirs. We still go on playing, having 18 first-class counties with a fair number of fairly indifferent cricketers. The competition may be good, but I don't think the class of county cricket necessarily is quite the same as it is in the Sheffield Shield in Australia. They only have six sides there. They play much less first-class cricket. But each game is gone into as though it's a mini-test match. Whereas in England, if you're out one evening's for naught, you don't worry too much because you've got another one the next day.

Speaker 225:13

Okay.

Presenter25:20

Yeah.

Presenter25:25

But in terms of the tradition, the English tradition, I mean little boys no longer are round the back of the entry, you know, bowling balls at the brick wall. I mean, they just don't do that any more. Football has taken over. Cricket just isn't central to a a l a a young boy's life as it used to be.

Henry Blofeld25:40

Well, I I I think this is true and I think the trouble is we haven't got a n national side that wins. Once we get a national side that beats Australia, I think an awful lot of more people will want to be whoever the cricketers are rather than Becks and Posh and all the others.

Presenter25:52

It's chicken and egg though, isn't it?

Henry Blofeld25:54

Well, of course it is. But I know efforts are going on to try and regenerate it a little bit in the public sector, and I hope very much this happens.

Presenter26:01

Okay. One quick Anorak question. Of all the cricketers you've ever seen perform before your very eyes, which one would you point to as being the most inspiring?

Henry Blofeld26:11

I think I'd have to uh to point to Gary Sabers.

Presenter26:14

I thought you might say both'em, actually.

Henry Blofeld26:16

Both em was was tremendously exciting, but not in no no, not in the s in the s qu the quite the same league as Gary Sovers.

Presenter26:22

And what's more he once duffed you up so you wouldn't choose to do it?

Henry Blofeld26:24

Well no no no but Beefy and I are now the greatest of friends. I mean that was we were all too much v much younger in those days.

Presenter26:26

I mean that was

Henry Blofeld26:29

And, you know, we got it we got it rather wrong that morning at Bermuda airport, or rather.

Presenter26:33

Beefy and Blowers were at it. Okay. Record number six.

Henry Blofeld26:37

Record number six, High Society, is the film that I think I've seen more than any other and the the the song from it which I absolutely love is Well Did You Ever when both Bing and Frank were w w w were very well oiled and um it's it's it's glorious.

Henry Blofeld26:56

Have you heard it's in the style?

Henry Blofeld26:59

Next July we collide with Mars

Henry Blofeld27:02

Well did you ever but a swell party, a swell party, a swelling party this is

Presenter27:18

Well, did you ever from the film High Society sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sonata with the MGM Studio Orchestra conducted by Johnny Greene? There's obviously a lot of sheer bloody mindedness in you, Henry. I mean, when we talk about you recovering from that early accident and recovering from your heart problem earlier this year, I mean, there's a determination, isn't there, in you, a kind of

Presenter27:38

You know, you know exactly what you want to do and where you want to go.

Henry Blofeld27:40

Well, I suppose I don't much care for coming second in a way. And it seems to me that if you do anything, it's worth doing well, isn't it? I think. You may say I I have too strong a competitive streak and that um certainly I mean when I play games, even if I play tennis now, I think I probably want to win. Some say w would say it too obviously, but I that's part of my nature.

Presenter27:47

I

Presenter27:58

Well we don't hear that when you're commentating. We don't hear I mean, I I know'cause uh I've read that you've said about yourself that you have a bad temper, you inherited it from your father. We don't hear that. What we hear on the radio is sort of bonhomie and repartee and that sight sort of eccentricity.

Presenter28:14

How much is that you, and how much is that your professional persona?

Henry Blofeld28:17

I don't think any of its professional persona I've never really consciously said anything or developed a manner or anything of luck anything of that sort. It has just simply been me. And unless one gets desperate feedback, saying this is simply awful and we'd have him off the air in a moment. I mean which I haven't had touch wood. I just I just bang on, you know.

Presenter28:35

But but Jonners has gone now, as we know, sadly, and and y you're sort of still holding the fort of that sort of m prep school master going to the match, aren't you? Uh uh uh one gets the impression that very slightly some of the ones who sit alongside you these days send you up a bit, cast you as a

Henry Blofeld28:51

Oh, they always pull my leg all the time. I mean, they're forever doing things. I mean, Jonathan Agnew pulls my leg endlessly. I mean, he writes out bogus emails and signed by names which, if said quickly, can sort of look like something rather naughty that one shouldn't say on the air. And the awful thing is, though, I don't even realise when I've said it that I've said something I shouldn't have said.

Presenter29:08

But I wonder if you do feel that the character is going out of that sort of commentary slowly but surely. I mean, you're still there, obviously, and I know you've got no intention of going away, but eventually you will, inevitably. I mean, do you think that everything's getting rather sort of um well, made more bland than it was, both the game and those who commentate on it?

Henry Blofeld29:27

I think the present team do it jolly well. I think one of the great characteristics of Testmat Special has always been that it's had great people on there, great characters, and people with strongly distinctive voices. And I'd like to think that is going to be continued. But I'm not certain. I mean, I think.

