That Was the Week - Part 4

How well do you remember the news events of 1982? September 1982 in particular? Yes Thatcher was in power. Yes there'd been the Falklands War earlier that year. But beyond that...

On a personal note I was just about to start the third and final year of my degree so was no doubt getting ready to knuckle down to some hard studying!! But not too busy to commit these three classic long-running topical comedy shows to tape. Yes, this is a rare opportunity to listen to The News Huddlines, The News Quiz and Week Ending all from the same week in 1982.

Firstly a typically lively Thursday night edition of The News Huddlines from 23 September. With Roy Hudd is Chris Emmett and Alison Steadman. There'll be more about The News Huddlines next month.  Amazingly even six years after resigning as PM, the team still wring some humour out of Harold Wilson, but then Chris did a great Wilson voice. A highlight is Alison's reading of Di's Diary.

Next up is Week Ending from Friday 24 September with David Jason, David Tate, Nicky Henson and Tracy Ullman.  Subjects for comedy include the TUC day of action, the Middle East, unemployment and a certain Royal Wedding.  There's that old standby of comic observations in the David Attenborough style.  In all honesty there's little here that raises a smile, not sure if it's the passage of time or that this is a duff edition. 

Finally the Saturday lunchtime edition of The News Quiz. In the chair is Barry Took. Taking part are Russell Davies, Hunter Davies,  Sue Cook and, here amply demonstrating  the comedy value that he imbued, Alan Coren.  Reading the headlines, complete with accents, is Peter Donaldson.  Note that the panel totally fail to answer what Took acknowledges as a "difficult question".  

Anyone checking the BBC Genome listing for this edition of The News Quiz will spot that Stan McMurtry was billed to appear rather than Hunter Davies. I've submitted this information to the Genome team. 

That Was the Week - Part 3

When Miles Jupp kicks off the 88th series of The News Quiz tonight he'll be the fifth chairman in the programme's 38-year history, following in the footsteps of Barry Norman, Barry Took, Simon Hoggart and Sandi Toksvig.   

In the mid-70s BBC national radio offered any number of general knowledge quizzes, from Brain of Britain and Top of the Form to Forces Chance and Town and Country Quiz  but nothing with a current affairs slant.

The idea for a quiz about the news was first pitched by Nicholas Parsons - himself no stranger to topical radio comedy after performing in Listen to this Space - to a young BBC comedy producer, one John Lloyd. A suggested team captain was Gyles Brandreth and the suggested title was Keep Taking the Tabloids.

The notion of a topical quiz was not an entirely new one, BBC2 had already broadcast Quiz of the Week that Ned Sherrin had chaired some seven years previously.  The only similarity between the two programmes would be the reliance on Private Eye team members; Richard Ingrams, John Wells and Willie Rushton appeared on the TV version with both Ingrams and Wells becoming regulars on the eventual radio incarnation. 

The pilot of Keep Taking the Tabloids was not a success. Lloyd reckoned that the news needed a serious title and a more serious approach. So on 1 April 1977 a new pilot, this time under the title of The News Quiz, was recorded. The panel consisted of Alan Coren - who would of course rise to be the show's star turn for the best part of three decades - Ingrams, Russell Davies and Nigel Dempster. The chairman was Barry Norman and the newsreader John Marsh. This is how it all sounded. Note the nod to Parson's original title which gets a deserved groan.   
 

The News Quiz got the green light and the first edition aired on Radio 4 on Tuesday 6 September with the same participants as the pilot except for the substitution of Nigel Dempster for Clive James. You'll notice the first transmission date was a Tuesday, odd for a quiz about the week's news; but which week? It moved to a Saturday for the start of the second series in 1978 but didn't find its current Friday night 6.30 pm slot until major Radio 4 schedule changes were implemented in April 1998. 

The News Quiz was launched fully formed and required very little tweaking over the years: two teams of two with questions over three rounds. News cuttings read by a Radio 4 newsreader and panellists reading out their favourite news story at the end. And of course the sig tune of Leroy Anderson's The Typewriter. The only real change has been the gradual shift from the quiz format to an outright comedy format. Listen back to early editions and the majority of the panellists have a journalistic background. They sometimes scrabble around for an answer or, as was often the case with Richard Ingrams, totally fail to know anything about the news story.

