Browse content similar to John Arlott in Conversation with Mike Brearley. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
That was as good a ball as Willis has bowled. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
It was up, it was on a length, it was on line, it moved in a little | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
and Richards simply walked into it, and on-drove it. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
Willis again. And that's chopped down, between slips and gully. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
Gully, who's Willey, turns and chases it. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:15 | |
They canter an easy two. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
No trouble at all. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:18 | |
-Do you have any favourites among the commentators? -Yes, yes. John Arlott. -John Arlott. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:22 | |
Massie, who's bowled unchanged throughout the innings. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
20 overs now. In for two. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
And, after Trevor Bailey, it will be Christopher Martin-Jenkins. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
It's not an easy job commentating. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:33 | |
I think John's been one of the best, by a long way. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
John Arlott. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
He's a man of many parts. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
He's generous to a fault. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:44 | |
Both in deeds and in thought. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:48 | |
He's a lover of cricket, and of cricketers. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
But well aware of the dictum, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
"What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
John, here we are in Alderney. I wonder what made you choose | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
to come and live here when you decided to retire. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
I'd been coming here for a long time. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:07 | |
I came first of all by accident. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:09 | |
A neighbour in Highgate introduced me to the island in 1951. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:18 | |
And I always wanted to come here and retire. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
Several things. First of all... | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
the tempo is superb. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
Secondly, it's extremely quiet. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
And, thirdly, and I think this is most important, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
people of the island let you live your own life. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
It's completely peaceful, as far as I'm concerned. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:42 | |
Nobody worries me. Nobody bores me. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
And I can live alone | 0:01:45 | 0:01:47 | |
and not see anyone except my wife or my family for a week and then | 0:01:47 | 0:01:52 | |
do a party, have some people into dinner, something like that. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
I find it the absolutely perfect existence and also, of course, | 0:01:55 | 0:02:01 | |
it's very good for my bronchitic chest, because the air is so clear. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:06 | |
What was the first money you ever earned? | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
Did you do a paper round or anything like that? | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
No, I was very upmarket. I, er... | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
I used to do scribbling for Mr Goodall the builder in the school holidays. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:21 | |
And I was supposed to have shorthand, | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
which was a bit of a glorification of my rather thin capabilities. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:31 | |
But he used to dictate this to me. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
Costings, tenders. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
I also remember it used to end, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
and I understood this for gospel for many years... | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
.."To clearing site and removal of dibrizz." | 0:02:42 | 0:02:46 | |
-Dubrizz? -Dibrizz. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
I later learnt that meant debris. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
Oh, I see. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
Removal of dibrizz. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
But, all right, that was my first six bob a week, I thought. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:01 | |
One of your first jobs, not your first job but, I think, | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
your second job probably, was being a policeman. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
And then becoming a detective. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:10 | |
Why did you...? What was so interesting in that to you? | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
Well, first of all, my father wanted me to have a secure job. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
We were poor. I grew up in the slump. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
And the desperate thing my father wanted was that | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
I should never be out of work. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
So, first of all, I went into the local government office, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:31 | |
then into the mental health service as a doctor's clerk. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
All pensionable jobs, you see. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
And then, into the police force, which was also pensionable. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
And Southampton Police had about the best | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
club cricket side in England so I thought | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
if I could combine security with cricket, I'd be doing fairly well. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
Mm. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
I wouldn't say, though, that I was ever a particularly good policeman | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
or a particularly good cricketer, but, er... | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
It seemed to me a way of growing up. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
It seemed to me that offices were petty and small-minded. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:12 | |
And that the police force would be bigger, and more virile, more manly. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:17 | |
I was wrong. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:19 | |
It could be very small-minded in those days. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
I don't know if it is now. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:26 | |
Greater freedom. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:28 | |
There's not the appalling, back-breaking discipline | 0:04:28 | 0:04:33 | |
of the chaser sergeants and the chaser points, you know. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
Driving you round the beat at 3-3½ miles an hour, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
as some of those old sadists used to do. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
But I suppose it was a way of life that brought you into contact | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
with people, in a way that, perhaps, it wouldn't do so much today. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:51 | |
Yes, it did. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:52 | |
And that was the most valuable part of it all. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
And the other thing is, of course, that it's a hardening process. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
I don't say it makes you into a bully, it removes physical fear, | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
which is very useful indeed. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
And if somebody says, "I'll clock you," you're not frightened. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
I mean, it may be that he is going to clock you. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
It may be he's going to knock you down. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
It may be he's going to produce a great, big black eye. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
But you've had a black eye before, at boxing, and things like this. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
You're not physically frightened, which I think is a good thing. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
And you reckoned the police helped you, being a policeman helped you? | 0:05:24 | 0:05:28 | |
Oh, I know it did. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:29 | |
I know it did because, at school, it was possible, at times, | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
for me to be bullied. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
I hit back, on instructions from my father. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
And I was threatened to be taken to the headmaster for bullying, myself! | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
Yes, it makes you altogether more self-reliant and less fearful. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