Henry Blofeld29:43

Cricket the game is a great former of people's character, and I think actually cricket the game is a reflection of society. And the game has.

Presenter29:50

And the game has fewer characters in it, doesn't it?

Henry Blofeld29:52

I think it does. I don't think cricketers today play it with such fun. They play it with tremendous zest because they want to win. And the rewards for winning are very much greater than they were. I'll tell you a very interesting story. Keith Miller, who I had lunch with the other day, the famous Australian cricketer, you were looking a bit blank, but and he was a great all-rounder.

Presenter30:09

You've found me out.

Henry Blofeld30:11

And he was sort of Dennis Compton that sort of time. And Keith was saying he really couldn't understand this business of pressure. All the players complain today that they're under pressure. He said, I'll tell you what pressure was. He said, when I was in a hurricane, he said, and I looked in my rearview mirror and saw two measuresmits on my tail. He said, that was pressure. And he said, when we were playing the cricket after the war, he said it wasn't a matter of life and death. We'd been through that. He said we played it hard on the field, but not off it. And he said we got together and he said it was always a game and we knew it was. And today I sometimes wonder if everyone knows all the time that it is still a game.

Presenter30:47

I call number seven

Henry Blofeld30:48

Dad's Army theme tune Who do you think you're kidding, mister Hitler? This kills two birds in one stone. I love Dad's Army, and of course Bud sung by Bud Flanagan, and I was very much brought up on the Crazy Gang at the Victoria Palace, with with Fanaganelle and Nerva Knox and and all the others, and it was terrific.

Henry Blofeld31:06

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler, if you think we're on the run?

Henry Blofeld31:16

We

Speaker 231:16

We are the boys who will stop your little game We are the boys who will make you think again Cause who do it? Think you are kidding, Mr. Hitler. If you think

Presenter31:32

Uh

Henry Blofeld31:32

Yeah. Then

Presenter31:34

That Dad's Army theme tune, Who Do You Think You're Kidding, Mr. Hitler, sung by Bud Flanagan. There's going to be a lot of laughter on your island, Henry.

Henry Blofeld31:41

Well, that's what I want to do because I I want I love laughing and I think it's terribly important. I think we all feel better when we laugh.

Presenter31:46

But do you think the kind of solitariness of the existence there is going to make any sort of prick the bubble of optimism that surrounds you?

Henry Blofeld31:53

I shall do my very best to see that it doesn't. I'm wildly hopeless at all the sort of DIY things. I'm frightfully impractical. I'm desperately absent minded, and if I was able to somehow invent a fish hook in order to catch a fish, the only thing I'd end up by catching would be myself.

Presenter32:07

But you can hunt. I mean, you can skin a rabbit, can't you? Talk that.

Henry Blofeld32:10

Oh, I can do that. Absolutely, yes.

Presenter32:11

Absolutely, yes. So your body and soul in that sense are catered for. It's really the um it's really the lack of clarity that we're talking about.

Presenter32:25

Last record.

Henry Blofeld32:26

My last record, Victor Borger, who I think was tremendous fun, the Dane, who had this way with words and and and this way with punctuation. Period sounds like this. Here is a dash.

Henry Blofeld32:40

An exclamation point is a vertical dash with a period underneath.

Henry Blofeld32:46

I have a book here and I'm going to read to you a short story so you can hear how this system really sounds.

Speaker 232:46

Yeah.

Henry Blofeld32:52

Beautiful Elinor sat alone.

Henry Blofeld32:54

Dreaming of but one thing

Henry Blofeld32:58

They had been sitting in the park, and Henry had said

Henry Blofeld33:03

Garlings.

Presenter33:06

Part of Victor Borger's phonetic punctuation. Now, Henry, what you have to do is say which one you'd take if you could only take one of those eight.

Henry Blofeld33:15

Uh if I could only take one, I would take uh Brown Johnston, Jonathan Agnew and John Arlett, simply because Testmatch Specials have been the top, bottom and sides of my life. I enjoy cricket. I enjoy more than anything the people I do Testmatch Special with. They're absolutely super friends, all of them. And this would be a terrific reminder of all that.

Presenter33:32

What about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Henry Blofeld33:35

My book would have to be Pete well, Woodhurse. I love Woodhouse, and I once collect had an almost complete collection of his first editions. The one I would take, actually, is A Pelican at Blandings, which is Bl I think the Blandings Castle saga is more fun than Jeeves. This is my own personal fi th uh thing.

Presenter33:52

We could discuss this at length, but we shan't. What about your luxury?

Henry Blofeld33:55

Uh my luxury, I don't know if I'm allowed this, but what I want to do is take a photograph album and I want to take 40 or 50 mug shots of all people who've been close to me in my life in terms of cricket. Obviously, Bitten and Suki, my daughter, and Rumpel, who's my handicapped stepson, who was a very important member of our family and absolutely splendid. And I would want to take them, my parents and family, people from the commentary box, so I could flick through the pages and each one, each photograph would bring tremendous memories of people I've loved. Well, I might have one or two I've hated, but I don't think so. No, no. We'll leave them behind.

Presenter34:28

Henry Blofeldt, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Henry Blofeld34:31

Thank you, Sue.

Speaker 334:39

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.