There was a no comedians rule which original co-producer (who had previously worked in the BBC's News Cuttings Library so was well-placed to look after the show) Danny Greenstone says was observed "because it would be too simple to simply populate the show with comedians, there were too many good ones around and we wanted The News Quiz to be very different and to stand out." They didn't want comics to "twist the news story to provide themselves a feed for the gag that they want to do".

Certainly by the time that Barry Took succeeded Barry Norman in 1979 the show was already evolving with Took keen to ensure that panellists drew out the humour from the subject matter:"The joy of The News Quiz is that while the questions are not especially difficult for the working journalists on the team to answer, their reaction to the question and their way of answering it reflects in many ways their own individual journalistic style".

This edition of the programme is a News Quiz of the Year. The year in question is 1989. Taking part are Alan Coren, Richard Ingrams, John Wells and Kate Adie. In the chair is Barry Took, reading the headlines is Brian Perkins and the producer is Armando Iannucci. This recording was made on Saturday 23 December 1989.

In 1990 former News Quiz producer Harry Thompson went off to BBC TV to produce the TV equivalent in Have I Got News For You? taking with him panellist Ian Hislop. It took the radio show another six or seven years before it regularly employed a resident comedy contributor with Jeremy Hardy and Andy Hamilton joining the rota. These two are now the longest-serving panellists, along with journalist Francis Wheen who first appeared in 1994.

One of the show's constants is the use of the otherwise formal sounding Radio 4 newsreaders. Former newsreader Charlotte Green said that they "love to take part because the programme allows them to play the part of a court jester to the hilt, reading out comically surreal cuttings from the newspapers". One of Charlotte's favourites was: "Shoplifters are becoming ever more exotic in their choice of goods. In New York, light-fingered Sybil Serth was rushed to hospital with hypothermia, after concealing six frozen quails in her bra and four more in her knickers. 'My son must have put them there when I wasn't looking,' she later explained".

In 2002 The News Quiz celebrated its 25th anniversary with an extended edition of the programme and an edition of The Archive Hour presented by Matthew Parris titled Headlines, Deadline and Punchlines, You'll also hear contributions from John Lloyd, Danny Greenstone, Alan Coren, Richard Ingrams, Harry Thompson, Ian Hislop, Simon Hoggart, Roy Hattersley, Charles Kennedy, Jeremy Hardy, Lucy Armitage and Linda Smith. 




Outgoing News Quiz chair Sandi Toksvig talked about the shows evolution in 2008: “If you hear some of the early programmes, they’re not funny. People would be asked about a story, they’d answer and they’d get two points.” That same Daily Telegraph article explained that "purists will be happy to learn that the contestants get no prior warning of the questions. The wiser ones will prepare gags on the week’s events – but aren’t allowed to take anything written into the Thursday night recordings. Toksvig is equipped with one-liners from a team of writers, but relies on ad-libs for 'around 40 per cent' of her contributions. The producer then has to edit an hour and a quarter’s worth of material into 28 minutes. (Sharp-eared listeners will notice that this sometimes has strange effects on the already fairly arbitrary scoring system.)"

According to Toksvig, in a Radio Times interview earlier this year, the first thing she did when she took over as presenter in September 2006 was "to get rid of the person who kept score ... the listeners never heard her but she sat right in the middle between the host and the newsreader". She acknowledged that "it's not even a quiz. We never needed a scorer at all because the host makes the points up."

And finally a 2005 edition of the show chaired by Simon Hoggart with Alan Coren, Andy Hamilton, Fred MacAulay and the much missed Linda Smith. Reading the headlines is Charlotte Green. This programme aired on Friday 1 July 2005.

Like Simon and Sandi before him, Miles is a poacher turned gamekeeper, moving from contestant to chairperson. Already he hopes to "tweak" the guest list, suggesting a return to a more mixed panel. "I would like to get some politicians on, particularly those who are capable of actual thought and speech. I want to make sure we keep having journalists on, too. They really go for the stories, whereas comedians tend to pick around the periphery of a news item and make jokes in the margin, which is valid. But journalists talk about the news stories in a way that makes them more accessible." As to how long he'll stay with The News Quiz, "it's open-ended", he told the Radio Times. "I'm just thinking about my first series, and doing the best job I can do, The news is different every week, so there's no reason why it can't feel fresh for quite a long time." 