-And more generally secure in outlook, I think. -Mm. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
And before that, the mental health job. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
I mean, did you actually have contact with... | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
Was that an interest or was it merely a branch of the civil service? | 0:05:56 | 0:06:00 | |
I was doctor's clerk in a mental hospital | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
and I was working with patients most of the time, with doctors, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:08 | |
and I was frequently on the wards. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
In your teens, you see, that's a very morbid experience. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:17 | |
Again, it teaches you a terrible amount about life and about people. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:23 | |
And the fact that the people they call insane are, in fact, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:29 | |
ordinary people with just one little kink, one little twist, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
one little oddity. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:33 | |
I wouldn't have missed that. I wouldn't have missed either. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
But I wouldn't want to have spent as long as I did in either, really. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
Because you were in there four years. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:46 | |
Four years and 11 years in the police force. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:50 | |
Things change now at a vast rate. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:54 | |
I remember talking to my mother not long before she died. | 0:06:55 | 0:07:01 | |
She was saying when she was married there was no radio, no television. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:06 | |
No internal combustion engine, no motorcars. No aircraft. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:11 | |
And she lived to look at television and see a man land on the moon. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
All right, it's trite, I know. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
But it does show just what has happened to us. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
-And how difficult, understandably difficult, it is for many people to adjust. -Mm. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:31 | |
I don't know about you. You may master computers. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
But I stand in utter awe of computers. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:39 | |
And yet I go round to my friends' houses | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
and find their 10-year-olds putting computers together with DIY kits! | 0:07:41 | 0:07:47 | |
And, you know, one never knows | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
whether to stay an old square or try to live up to it or... | 0:07:49 | 0:07:54 | |
You've mentioned your father a couple of times. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
What did he do? What was he like? | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
He was the cemetery registrar at Basingstoke. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:07 | |
He was a terribly good mechanic and he was tutored in diesel engines | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
by Dr Diesel himself, of which he was very proud. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
It was a shame that... | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 | |
He did that, you see, to get a house for himself and my mother, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:21 | |
and a secure income before he went to the First World War. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
And, er... | 0:08:25 | 0:08:27 | |
He was very small. Very neat. Very capable. Superb with his hands. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:33 | |
He could do anything in the house. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
Furnish the house in oak. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
He used to mend our shoes. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:41 | |
Change the fuses. Do the plumbing. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
And the carpentry. Do all the repairs about the house. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:47 | |
And, in addition, feed us from the allotment. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:51 | |
Of course, he worked himself to death. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
He just worked so hard to keep the family going on a small income | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
that, when he retired, there wasn't very much left. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:01 | |
He was a very sweet, gentle, loving, indulgent man. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
He and my mother were just so wonderful. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
The poverty never mattered. It never occurred to me. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
I only stand back and look now and realise how poor we were. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
And I'm amazed that we were so incredibly happy as a family, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
-how well we understood one another. -Mm. There were just the three of you? | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
Yes. Yes. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
The doctor, I believe, recommended my mother to have another child. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
And she said, "Yes, I would, Dr Bethel, if I could afford it." | 0:09:34 | 0:09:37 | |
And it really was like that. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
She was a very capable woman. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:45 | |
She was the local Liberal agent and did succeed, | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
the only one who ever did, | 0:09:48 | 0:09:50 | |
the only agent who ever got a Liberal in for Basingstoke. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
It sounds as though your relationship with them | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
continued to be really close. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
I mean, you asked your mother her opinion about the politics and | 0:09:58 | 0:10:02 | |
your father's reaction was, you know, there was a lot of communication... | 0:10:02 | 0:10:07 | |
We were always terribly close, yes. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:09 | |
I loved them dearly. I was desperately grateful to them. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
Still am. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:13 | |
It's about the most important thing people do for other people, isn't it? | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
Yes. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:22 | |
And these other... Well, let me ask you, | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
are there decisions that you've actually regretted? | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
Things that you wished you had done? | 0:10:37 | 0:10:40 | |
As they say, that's a good question. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
There ought to be. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
I'm trying, as I've never thought of this before, | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
but what I suppose is that, | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
once I make a decision, I accept it, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
and I don't gripe if the dice fall the other way. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
I've been lucky, you see. Desperately lucky in many ways. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:12 | |
Unlucky in a few. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
A few unimportant ones. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:17 | |
To think that the cemetery keeper's boy | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
was going to be a commentator, a poet, an author. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:30 | |
Even be conversed with by you. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
It's a pretty heady thought, you know, that... | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
It's one that you appreciate more than | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
if you've been born into some kind of privilege. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
Sometimes you tell yourself you've done it yourself but you know, | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
really, that there's a vast element of luck in it, | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
of being in the right place at the right time | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
and doing the right thing that was warranted at the right time. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:05 | |
I'm sure there are 50 better commentators then me | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
about the place who are not doing commentary. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
And, uh, I was there when it happened. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
But I had a feeling also that | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
you were quite ambitious to do well in something. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
I mean, you said about various things that, at that point, you saw | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
you couldn't do any more and weren't going to be good enough at it. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
I think, wouldn't you say, you wanted to do something really well. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
-Yes, I did. -Or some things really well. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
