Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A sports commentator, the voice of BBC racing for 50 years and Daily Express racing correspondent for 36 years, known for commentating on over 14,000 races.
On the island
Eight records
Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars
Well, in my early days at school I was very keen on jazz and Louis Armstrong was becoming one of the icons of jazz and Jack Teagarten was another hero and I'd love Louis on his trumpet of course and Jack Teagarten on his trombone. And I think there's a recording of them with Pee Wee Russell on clarinet and Earl Hines on piano and Sid Catlett on drums. I've always been mad about drums and I'd like to hear that.
Well, I've always been uh mad about birds, bird life, and I think that um the pipes ... recalling ... The flight of the condor is so evocative of the marvellous floating progress of this amazing bird with a fifteen feet wingspan. And I love the pipes too.
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Well, when I was at school round about, I suppose I'd have been about 14 at the time when Duke Ellington and his splendid orchestra first recorded It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. And I thought this was marvellous.
Well, I used to go to Paris a lot for The Express and find my way, needless to say, into into uh uh jazz dives and nightclubs and so forth and uh Edith Piaf was then uh uh an entertainer very much at uh height of uh talent for b belting out uh songs and I th I I would just love to hear her uh belting out genre grat rien.
Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson
Well, I had the very good fortune in the nineteen sixties to hear Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Petersen on the same bill at uh a gala evening at the Palace Hotel at Gestad. And so th they would revive happy memories.
Well, a classic uh classic bit of jazz, marvelous bit of writing, Dave Rubrik and take five.
Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli
Well, I think one of the most felicitous marriages in music is Yehudi Menuin and Stefan Grapelli.
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 ('Emperor')Favourite
Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
On the other hand, if there were birds, I decided that as a musical ignoramus, I should give myself a chance ... of hearing a sound which would not only evoke memories of teenage visits to Henry Wood concerts at Queen's Hall, but but might alleviate my my ignorance and therefore quicken my appreciation of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30How much did you work on [your voice] in the early days, cultivate it?
Frankly, Sue, not at all. It just uh it's just my voice. Maybe I've I've modified my my pace a bit. I'm told that I used to speak very much too quickly, and so I tried to slow down. But of course you have to talk quite fast to keep pace with a race horse.
Presenter asks
5:36Is the Grand National the hardest race of all to commentate on, to call?
It's not necessarily the hardest through, but it's the most fraught. It's it's the one uh I think that uh that one's most anxious about.
Presenter asks
20:19How did [your acne] affect you?
Well, it affected my outlook. I mean, it it it was painful in the sense that it was a very, very severe skin eruption, but of course it made one so unsightly that you you felt a a pariah. ... I had a I went through a very lonely period, I suppose, really.
Presenter asks
21:39The keepsakes
The book
Aldous Huxley
It's a three hundred and thirty page philosophical treatise, and it's subtitled An inquiry into the nature of ideals and into the methods employed for their realization. And I'd be intrigued to read it again.
The luxury
I'm very, very susceptible to mosquitoes, and so I would very much like to take a spray that would inhibit their activity without obviously upsetting the ecological balance of my island.
How did you get out of this awful introverted way of life?
Well, at the outset of the war, or before the war really even started, I was medically graded out of the services. So I changed my car for a four-seater and I evacuated families to the country. And then when I'd run out of my slender resources, I joined the rescue services in Chelsea. And I found that uh when the raid started that uh most people were very apprehensive. I wasn't in the least bit apprehensive uh and was absolutely impervious to danger. ... while everybody else was apprehensive, I'd my my condition im improved enormously. It was psychological.
Presenter asks
24:55Do you think you've lost [overall over your betting career]? Are you up or are you down?
Uh I d I don't think I've come out too badly. But mind you, any punter will tell you that. ... I think um I I I think I might have just made it pay.
“I think one has to remember that as a commentator on a sport in which so many listeners or viewers have a pecuniary interest, you're inevitably a purveyor of ill tidings to the majority, and not only a purveyor of ill tidings, but you're held partially accountable for them.”
“It's the tone of colour that is absolutely vital.”
“I'd as soon be remembered as a as a as a racing journalist uh as a as a commentator. I don't know about the tipping. Tipping, you know, never really uh appealed to me very much because uh I felt so responsible. If one had uh one developed uh a few followers and uh you know you've let them down it uh it was worrying.”