Dedicated to Danny Greenstone who sadly died last month.

Quotes from:

Hunting through the headlines by James Walton (Daily Telegraph 25 September 2008)

And finally... by Kirsty Lang (Radio Times 20 June 2015)
Here is the news by Patrick Foster (Radio Times 12 September 2015)

Laughter in the Air by Barry Took (Robson Books 1981)

The News is Read by Charlotte Green (Robson Press 2014)

The News Quiz did make an unsuccessful transition to TV as Scoop. Two series were broadcast on BBC2, the first in 1981 chaired by Barry Norman, the second in 1982 with Richard Stilgoe.

From Our Own Correspondent

"This is the BBC Home Service. From Our Own Correspondent. We are broadcasting now the first of a new series of programmes in which BBC correspondents will deal with current affairs as seen from their own posts in various parts of the world ..."

So began the introduction, sixty years ago on 25 September 1955, to what would become a radio institution. From Our Own Correspondent provides "correspondents with an opportunity to say a little more: to provide some of the context to the stories they're covering, to describe some of the characters involved and some of the sights they see as they watch events unfold". (1) 

In 1955 FOOC offered a rare opportunity for longer more reflective and more personal talks on world events outside of the usual reports for the Radio Newsreel programmes - at the time most other news bulletins were just a straight read-through by the newsreader. 

The programme's approach was summed up by journalist Misha Glenny: "radio correspondents often feel as though their wings are clipped. A piece for the six o'clock news lasts between forty-five seconds and one minute fifteen (the latter if you are on a ver big story) which means that you may say nothing but the bare minimum. If you are producing a feature, your own sentiments are invariably, and correctly, drowned by sounds effects and other voices. It is only through FOOC that the BBC correspondents are able to communicate directly and personally with their audience". (2)

To mark the programmes sixtieth anniversary the Radio 4 today broadcasts a discussion on Foreign Reporting: Past,Present and Future presented by Owen Bennett-Jones. This will also go out on the World Service. In addition Kate Adie presents an additional eight editions of FOOC, the first airs today. 

But for this blog post I'm going back to the thirtieth anniversary in 1985 with this special edition presented by the BBC's former diplomatic editor Angus McDermid. In From Our Own Correspondent-The World 30 Years On you'll hear:

• ·       Ian McDougall on the U-2 incident (1960)  
• ·       Robert Elphick on Czechoslovakia (1968)
• ·       Tim Sebastian from Gdansk, Poland (1980)
• ·       Clive Small reviews East-West relations
• ·       Philip Short in Syria (1973)
• ·       Gerald Butt surveys the Middle East
• ·       Martin Bell on the Biafran War
• ·       Mike Wooldridge on Africa
• ·       Anthony Lawrence in Vietnam (1970)
• ·       Philip Short on the trial of The Gang of Four in China (1980)
• ·       Mark Braine surveys China today
• ·       Christopher Serpell on the Common Market (1969)
• ·       Stephen Jessel reviews EEC history
• ·       Martin Bell in El Salvador (1981)
• ·       Robert Tyrer on Latin America
• ·       David Willey from Naples
• ·       Ian Mitchell in Bonn (1976)
• ·       Michael Elkins in Jerusalem (1978)

This programme was broadcast on Radio 4 on Wednesday 25 September 1985.

(1) FOOC producer Tony Grant in his foreword to Kidnapped and Other Dispatches by Alan Johnston (Profile Books 2007)

(2) From Our Own Correspondent: The First Forty Years edited by Tony Grant (Pan 1995)

The Night Grace Archer Died

Thursday 22 September 1955, and British broadcasting was on the verge of a new era: commercial television was launched. Admittedly it was only in the London area and, it was estimated, just one set in five was tuned to 'Independent Television'.

However, the big news in the press the following morning was not just about the first commercials but that there had been a 'Death in the Family' as poor Grace Archer had met her untimely and shocking demise whilst attempting to rescue her horse from a blazing barn. Graces' screams of "Midnight! Midnight!" and Phil's plea "Grace, come back! The roof's collapsing" were heard by about eight million listeners to the BBC Light Programme daily serial The Archers just an hour before Postmaster General Dr Charles Hill and Sir Kenneth Clark, Chairman of the ITA made their inaugural speeches in London's Guildhall.