But I wasn't looking for something to do well. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
I became interested in things and tried to do well at them, | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
which I think is a different matter. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
I didn't want success at any price. I wanted... | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
I wanted to do what I've done, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
which was earn my living doing the things I've loved. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
You see so few people who are really happy in their work. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:57 | |
Decent, nice, fundamentally mentally contented chaps will tell you | 0:12:57 | 0:13:02 | |
they're happy in their job but they're not really. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
The job doesn't satisfy. It doesn't please them. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
It doesn't make them terribly proud. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
It's rarely a thing... | 0:13:11 | 0:13:12 | |
It's rarely doing something that, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
if they weren't doing it professionally, they'd do as a hobby. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
That's right. There are not many of those. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
And, for us, we've both been fortunate in that way. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
Yes, I think it might have taken a lot of persuasion to ask you | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
to refuse the England captaincy(!) | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
It would have taken a lot to stop me becoming a commentator once | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
I had the chance of it. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
Or a Guardian cricket correspondent. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
Or almost all the other things I've ever been. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
Desperately lucky. Right time, right place. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
Not only were you a cemetery keeper's son, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
but you were, as you've already said... | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
You failed your school certificate. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
-I mean, you didn't have a very... -Spectacularly. -Spectacular, was it? | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
Well, I mean, the one subject I would have passed | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
and might have got a credit in, which was geography, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
I left halfway through the paper, knowing I'd done enough to pass. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
I went to see Reading play in a cup tie | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
and, for that reason, they turned me down and failed me | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
in geography, which I always thought was a dirty trick. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
But I took it after I'd left school, you see. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
I left school in rebellion. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:20 | |
Yes. Why was that? | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
What happened at school? What was your school? | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
It was Queen Mary School, Basingstoke, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
which was a little grammar school of 125 boys. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
Tough and hard, with a Prussian headmaster | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
who enjoyed wielding the cane. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
We looked each other in the eye very early on. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
I think he thought he would beat me into submission. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
I had more whacks than anybody else in our form. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
You used to touch your toes, whip your coat-tails up your back | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
and, out of the hem of his gown, he pulled this cane, | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
which was as thick as my thumb, and four feet long. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
He always used to cane at the washbasins, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
because there it echoed all round the school. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
And the bruises lasted for about a fortnight. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
Red the first night, gradually going black, and, er... | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
..you'd take a three or four and stand up and look him in the eyes. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
I never had a six. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
I never did anything quite bad enough to deserve that. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
I never saw anybody who kept consciousness after | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
he had one of Percival's sixes. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
They would fall on their faces or stagger out and | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
the people in their form would catch them. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
Take them out and run their head under the tap in the basins. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
But he enjoyed it, poor fellow, | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
and he had asthma so you can only feel sorry for him. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:52 | |
But it set you against the whole school process? | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
Well, I had friends there and some staff that I respected immensely. | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
But it set me against him, you know, so that I had to draw level, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
even though I couldn't afford it, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
to the extent of smoking the same expensive cigarettes. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
I did put it straight years afterwards. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:15 | |
When, bewilderingly, he turned up at our old boys' dinner | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
and they asked me to propose his health. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
I said, "Me? You know what I thought of him." | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
And the chairman said, "Yes, say it." And I said it. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
And I still don't know whether it was cruel or deserved. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
Or valedictory or whether he hadn't asked for it, | 0:16:30 | 0:16:32 | |
and deserved to know before he died. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:34 | |
If he's listening now, I meant it. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:39 | |
John, you've written at least one hymn, maybe you've written more. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:49 | |
And that wasn't all that long ago, was it? | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
-Oh, it's a long time ago. -Was it? | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
Oh, yes. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:55 | |
Late '40s, I should think. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
I wrote three or four hymns for the BBC hymnbook, | 0:16:58 | 0:17:02 | |
one of which is pretty constantly reprinted. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
More reprinted than anything else I've ever written, I think. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
-Is it about ploughing? -Yes, harvest festival. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
Yes, anything to turn an honest penny. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
Presumably there was some belief behind it. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
Yes, I was brought up to God. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:31 | |
In church I was brought up, I suppose, | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
as what you'd call a practising Christian. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
The loss of my eldest son hit... hit that pretty hard. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:43 | |
It's all very well for people to tell me | 0:17:49 | 0:17:50 | |
about it being all for the best and things like this. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
That matters, I suppose, to me, more than anything else at the time. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
It hasn't changed much over the years, except other things have joined it. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
I rate my family higher than anything else in the world. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:21 | |
Too many of them gone. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
You see, you either belong to the club of "It happens to me" | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
or the club of "It doesn't happen to me" and... | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
never the twain you shall meet. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:38 | |
That's a corny thing to say, but it's true. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:43 | |
They really don't understand each other | 0:18:44 | 0:18:46 | |
and neither can explain to the other, really. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
You can't win 'em all, you know. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:59 | |
Luck over some things, and not over others. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:03 | |
