Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend. Jonathan Agnew
was that while he wanted to be involved in ‘entertainment’, nothing particularly interested him. A chance reunion with two BBC war correspondents, Stewart MacPherson and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who Brian had met during the war, led to his interview with the Old Etonian Seymour de Lotbiniere at Outside Broadcasts. Although Brian did not seem to be entirely convinced, he agreed to take part in two tests that can hardly be described as taxing. In the first, he simply had to commentate on what he could see going on in Piccadilly Circus; the second involved interviewing members of the public in Oxford Street about what they thought of rationing. It is fair to say that his performances did not set the world alight, but he was nevertheless regarded as promising enough to be offered a job, starting on 13 January 1946. So began a career in broadcasting that was to last almost fifty years.
At the time Brian joined the BBC, the flagship Saturday-evening programme In Town Tonight attracted a staggering twenty million listeners or more every week. Entire families would crowd around the radio to listen to the studio-based magazine programme featuring interviews and music, including a brief three-and-a-half-minute live segment. This was the slot that Brian inherited from John Snagge, but now made his own, and his off-the-cuff, unscripted and often daring broadcasts to millions of people earned him his fame and his reputation.
Many of these live broadcasts have passed into folklore, although I do think the naïvety of the audience in those early days did give Brian a sizeable opportunity for hamming things up a bit – something he certainly would not have shied away from. There was the night he spent in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s, during which he claimed to be terrified as he cowered amongst the waxworks of mass murderers, executioners and their victims. Yet this was a man who had only recently been under fire, winning the Military Cross. And there would certainly have been BBC technicians with him in the Chamber of Horrors. The whole episode was surely skilfully laced with Brian’s love of dramatics. A rather braver episode was lying beneath the track outside Victoria Station in a pit about three feet deep, and commentating as the Golden Arrow, en route from Paris, thundered overhead. Unfortunately, the Golden Arrow was running a few minutes late that evening, so after quite a build-up Brian had to make do with a comparatively dull suburban electric train, which nonetheless sounded very impressive as it passed over him, with Brian barely audible as he described the impressive shower of sparks. In An Evening with Johnners he would claim that when the delayed Golden Arrow finally rattled overhead, someone happened to flush the toilet and absolutely soaked him, although I suspect this was another case of entirely harmless Johnston creativity.
Live broadcasting in those days must have been a hairy business of poor communications, failed live crossings and all manner of technical mishaps. The best presenters would have been those who could remain calm, or lucid at least, when everything was falling down all around them. Maybe the post-war attitude, as famously expressed by the great Australian cricketer and fighter pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force, Keith Miller, was a contributing factor. When asked about handling the pressure of a situation in a particular cricket match, Miller scoffed: ‘Pressure? Pressure’s having a Messerschmitt up your arse!’
It was in 1946, during his first year at the BBC, that Johnners was first approached to commentate on cricket. This began as little more than a gentle enquiry from an old friend, Ian Orr-Ewing, who was now head of Outside Broadcasts at BBC television, which in those days was little more than a fledgling operation. Only four Test matches had been broadcast on television before the war, but Orr-Ewing was now planning to show the 1946 series against India. Brian was a staff man at Outside Broadcasts, and was known to love cricket; those credentials proved to be more than enough to get him the job.
It must have been a terribly exciting time – these were the pioneering days of television commentary, with no rules or experience to fall back on. Brian’s colleagues in the box included the former Surrey and England captain Percy Fender, whose nose was equally prominent as Brian’s, and R.C. Robertson-Glasgow, who had played for Somerset and was one of the leading writers on cricket of the time. I suspect this environment was not unlike that of my early days on the new digital television networks. All the equipment was in place, but only a tiny audience was watching, so it was a perfect way to learn the trade without too many people witnessing one’s mistakes.
BBC Radio had been broadcasting cricket reports since 1927, and Howard Marshall began providing commentary in short chunks in 1934. He was joined by E.W. (Jim) Swanton, and later by Rex Alston, and in 1946, the same year that Brian started in the television commentary box, John Arlott was recruited by BBC Radio. Despite the BBC having the personnel to broadcast a full day’s play, there were still only short periods of commentary until 1957, when for the first time an entire Test match, against the West Indies, was broadcast. A new programme needed a new name: Test Match Special. It was not until he became the BBC’s cricket correspondent in 1963 that Brian started to appear occasionally on Test Match Special, sharing his radio duties with television, despite regularly touring overseas for BBC Radio from the winter of 1958 until he retired as cricket correspondent in 1972.
Despite often living on the edge, in broadcasting terms at least, Brian was always capable of laughing at himself. He absolutely adored cock-ups, and in those early days of broadcasting these must have been many and often. One I distinctly remember him mentioning in his Uppingham speech all those years ago involved Wynford Vaughan-Thomas rather than himself, but he told the story with tremendous enthusiasm, and as was his wont, he could not help but laugh along too.
This gaffe occurred when Queen Elizabeth, later to become the Queen Mother, launched HMS Ark Royal at Birkenhead in 1950. Vaughan-Thomas was reporting the event for BBC television, and was briefed by the producer that there were three cameras. The first would show the Queen officially naming the ship, breaking the bottle of champagne against the hull. He was not to speak at this stage, or indeed during the second shot, which would be of the Marine band playing and the crowd cheering. Camera three would then show the Ark Royal slipping slowly down the ramp, and only when it finally entered the water could Vaughan-Thomas start his commentary. Everything went perfectly until the third shot, when, with the Ark Royal sliding down the ramp, the producer saw that camera one had a lovely picture of the Queen smiling serenely and waving to the crowds, so he switched the picture from camera three to camera one. Vaughan-Thomas failed to check his monitor as the Ark Royal hit the water, and with televisions all around the country showing a full-sized frame of a beaming Queen, Vaughan-Thomas said: ‘There she is, the huge vast bulk of her!’
That story brought down the Uppingham School hall, and would later feature in Brian’s theatre show. Little did he know that sitting in the audience that day was a schoolboy with whom, almost a quarter of a century later, he would combine to create an even more notorious broadcasting cock-up. Johnners would then always use what has become known as ‘The Leg Over’ as the climax to his speeches, as indeed I do today. But that afternoon in the mid-1970s, as I walked back to my boarding house with my mates chuckling at the stories we had just heard, I had no idea that this wonderful entertainer and I would one day be colleagues.
Chapter Two
A Radio Man
Brian Johnston was a major influence on my career. Sitting and watching him communicate with his listeners with such ease and warmth was an object lesson in broadcasting. Most of what I learned from Johnners came purely from example – he was the most natural broadcaster I have ever met. He only ever directly gave me one firm piece of advice.
We were sitting together in the commentary box high in the left-hand turret of the Lord’s Pavilion before the start of a day’s play in a Test match. Bill Frindall settled down beside us as we relaxed with a cup of tea at the commentators’ desk, while Peter Baxter, the producer, was constantly on the move preparing for Test Match Special to go on air. Backwards and forwards he rushed between the commentary box and the engineers’ room, which was little more than a small glory hole to our left, full of tangled wires and electronic equipment. There was no direct communication between the two. Beyond the engineers was an even smaller booth, at the end of the run of three semi-permanent boxes which was where the BBC reporting position used to be located before the arrival of the spectacular Media Centre which now dominates the Nursery End. Its shape has been compared variously to a spaceship, a gherkin and even Cherie Blair’s