Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Television commentator best known for his rugby league commentary.
On the island
Eight records
Well, coming from the north, which is a wonderful place for brass bands and hymn singing, I'm going to have a hymn called Deep Harmony, played by the Black Dyke Mill band. And this, incidentally, Deep Harmony, was written by a man called Handel Parker from Shipley, where I spent many, many happy hours as a youngster. My father got the original manuscript and handed it down to me.
I'm going far away from Yorkshire. I'm going to France. I'm going to Paris, a place I love, and it's Isle of Paris by Montavami.
Obviously, I'm gonna pick an Australian. Peter Dawson was I liked very much as a singer, and I think it's The right sort of title, The Road to Mandalay.
Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra
It's Yellowbird, which I heard in Bermuda returning from one of my Australian trips.
CrimondFavourite
Well, I think I said earlier I was interested in brass bands and choral singing, so I would like to have. The tune Crimond sang by the Glasgow Orpheus Choir.
Well, I've never made any doubt of the fact that I am an Englishman, so I would like from HMS Pinafore, for he is an Englishman.
Well, I spend quite a bit of time on the west coast. of America and I been to a number of film studios, met a lot of people that I got on very well with. Bob Hope was one. Another man was Perry Como and I would like to have his Song the snowbird
Well, I love to hear a military band, particularly at Wembley. And in the BBC Two flood league competition we used to have one to start the evening Lanton Cordiale.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:28Which part of Yorkshire [were you born in]?
Well, actually, from the West Ryden, I was born in Dewsbury and I started sort of my working life as a young. newspaper writer on rugby league.
Presenter asks
1:21What would you want music to do for you on a desert island?
Remind you of the past? Well, that's obvious. It would do, and I would think of it in that way, but I would also want it to cheer me up at times and other times put me to sleep and rest me. And if I got lonely, something to make me think there was someone else there that I knew.
Presenter asks
3:38Did [your ambition to be a newspaper reporter] go back to school days?
Yes, it did indeed. We had a school magazine, and I wrote rugby league notes, obviously edited very much by the master in charge of the paper. But it put into me the idea that that might be some sort of a liking, particularly if I could do sport.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
George Bradshaw
I would like the old Bratshaw timetable about five inches thick, where I could run so many journeys up and down the lost railway lines of Great Britain that I would enjoy.
The luxury
Well, do you think I might have a a lovely couch? I can get on very well with catnaps. And if I could have this couch where I could curl up like a cat, I would like that.
What are the main differences between rugby league and rugby union?
Well, there are few alterations. They're getting less because rugby union people are taking some of the good rugby league rules to play with now … mainly in the forwards, the difference. They have what they call loose malls and they let the ball go when they're tackled in rugby union. Where, as in rugby league, when a player is tackled, it's a set formation and he plays the ball either backwards or forwards. In other words, it's more controlled.
Presenter asks
6:05When did you first go to Australia?
I went in nineteen forty six. And it was the first time that a rugby league writer had gone from England to Australia to cover a rugby league tour.
Presenter asks
14:52How well could you adapt yourself to [loneliness on a desert island]?
Not very well, I don't think. But once I decided that it was inevitable, then I would.
“I fancy myself as a singer. In fact, I remember asking my father later in life what he wanted me to be. I was then a newspaper man. He said, Well, he would have liked me to be an either a minister or a pianist or a singer. Well, I was none on three, although I think I would have liked to have been a singer.”
“I'm out for the entertainment of the game. And if a game sells itself, then I let it. Technicalities, I certainly explain where I got to, but I like the picture to do the story. And I feel I'm selling a game that is only known to about 60,000 people. I'm selling it to six or seven million people, so there's forced to be a little bit of different.”
“I would like the old Bratshaw timetable about five inches thick, where I could run so many journeys up and down the lost railway lines of Great Britain that I would enjoy.”