That's pretty corny and trite, too. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
And I needn't have said it and I probably shouldn't have said it. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
-Talk about something else. -Yeah. What shall we talk about? | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
I must say, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
filming with beaujolais is much better than just filming, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
-don't you think? -It is, yeah. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
Not the connoisseur's drink, but the ordinary chap's drink. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:48 | |
In the old bistro glasses, the 19th-century bistro glasses. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:53 | |
-They're lovely glasses. -They're not delicate, sensitive, or anything like that. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:58 | |
The glasses they use... | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
Where did you get them? You've got a lot of them, haven't you? | 0:20:03 | 0:20:07 | |
Yes. Bought them in Burgundy from Christopher Fielden. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
Oh, and from a lady called Lesley Taylor in Cirencester, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:18 | |
who used to buy 'em a lot in France and bring 'em back and sell 'em. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
You simply don't find them any more. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
It's a wonder they're not all gone. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:27 | |
Thank goodness they bounce if you have reasonable carpets. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
And sometimes off the parquet, too. They're pretty solid. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
That's probably done no good at all to the microphone. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
-The table's all right, though. -They are solid. The table's used to it. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
Yes, we touched on it before, | 0:21:00 | 0:21:01 | |
whether you'd ever worked too hard for the family. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
And one of the aspects of that was being a professional, | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
wasn't it, and doing jobs properly and not turning things down. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
Yes. I think I'm not so reluctant now. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
You see, for a long time as a freelancer, you think, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
"If I refuse this job, I may never get another." | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
And especially when I left the BBC | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
and left the shelter of a permanent, pensionable job | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
and set out into the wilderness that my father so dreaded, | 0:21:29 | 0:21:36 | |
there was then a time when I accepted anything, | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
right, left and centre. If it was work, I took it. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
And for years, of course, you never took a holiday. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
But, er... | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
But Maurice Eddleston cured that. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
Turned up one day and he said, "When are you two going on holiday, then?" | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
So Valerie looked the other way and I said, | 0:21:56 | 0:21:58 | |
"Well, I don't think we are, Maurice." He said, "Why not?" | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
"Take the girl for a holiday." | 0:22:01 | 0:22:02 | |
I said, "But, Maurice, you know, there's so much work to do and if you're a freelancer..." | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
He said, "I'm a freelancer. We're going on holiday." | 0:22:06 | 0:22:11 | |
"Why don't you make him take you somewhere?" he said to Valerie. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
She said, "Well, you did say you'd take me to Venice." | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
So I said, "OK, we'll go to Venice. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
"And what's more, we'll go on the Orient express." | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
So I rapidly accepted a job to write an account of a Test tour. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:31 | |
Dashed this down. Every night I filled it in, | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
kept the job up-to-date, so that as soon as the cricket season ended, | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
we could dive off and we got on this train at Waterloo, er, Victoria. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:47 | |
This was the romantic dream of all time. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
This was the Orient Express. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
They took the diner off at Paris on the way out. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
We went on the way out in a cabin where there wasn't room | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
for two people to stand up at the same time, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
nor even one to stand bolt upright. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:07 | |
On the way out, we were next door to the toilet, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:13 | |
which reeked to high heaven of ammonia. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
On the way back, we were at the opposite end with half a mile walk to the toilet. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:21 | |
And I'm not sure which was worse. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
And on the way back, they took the diner off at Milan. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:27 | |
But the exciting thing was that to eat, | 0:23:27 | 0:23:32 | |
you bought off these trolleys on the railway platforms. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
And, in Switzerland, you could get off and you had 40 minutes for a meal at the border. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:40 | |
In a railway buffet. And a railway buffet in this country means | 0:23:40 | 0:23:45 | |
everything a railway buffet means in this country, but there it doesn't. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:49 | |
And so often, you know, you go to a French town | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
and the best restaurant in the town is the railway buffet. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
And this was like that, or it tasted like it, in Switzerland. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
And we had the most magnificent time in Venice. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:04 | |
And, you know, this is where I vacillate. I'm so feeble. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:09 | |
I don't know which is the finest city in the world. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
Whether it's London, Paris, Vienna, Venice, Rome. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
Bordeaux's got to get pretty closely into the running. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:23 | |
And Beaune, the walled, boozy city of Burgundy. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:27 | |
Or Beaujeu, the little forgotten town of Beaujolais. I don't know. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:31 | |
Barcelona, the Ramblas. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
I don't think... Well, I don't know. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
San Francisco. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
But, on the whole, not many good cities outside Europe. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
Not for the European, I don't think. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
-Sydney takes a beating. -Pardon? -Sydney takes a bit of beating. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
Trouble is, it's full of Australians. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:54 | |
Well, there are exceptions. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
Yes. There are exceptions, actually. | 0:24:57 | 0:24:59 | |
There's some very nice Australians. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
And Sydney is, in many ways... | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
..I suppose, the most attractive of really modern cities. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:13 | |
If you can put up with the taxi drivers. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:17 | |
You had your own... | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
What was your first experience with Sydney taxi drivers? | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
The first time I ever hailed a cab and he pulled up. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
Being used to London, I put my hand on the handle of the back door | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
and the driver looked up at me and said, "Do I bleeding stink, then?" | 0:25:29 | 0:25:34 | |
You get in front with the driver in Sydney. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
Which I'm always happy to do anywhere, anyway, but I... | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
I was over-accustomed to London. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:44 | |
The trouble is, if you get in the front seat, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:46 | |
and especially in a Test series, | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
"You bleeding Poms haven't got a chance, have you, eh?" | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
"We'll mop ya, mate." | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