The opening line-up for ITV in London published in the
new magazine TV Times

The next morning the headline in the Daily Mirror read 'Radio fans weep as Grace Archer 'Died'' whilst the News Chronicle asked 'Why did Grace have to die?'. Even The Times was moved to report 'Death of BBC Serial Character'.    

The events surrounding that fateful night in 1955 are this weekend recalled in the BBC Radio 4 drama Dead Girls Tell No Tales. Written by former Archers scriptwriter Joanna Toye it depicts life in and around The Archers' production office and studio. Amongst the cast is the original Grace Archer played by the now 90-year-old Ysanne Churchman.   

But was the turn of events in Ambridge mere coincidence or, as some claimed, a stunt? At the time scriptwriter Edward J. Mason denied that Grace had died in the cause of publicity rather than art. The Herald, however, pointed out that the death "ensured that The Archers made headlines when 'in all theory' sound radio should have been pushed right off the news pages by the advent of Independent TV."

Mary Crozier of the Manchester Guardian perhaps summed it up best, in verse:

She dwelt unseen amid the Light,

Among the Archer clan,

And breathed her last the very night

That ITV began ...

She was well loved, and millions know

That Grace has ceased to be.

Now she is in her grace, but oh,

She scooped the ITV.

The truth of the matter was that the exact timing Grace's death was no coincidence. Her 'exit' had been planned months before, just not when, or how.  According to Asa Briggs' history of the BBC the decision to kill off Grace had been taken in January 1955, months before her marriage to Phil Archer that Easter. The creator of The Archers, Godfrey Beasley, wrote to Rooney Pelletier, the Controller of the Light Programme, on 10 January that "at a suitable opportunity, either at the end of August or early September, Grace will be involved in a motor vehicle accident which will prove fatal".  

By 11 May 1955 the plan had been hatched by Pelletier in a memo to Denis Morris, Head of Midland Regional Programmes. He wrote: "the more I think about it, the more I believe that a death of a violent kind in The Archers timed if possible to diminish interest in the opening of commercial television in London is a good idea".   

At the same time Briggs observes that this was not the whole truth of the matter. The scriptwriters were also "anxious to cut the number of characters in the series: they felt it was becoming 'cluttered up' and that it would be desirable to introduce 'greater validity' into the situations described".

There was also a degree to which radio was flexing its muscles, showing it was still a force to be reckoned with, despite the rise in television viewing. It's no coincidence that all this happened just two years after the BBC had issued a Ten-Year Plan that concluded that sooner or later "with the growth of television audiences and a consequent shrinkage of audiences dependent on sound alone" there may have to be realignments of the radio services. Did the death of Grace Archer mark the beginning of the end of radio's Golden Era?    

This is what listeners to the Light Programme will have heard that week in September. This edition of The Archers is the omnibus version that was broadcast on the Saturday evening.

As a postscript to this blog post it seems that The Archer's may have made the news in 1955 for other reasons, as an early example of a transfer from radio to television. I stumbled across this aborted attempt to have the folk of Ambridge fill part of BBC tv's Toddler's Truce closedown period in Leonard Miall's Inside the BBC:

At that time, when evening television only began at 7.30 p.m., the Post Office set a strict limit on the number of hours of television that the BBC might transmit each week. However, when ITV started in 1955 the Post Office allowed the evening's viewing to begin at 7 p.m.

Unfortunately this daily increase of thirty minutes' television time was not accompanied by any more studio space or film resources, which were then what limited programme expansion. Every production studio at Lime Grove was fully committed, so Cecil McGivern, BBC Television's Controller, decided to fill the extra time with a quarter of an hour of news originated from a studio at Alexandra Palace, followed by a daily television version of The Archers, produced in Birmingham.

The pilot programmes of The Archers were not up to standard, and at short notice McGivern asked if the Television Talks department could provide a substitute daily programme.

That programme turned out to be Highlight which in turn begat Tonight.