Yes, there can be no greater pleasure than a tour of Australia | 0:25:57 | 0:26:01 | |
with a winning English side, especially if they've lost the first Test match. Oh! | 0:26:01 | 0:26:07 | |
Glorious. Because they are not the world's greatest losers. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:12 | |
They do melt away a bit. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:14 | |
Mind you, they melt away all over the place, don't they? | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
I've seen them melt away in Kent | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
when things are not going well, and in a much different style. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
They've a rather nicely spoken, smiling style when things go well, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
but they melt away quietly. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
Ah, not like the Australians, Mike. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
You must admit, not like the Australians. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
Nobody gets so bitter as the Australians. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
Nobody has ever been on the receiving end of that | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
-more desperately than you except, perhaps, Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine. -Yes. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:43 | |
To go there and win is great but you come back with scars on the soul. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
Yeah, well... Mind you, the biggest opposition and hostility was when | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
we in fact lost the time after, because we'd one the year before. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:56 | |
And then the Packer players came back. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
And we didn't agree to all the detail that they wanted and I seemed to be, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
to them, the person who made all the decisions as to what rules we played under and everything. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:07 | |
And it was quite an interesting, interesting tour. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
You never did a braver or better, or calmer thing in your life than that. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:16 | |
I must say, I boiled with indignation for you | 0:27:16 | 0:27:20 | |
and was overwhelmed with admiration that you could put up with it. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
-I couldn't have put up with it. -Yeah. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
-I lost my temper once. -Perhaps you couldn't buy a machine gun. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:32 | |
I met Bob Hawke there who, towards the end of the tour... | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
-The new Prime Minister. -The new Prime Minister, who told me... He said that he had a lot of... | 0:27:35 | 0:27:40 | |
He was very interested to meet me, and he was a very nice, pleasant man. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
And he told me that he thought I didn't quite handle the Ockers as well as I might have. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:48 | |
And that they weren't all as bad as I probably thought. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:52 | |
In fact, quite a lot of them voted for him, he said. HE LAUGHS | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
Yes, the Ocker is an unfortunate symbol that too many of them have adopted, you know. | 0:27:56 | 0:28:03 | |
People like Dennis Lillee and Marsh, Rod Marsh, | 0:28:03 | 0:28:10 | |
-who almost welcomed the concept of the Ocker image and it's... -Yeah. -It's not nice. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:16 | |
I'd take Marsh out of that category a bit. Put Ian Chappell in. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:19 | |
But I'd take Marsh out a bit. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:21 | |
I mean, about Rod Marsh, he never appealed... | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
Occasionally he got angry if he thought they'd been done. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:27 | |
But, generally speaking, he never appealed unless he thought it was out. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
I used to get great fun out of him, because somebody would say, | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
"Ah, you're being tough again, Rod." And I'd say, "But he's not tough. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:40 | |
"He's a dear, nice, sweet, cuddly teddy bear." | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
"Get off, mate!" This was the one thing he couldn't stand. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:48 | |
He'd take almost anything else. But not being described as a nice, cuddly teddy bear of a man. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:52 | |
I suppose not many people would, really! | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
No, let's let Rod off, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:00 | |
if only on account of that wonderful calling back when he said not out. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:05 | |
Randall? Yeah. I believe Greg Chappell | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
was so fed up, he went off to fine leg for a couple of overs. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
Took no part in the running of the match but, yes, | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
I think Rod Marsh is... | 0:29:14 | 0:29:16 | |
I mean, off the field, he bristles, doesn't he? | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
He doesn't shave and he bristles on the field. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:20 | |
And there's a nice story of him with Derek Randall and Randall coming in to bat one day, | 0:29:20 | 0:29:24 | |
I think in England, in a Test match, and saying... | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
You know, they never could understand Randall. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:29 | |
Well, a lot of people can't understand him! | 0:29:29 | 0:29:31 | |
But the Australians could understand him less than the rest of us. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
And Derek came in and said, " 'Ey oop, Marshy, how you goin', then?" | 0:29:34 | 0:29:38 | |
And Rod Marsh didn't say a thing. "Are we not chatting, then, today?" says Randall. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
And Marsh eventually says, "What do you think this is, a...garden party?" | 0:29:42 | 0:29:48 | |
But he was all right. And off the field, quiet and a very warm man. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:53 | |
Yes. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:57 | |
I've known some splendid Australians. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
-Especially the nice, tame ones who settled in England, like Jack... -HE LAUGHS | 0:30:02 | 0:30:07 | |
..like Col McCool. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:09 | |
Bill Alley's still here. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:13 | |
Always had that elegant, dignified Sydney side. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
What a good player, my goodness. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:21 | |
What a loss he was, for years, to top-class cricket. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:24 | |
Yes. They do make me laugh sometimes, but not always. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:30 | |
Sometimes they make me very cross, indeed. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
They don't lose well. That's... | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
Well, again, in my experience, Rod Marsh would be the first | 0:30:39 | 0:30:43 | |
at the end of a Test match we'd won to come and shake everyone's hand | 0:30:43 | 0:30:48 | |
and say, "Well played," and, you know, be there. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
What I always remember and, I'm not always proud of our reactions, | 0:30:51 | 0:30:56 | |
especially the reactions of our football supporters, but, in 1948, | 0:30:56 | 0:31:03 | |
when Bradman's side rolled over us like a steamroller, | 0:31:03 | 0:31:09 | |
and there was the outside chance to win at Headingley, | 0:31:09 | 0:31:14 | |
and we missed it, we dropped two crucial catches. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
We didn't quite have the side to do it. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:19 | |
Above all, I don't think we believed we could win. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
And then they came to the Oval. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:25 | |
And they won. And the cheers, the farewell for Bradman | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
and the cheers for the side were so, so generous, | 0:31:28 | 0:31:33 | |
I'd never been prouder of an English crowd of any sort in my life. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:38 | |
And they haven't often shown us that kind of generosity. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:44 | |
It's hard, if you've been trying, and you're combative | 0:31:49 | 0:31:52 | |
and you're competitive and you're a good performer. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:55 | |
It's very, very hard to lose easy. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:59 | |
I remember that... | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
Was it the '57 West Indies side that lost and, suddenly, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:06 | |
after the Oval test, they all disappeared. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:08 | |
There was no grumble, no complaint. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
But when everybody thought we were going to have a party now, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
we can fetch the bottle and they'd gone. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
Well, I didn't find the Australian players like this. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
-The public, perhaps, but not the players. -No. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
And another thing I will always remember is that | 0:32:24 | 0:32:29 | |
great West Indian win of 1950. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
You know, the Ramadhin and Valentine team. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
And how an originally stunned English public, | 0:32:34 | 0:32:39 | |
and, by heaven, they were stunned, read the reports that West Indies | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
had won so many series over there, but they'd never won any here. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:48 | |
And then they came and... | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
I'm not sure, moved as the West Indian spectators were at Lord's | 0:32:51 | 0:32:56 | |
when they coined Ramadhin and Valentine and all this, | 0:32:56 | 0:33:01 | |
I'm not sure that, in many respects, the English spectators, | 0:33:01 | 0:33:05 | |
-once they'd got over their surprise, weren't even more impressed. -Mm. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:10 | |
They were a funny couple, weren't they? | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
Those two on the boat over, the rest of the team spent | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
much of the time teaching them to sign their autographs. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
They said it didn't matter whether they could bowl or not, | 0:33:19 | 0:33:22 | |
but in England, they got to sign their autographs. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
Garfield Sobers said to Charlie Davies when he came over, | 0:33:26 | 0:33:31 | |
"Charlie," he said, "if you're going to be an English county cricketer, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
"you won't qualify until you've eaten half a ton of lettuce." | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
You must have had enough county ground lunches to know how deadly true that is. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
Good ones were... I mean, not true at Lord's, though. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:47 | |
-No. -Marvellous lunches there. -Lord's were very good. -Very good. | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
I always liked that story of Ted Dexter saying, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:55 | |
when he was Test captain, "Why do we always have to give them this hot | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
"tomato soup and things like this in hot weather?" | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
"Why don't we give a nice, well-chilled, cold consomme?" | 0:34:02 | 0:34:07 | |
So they duly served this and the Australians, to a man, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
complained that the soup was cold! | 0:34:10 | 0:34:12 | |
I've always cherished that. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:17 | |
I've never found it a necessity, funny. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
You see, I've worked in radio and television and never known, | 0:34:21 | 0:34:25 | |
really, very much about either. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
I remember when I was a little boy and my father made | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
our first crystal set, listening to a banjo in the earphones. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:34 | |
But then, you see, I used to go out in the evenings, | 0:34:34 | 0:34:37 | |
playing cricket, playing football. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:39 | |
Playing bridge in my bridge-playing phase. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
Then courting. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:47 | |
Then leaving home and going into digs | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
when they didn't want you in their room, listening to their radio. | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
And then I married, but then came the war. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:58 | |
So you didn't much look in or listen in. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:01 | |
And, after the war, it was a question of working, | 0:35:01 | 0:35:06 | |
going to London and being all eyes and ears for London. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:10 | |
And then, this influence of the French, so I've never really | 0:35:11 | 0:35:16 | |
much listened to radio or looked at television, except the Today programme | 0:35:16 | 0:35:21 | |
in the mornings which is the ideal bathroom compassion. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:26 | |
I mean, you can shave, shampoo, | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
think, or anything you like. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
Stand on your head while that's on. I find it infinitely entertaining. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
But, otherwise, that and the 5.40 news. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
And that's it. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
For the rest, you know, work through the day | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
and dine through the evening. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
Do you use a video? I mean, do you ever think there's something | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
you'd really like to be able to see at your leisure? | 0:35:53 | 0:35:56 | |
I often think that, but I always forget to do it. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:59 | |
It's rather like that silly story about the Irish video recorder | 0:35:59 | 0:36:05 | |
that records programmes you don't like and plays them back when you're out. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:10 | |
I've always thought that Ideal arrangement. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
No, I ought to. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:17 | |
I looked at the series of John Betjeman programmes. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
I did remember to do that quite faithfully. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
But that's the only series I've really ever looked at. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
-He was a good friend of yours, wasn't he? Or he is. -Yes. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:30 | |
Er...immense influence on me. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
I mean, I think I would never have tried to write poetry | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
if it hadn't been for him. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
And the first anthology I ever made, with George Hamilton, | 0:36:38 | 0:36:42 | |
was based on the Betjeman topographical poetic theme. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:48 | |
And my middle son's godfather, | 0:36:48 | 0:36:54 | |
I see him from time to time, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
he's a very pretty thirst in champagne in his old age. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:01 | |
He messed about with whisky and things like that at one time. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
But now I believe he actually knows the grande marque one from the other | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
and you've got to be very careful what you take there for him to drink. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
But always a funny man with an immense streak of sincerity | 0:37:13 | 0:37:19 | |
and depth of feeling. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:22 | |
And as independent a thinker as I suppose there's been in this century in Britain. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:27 | |
-And you shared quite a few of his views, didn't you, as well? -Yes. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:32 | |
I mean, a lot of your poetry was about English towns and places, | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
and crafts and... | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
Yes. Yes, indeed. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:39 | |
As I say, an immense influence on me in that respect. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
I only wish I'd been as good as he is. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
I imagine that it also actually influenced what you did do creatively | 0:37:47 | 0:37:52 | |
-which was, amongst other things, broadcast on cricket. -Yes. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
You see, the good poet, in his imagery, defines. | 0:37:56 | 0:38:02 | |
He describes precisely. He doesn't say, "That was a good stroke. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:08 | |
"This is a pretty cricket ground. This is a good-looking man." | 0:38:08 | 0:38:12 | |
He says what is a poised, graceful, well-timed, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
powerful - or whatever - stroke. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
"This is an old-fashioned looking ground, a leafy, tree-y ground | 0:38:20 | 0:38:25 | |
"with an Edwardian pavilion, | 0:38:25 | 0:38:27 | |
"or a Victorian pavilion, or a modern pavilion." | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
And I think if you're trying to describe things to people, | 0:38:31 | 0:38:35 | |
that's the sort of thing you've got to say in a commentary. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:38 | |
Say what you see. | 0:38:38 | 0:38:40 | |
You see, it's easy to be a commentator | 0:38:40 | 0:38:42 | |
and bring out statistics. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:44 | |
And a terrific number of people are vastly interested in statistics. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:47 | |
You know, he wants so many runs to do so and so. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
And I always had Bill Frindall to tell me that. But, for me, | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