Miall goes on to say:

The Archers may have muffed their own television launch, but with panache they pre-empted the press coverage of ITV's Guildhall launch by having Grace Archer die in a brave attempt to save a horse from a blazing barn. (Donald) Baverstock immediately invited The Archers' writers to be interviewed on Highlight by its initial presenter MacDonald Hastings. Mac introduced the item with the words 'And now for a slight case of murder.' Castigated for causing national grief, the scriptwriter Ted Mason countered by demanding, 'Why blame us? Did people blame Shakespeare for the death of Desdemona?'

Dead Girls Tell No Tales will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 19 September 2015 at 2.30 p.m.

Sources:

The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Volume IV: Sound and Vision by Asa Briggs (OUP 1979)

Inside the BBC by Leonard Miall (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1994)

Note:

Recent press coverage of the play Dead Girls Tell No Tales (and indeed the Radio 4 news report above) states an audience for infamous edition of The Archers as hitting 20 million, this is probably overstated by more than 50%. Briggs quotes an audience of 8 million and the BBC Year Book for 1956 states the usual figure as 9 million. Bearing in mind that there would have been no pre-publicity about the tragic storyline (how unlike today's coverage of events on Coronation Street and EastEnders) it seems unlikely that 20 million tuned in.  

Radio Lives - John Arlott

He was the voice of cricket. In that post-war period when the BBC had a monopoly on sports coverage it was John Arlott's commentary that welcomed in the summer.  When in 1957 radio's Test Match Special began - "don't miss a ball, we broadcast them all" - Arlott and fellow commentator Rex Alston were there to bring the action. John would cover all the domestic Test games until his retirement some twenty-three years later. His last cricket commentary was exactly thirty-five years ago today.   

John Arlott was born and raised in Basingstoke, Hampshire, as evident by that famous Hampshire burr. He had a passion for reading and devoured any material he could lay his hands on: Jules Verne, Dickens, Scott, The Strand. A Double Scholarship to Basingstoke Grammar saw him enjoy mixed fortunes academically and on the sports field- he enjoyed playing both football and cricket. Even during his school years his future career seemed to be mapped out. He took part in school debates and on one occasion spoke about 'the development of cricket from its original games' and gave 'interesting accounts of old cricket matches'. He'd also fill an exercise book with analysis of the scores for Glamorgan, a team he'd chosen as the Cinderella club in the County Championship and underdogs in all their matches.     

John's enquiring mind was not viewed sympathetically by his teachers who saw him 'beyond the pale' and, by his own admission, he was "a bit of a rebel".  His radical views would later see him challenging the political orthodoxies of both the right and the left in his regular appearances on Any Questions?     

His first paid job was in the Town Planning Office at Basingstoke Borough Council and then shortly afterwards as a diet clerk at the Park Prewett Mental Hospital. The attraction of the job was more that the hospital fielded a good cricket side rather than the delights of assessing and ordering provisions.

It was a similar consideration that informed his next career move to join the constabulary in Southampton - a place not too far away from a first class game and where there was a good side within the force. 

There's one amusing incident that Arlott, PC94, became involved in that perhaps presages the famous 1975 'freaker' commentary. Apparently a notorious Southampton flasher would ride his bike past rows of house drawing attention to himself  whilst rattling a walking stick across the fences or iron railings and at the same time shining a torch on 'himself'. One winter's evening Arlott and a fellow copper gave chase to him on their bikes, the pursuit came to an ungainly halt when the bikes and their riders parted company after hitting a tram that had screeched to a stop. Afterwards when John went round to see the youth's mother she remarked: "There's many a woman down the street who would give her right arm for what Billy's got".        

His work in the police force helped John develop his skills of observation, skills that would later infuse his commentary and his sports writing, It was also at this time that he developed his love a poetry, both reading it and writing it; his own verse enabling him to voice some of the horrors he witnessed in the war-torn city.

Illustration by Peter Brookes

In 1942 John published his first book, an anthology of topographical verse titled Landmarks. It also included some of his own work such as Cricket at Worcester, 1938. 'Dozing in the deck-chair's gentle curve/ Through half-closed eyes I watched the cricket/Knowing the sporting press would say/ Perks bowled well on a perfect wicket.'  He continued to contribute verse to periodicals and in 1944 an anthology of his own poetry was published by Jonathan Cape, Of Period and Place.     