it was in through the eyes and out through the mouth and... | 0:38:53 | 0:38:58 | |
-Something happened in between! -There was a digestion process, yes, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
because there was an editing process. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
But you say what you see. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
-Every man sees something different. -Mm-hm. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
In fact, in my younger days, I had been known to observe | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
attractive young women walking round the ground and that type of thing. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
In your younger days only, of course! | 0:39:20 | 0:39:22 | |
But I... Well, this is a big topic but, I mean, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:30 | |
I read that somebody said of you, in your early days at the BBC, | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
that you had a superior mind and a vulgar voice. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:38 | |
That's right. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
And I wondered if people tried to change you from being what you were. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:46 | |
Well, I tried to change my voice once. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
On the Thursday, I was producing a programme and Val Dyall came in. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:55 | |
Valentine Dyall. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:56 | |
And after a bit he said, "John." | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
I said, "Yes?" | 0:40:01 | 0:40:03 | |
He said, "Are you trying to do something to your voice?" | 0:40:03 | 0:40:07 | |
I said, "Well, I'm trying, you know, not to sound too much like a country bumpkin. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:12 | |
"You know, I'd like to get onto a sort of standard southern English." | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
He said, "You fool! Everybody in this studio can speak that." | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
"You're the only one who can speak authentic Hampshire." | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
He said, "Don't, for God's sake, throw that away." | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
And I thought, "Well, I suppose he's right and it's going to seem a bit of an effort." | 0:40:26 | 0:40:30 | |
You do it anyway, you know. I went back home once, I remember. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:34 | |
I'd been to the police training school and I'd just come back, | 0:40:34 | 0:40:40 | |
so I'd been to the Birmingham police training school for the Southampton force, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:45 | |
and I'd been back about a month. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:47 | |
So I'd been away from home for four months. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
My mother said, "You better go out and see the men." | 0:40:50 | 0:40:55 | |
And these were the men who were grass-cutting outside, you see. | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
So I went out and said hello and how were they. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
And they quizzed me about Southampton. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
Was it true there were trains - they meant trams - running through the streets. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
These were very old men. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
I said, "Yes, it was." And this went on and on. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
And after a bit, one of them looked me and he said, | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
"And what be this here London talk you been putting on, then, eh?" | 0:41:15 | 0:41:19 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
Who'd have thought that, 50 years ago, mine was a London talk. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:28 | |
But, er... | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
But the first recording I ever made, | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
I did a live programme first, | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
then I was asked to come on Country Magazine. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
And we knew there was a repeat going out at half past five in the morning overseas. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:49 | |
It took me a lot to get out of bed at that time. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
We got up, got out and switched this on. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
And I can imagine my face fell. I said, "Oh, dear. Oh, dear." | 0:41:57 | 0:42:02 | |
My wife said, "What's the matter?" | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
I said, "Well, that's the script I did. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
"That's the script, but they've got this country chap reading it." | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
So she threw her head back laughing and said, "That's you, you fool!" | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
I'd never heard my recorded voice. I never dreamt it was like that. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:21 | |
I think it's a shock for everyone, isn't it? The first time you hear it. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
But this seemed to me to mean I was ruined forever. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:27 | |
I was never going to get this career in broadcasting I'd come to dream about. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:31 | |
But, with a bit of good advice, and with your own personality, | 0:42:34 | 0:42:38 | |
you stuck with it and you cut your own path, really, didn't you? | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
It was a new thing, what you were doing, wasn't it? | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
-Certainly in sport. -It was in a way, yes. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
You see, Howard Marshall had done it. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
Howard Marshall - we used to play back the discs sometimes - a bit behind the play. | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
There'd never been, I think, previously, | 0:42:54 | 0:42:59 | |
an attempt at precise visual description. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:04 | |
He used to read out the square number on a soccer ground. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
But you didn't get any idea. You didn't, it seems to me... | 0:43:08 | 0:43:12 | |
After I went on the instructional staff, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
I used to get every record I could and play 'em back. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:18 | |
But I couldn't find that anybody had any immense visual urge. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:25 | |
I mean, you got facts and details of play | 0:43:25 | 0:43:27 | |
and what was happening at the event. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
Heaven knows, that's more important, but... | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
I don't know. It's just your own particular bent, I suppose. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
You expose your own mind and you never do it more than in commentary, | 0:43:40 | 0:43:45 | |
when you're speaking absolutely ad-lib | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
and you don't know what's going to happen in the next second. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
It's got to come out and... | 0:43:52 | 0:43:54 | |
The funny thing was, I used to find that | 0:43:55 | 0:44:00 | |
if I was writing about a day's play, I tended not to remember | 0:44:00 | 0:44:06 | |
the play that I'd done a commentary on, because that went in and out. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:11 | |
It's funny. You retained other things. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:13 | |
But you had to cast your mind back. It was a deliberate effort | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
to pick up what you'd done the commentary on. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
It's almost as if you'd purged yourself of it. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
-It's about as immediate as you can get, isn't it? -yes. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
Yes. I always used to think if you could get the man caught at the wicket | 0:44:27 | 0:44:32 | |
before the crowd shouted, you were up with the ball. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
Yes, I rather liked those... | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
Sometimes something I find myself doing sometimes is, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
where there's a photograph in a cricket book, of a dismissal, | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
to see the beginnings of recognition in the crowd... | 0:44:45 | 0:44:48 | |
-Yes. -They're just... -Just starting to... | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
Yes, that's right. And the stump's by then on the ground. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
-Or the man's already started to walk. -Yeah. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:56 | |
Yes, it's funny. There's nothing in cricket, to my mind, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:04 | |
not even a spectacular six, | 0:45:04 | 0:45:06 | |
-there's nothing so exciting as the fall of the wicket. -Hm, I agree. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
And when a side is running through another's batting | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
and wickets are going down quickly, and you hear this almost, | 0:45:13 | 0:45:17 | |
almost like the baying of a pack of hounds every time a wicket falls. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
And they're hounding the side that's being bowled out. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:23 | |