The poet policeman became the broadcasting policeman in 1944 when BBC producer, and former literary editor, Geoffrey Grigson heard of Arlott via John Betjeman. His first talk, on cricket naturally enough, aired under the title An Enthusiast on his Enthusiasm on the Home Service on 23 October 1944. This was sufficiently well received, and for the next couple of years - with the kind understanding of his police superiors - the BBC offered him further talks plus poetry readings and acting performances on both the domestic and overseas services.  In an internal memo Grigson noted: "Arlott's a slowish speaker with a fairly rich Hampshire voice. He takes production very well, and can be bullied with discretion into style and vigour."   

By now John had been attached to the Police Training School, initially in Southampton and then seconded to London, handy for all those broadcasts. He has chosen to represent the police in the broadcast of a Tribute to the King on VE Day. Shortly after he handed in his resignation to join the staff of the BBC as Assistant (English Programmes) Eastern Services at the Overseas Services HQ on Oxford Street.

For the next four and a half years John's production work at the BBC mostly consisted of Book of Verse, a series about poetry featuring poets and writers such as Cecil Day-Lewis, P.H. Newby, Laurence Whistler, Stephen Spender and Dylan Thomas. John made about forty programmes with Dylan Thomas, about whom he observed: "He was an essentially simple person. He liked cricket, Rugby football and beer, jokes, idleness and other men's poetry."

Book of Verse was not only heard on the Eastern Services but enjoyed repeats on the Pacific and North American services and, for a while, was heard in the UK on the Light Programme. The readers included Valentine Dyall, David Jacobs, Robin Holmes, Laidman Brown, Carleton Hobbs and Marjorie Westbury.

John' move into cricket commentary came about, as these things often do, in a casual manner. In 1946 the Director of Eastern Services, Donald Stephenson, wanted to cover some of the matches of the Indian Test tour and asked John if he'd ever done a cricket broadcast.  He replied in the affirmative, referring a talk he'd given on the Home Service called The Hampshire Giants, even though he'd not done any actual commentating.  Arlott passed with flying colours. He soon developed a style of observation suffused with the poetic, allowing him to describe the players and the action in his own inimitable style. Years later, for instance , he would describe a bowler's crab-like delivery was "like Groucho Marx chasing a pretty waitress" and an umpire signalling a bye "with the air of a weary stork". He described his own technique thus: "I talk about what I see. A lot of commentators tend to talk about what they are thinking rather than what they are watching."

As well as providing brief pieces of cricket commentary - this was before the days of ball-by-ball coverage - for Overseas listeners, he also broadcast to home listeners on the Light Programme; his first commentary billing in the Radio Times for the match between Glamorgan and India is on 3 August 1946.  

By now John was combining cricket commentary, and from 1947, football commentary, presenting and producing for the Overseas Service, writing books about cricket and a sports column for the Evening News. He gave up his poetry programmes in 1951 to briefly join the Corporation's Staff Training Unit and in March 1953 left the staff to go freelance.

Those football commentaries are often overlooked. When Sports Report first aired in January 1948, John Arlott was there to report: "The game between Portsmouth and Huddersfield was a magnificent one to watch because both forward lines kept up on the attack and the wing-halves of each side gave them all the support they could possibly want, bringing the ball to them along the ground..." He continued to cover football until the late 50s but his style didn't necessarily suit the game. "His delivery was flat and monotonous. He seemed to concentrate very much on the players rather than the teams for which they were playing, so that if one joined the programme late, it would be difficult to distinguish which way the ball was going."  

TMS 23 June 1962

Much is made of Arlott's cricket commentary style, even though a lot of the available archive material doesn't adequately represent it. Often the longueurs of the game provide as much delight as the moments of action and high drama. It's difficult to describe so I'll leave it to Norman Herd who wrote this précis in the weekly magazine Spotlight:

His sentences are put together with a delightful smoothness and a spontaneous obedience to grammatical laws. He sees in pictures. He sees every player freshly and introduces him afresh at every appearance, no matter how much he may have done so previously... His imagery is remarkably consistent. Watkins, he tells us, is squatting 'rabbit-like' on his heels. Later on, Watkins 'scurries' across. Compton is once again walking and 'doctoring' this almost 'incurable' wicket.

This is John providing the commentary, alongside Ralph Richardson, in this somewhat over-romanticised look at the game for a British Council film released in 1950:

John's broadcasts weren't entirely devoted to sport and when Any Questions? started on the West of England Home Service on 12 October 1948 he was on the panel alongside novelist Naomi Royde-Smith, journalist for The Economist Honor Croome and Chief Education Officer for Dorset (later he'd chair My Word) Jack Longland. Arlott was an out-spoken, passionate and witty contributor to the programme though he nearly created a diplomatic incident when, in 1950, he opined that "the existing government in South Africa is predominantly a Nazi one".  He was dropped for a while but continued to appear fairly regularly until the early 1970s. 

Here are some audio memories of John Arlott as recalled on Radio 5 Live's Voices of Summer that first aired on 30 May 2013. With Mark Pougatch are Jonathan Agnew , Vic Marks, Bob Harris and David Rayvern-Allen.

Guilty Party broadcast on the Light Programme 21 August 1962.
This particular edition, along with a few others, can be heard on at least
one Old Time Radio website.

As well as numerous books and essays on cricket, and other sports, John wrote about his beloved Hampshire countryside and about wine - he had a well-stocked cellar at his final home on Alderney. He wrote for many national papers including the News Chronicle, the Observer, the Guardian, the Times and the Daily Mail. He also, naturally, wrote for Wisden.   All this was in addition to his radio and TV commentary work -he'd started to cover TV matches from the mid-50s. Such was his fame beyond the world of cricket that he had plenty of other job offers too from advertising St Bruno tobacco and cheddar cheese to appearing on panel games such as Guilty Party. This programme - on the Home Service and then the Light Programme between 1954 and 1962 - featured John on the panel trying to guess to outcome of an acted out crime and then identify 'the guilty party'. One can only assume his police training came in useful for this role. The format was revived in the 1990s as Foul Play.  

By 1979 John had made up his mind that the following season would be his last. Not only was he tired of meeting all his broadcasting and writing deadlines but his bronchitis was causing him trouble. "My wheezy chest, which does sometimes sound like a pair of bagpipes full of dust." In this interview with fellow commentator Brian Johnston he recalls his career. This was first heard on the Radio 4 special 100 Years of Australia-34 Years of Arlott. 

His final Test Match appearance was on 2 September 1980 for the Centenary Test against Australia. There was no on-air farewell, no acknowledgment that 34 years of Test Match commentary was at an end. Perhaps he feared he would have choke on his words.   

Radio Times billing for John's final
commentary match 

A number of references to Arlott's final Test Match commentary make the assumption that it was his last ever radio commentary. It wasn't. That followed some four days later when Radio 3 medium wave covered the Gillette Cup Final of Surrey vs Middlesex at Lords. I was reminded of this last year when Charlie Cooke contacted me to kindly offer me his recording of part of that commentary. With him in the commentary box is Fred Trueman and 'The Bearded Wonder' Bill Frindall. You'll also hear Brian Johnston, Trevor Bailey and Radio 3 announcer John Holmstrom. Here's John in action. Listen out for a comment about chanting from the Tavern "born on the wings of ale".

The recording doesn't include John's sign-off but this was related by Henry Blofeld in his Times obituary for John: 

"It was a rare and unforgettable privilege to have had the luck to share a microphone with Arlott in the last seven years of his commentating career. On a Saturday evening in early September 1980, towards the end of the Gillette Cup final, Arlott said simply, 'And after a word from Trevor Bailey, it will be Henry Blofeld.' 

He got up from his seat and pushed back his chair; he stood aside while I sat down and then moved quietly to the back of the commentary-box, where he opened the door and walked slowly out of cricket commentary for ever. As likely as not he went in search of a glass of his beloved claret."

In fact even that match wasn't John's final radio commentary. Not if you count his appearance on Noel Edmond's Radio 1 show on 7 September covering the game featuring Princess Margaret's XI versus President Carter's XI.

John lived out his retirement on Alderney, still writing on cricket, and wine, and making occasional radio and TV broadcasts. But his health was failing and on 14 December 1991 he passed away. The voice of cricket fell silent.  

John Arlott

1914-1991

This post only touches on John Arlott''s life and career. There are a number of books by and about John but the above quotes come from Arlott: The Authorised Biography by David Rayvern Allen (Harper Collins, 1994).

With thanks to Charlie Cooke.