I often think that sides are bowled out for small totals | 0:45:23 | 0:45:28 | |
almost psychologically, after the first three or four wickets are down. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:32 | |
Then you can feel the crowd waiting to roar again. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:37 | |
It used to be like this at the Oval when Bedser, Loader, Surridge, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:44 | |
Lock, Laker, with Eric Bedser in reserve, were bowling out sides, | 0:45:44 | 0:45:50 | |
when they first started to win the championship before the crowds dwindled. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:55 | |
We used to go there, almost like the crowd at a gladiatorial contest, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:59 | |
to watch the other side torn to pieces. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
Well, that reminds me of the famous '74/75 series in Australia | 0:46:02 | 0:46:07 | |
when Lillee and Thomson demolished us on some bad wickets. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:11 | |
The England players used to refer, towards the end of the series, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:15 | |
and I think this wasn't just healthy hangdog humour, | 0:46:15 | 0:46:19 | |
they used to refer to the seat reserved for the next batsmen in as the condemned cell. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:24 | |
I think they got the message pretty well. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
Yes. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
There's no doubt that communicates to a crowd more than anything else, | 0:46:29 | 0:46:34 | |
the destruction of the opponents. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
Hitting a six, all right, spectacular. Beautiful. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
We've seen, you know, that glorious stroke onto the roof of the... | 0:46:40 | 0:46:47 | |
Lord's pavilion, by Hughes. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
But there's nothing quite to compare with the bowling rout of a side. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:57 | |
-Shall we talk about South Africa? -Yes. Why not? | 0:46:59 | 0:47:03 | |
I mean, we got to know each other partly at the time of | 0:47:03 | 0:47:07 | |
the D'Oliviera affair, as it could be called, in 1969. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:12 | |
And, of course, your experience of South Africa, and your contacts | 0:47:14 | 0:47:17 | |
with South Africa, went a long way back before that, didn't they? | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
Yes, I went in '48/9 and I was desperately shocked by what I saw there. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:27 | |
I never dreamt that these things went on. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:32 | |
I'd heard lip service paid to the awfulness but, you see, | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
this was just the time | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
when the first nationalist government of Dr Malan was returned. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:43 | |
And I saw and heard some quite terrible things | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
about what happened to ordinary black people there. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
And I didn't know what to do. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:53 | |
And I still haven't really done much about it. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
I haven't done as much as I ought to have done. | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
And, you see, it's so easy, especially for English people, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
especially for cricketers, to go to South Africa | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
and not see what goes on because it's not flaunted. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
It's not pushed under their noses. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
You'd have great difficulty in finding a taxi driver, sometimes, | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
who would take you to these compounds and, er... | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
And I thought, perhaps, I'd done something | 0:48:19 | 0:48:23 | |
when I helped bring Basil D'Oliviera to this country. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:26 | |
And I think that did do something that perhaps you can't see. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
It must have made a lot of people convinced | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
that their cause wasn't quite lost. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
If one could do it, in a way, he stood for them all. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:40 | |
But then, you see, there's been a clampdown since. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
A certain amount of liberal thinking, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
and a certain amount of increased repression. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
Old Smuts was so clever. He used to give them a fresh liberty every year. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
I mean, it would've taken 200 years for them to be really free. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
But he didn't impose fresh restrictions and fresh repressions, | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
as the nationalist government has done since and this is distressing. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:05 | |
It's distressing to think about it. | 0:49:05 | 0:49:07 | |
I don't know what the answer is. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:12 | |
Except, perhaps, the most appalling one of all, | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
that, you know, one can't lay one's tongue to. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:18 | |
Well, it's going to be explosive in the end, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:22 | |
I feel all too sure of that. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:24 | |
It's an important thing you did, to help to be responsible for getting Basil D'Oliviera to come to England. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:33 | |
How did that happen? | 0:49:33 | 0:49:35 | |
Well, out of the blue, I got this letter from a young man, | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
beautifully written in green ink, terribly courteous correspondence, | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
saying how much he loved cricket and how much he'd like to learn | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
to be a coach and qualify to be a coach in England | 0:49:46 | 0:49:50 | |
so that he could go back to South Africa and teach his own people. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
So, I thought I'd never heard of anything much more hopeless, really. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
There was such charm in the letter. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
I went on and replied to him to see what we could work out, you see. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:06 | |
And, in the end, I said, "Well, how good a player are you? | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
"Because I think, if you want to come here, probably you'd only help us as a player." | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
He sent me some pretty remarkable statistics of his performances | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
for Cape Coloureds and so on. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
And he'd gone as high as he could in cricket, for a Cape Coloured. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:23 | |
And I really began to give up hope. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:27 | |
People just couldn't see. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:33 | |
I mean, if I said, "Look, this chap made 286, so many sixes..." | 0:50:33 | 0:50:38 | |
They'd say, "Well, it must have been an absolutely plum wicket." | 0:50:38 | 0:50:42 | |
"Well, in the same match, he took six for 16." | 0:50:42 | 0:50:44 | |
And they'd say, "Oh, it must have been an awful wicket. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:47 | |
"Must've been a bad batting side." They wanted it both ways. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:50 | |
Well, then, Alan Oakman and Pete Sainsbury and Jim Gray | 0:50:50 | 0:50:55 | |
went and played in a match and they saw him play. | 0:50:55 | 0:50:57 | |
And they came back and I said, "Well, what's he like?" | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
And they said, "Well, he's a very, very gifted player." | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
"Very talented. A bit crude." | 0:51:03 | 0:51:05 | |
"But still, you know, first-class." | 0:51:05 | 0:51:07 | |
Even then, I couldn't get anywhere and John Kay helped me immensely, | 0:51:09 | 0:51:14 | |
Manchester Evening News and a Lancashire league expert and player. | 0:51:14 | 0:51:18 | |
And, all of a sudden, he came to me that his club, | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
they'd got rid of Gilchrist and had been trying rather secretly | 0:51:21 | 0:51:27 | |
to sign on Wes Hall, and, at the last minute, Wes let 'em down. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:32 | |
So he rang me up and he said, "Look, if your chap wants a job, he can come." | 0:51:34 | 0:51:39 | |
He suggested a wage figure which was very low. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
Now, this had been going on now for six years. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
Eventually I wrote and said, "Look, the chance has come. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
"I don't think it'll ever come again. I know the money is not good. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
"But if you want to come, you must say yes to this and come." | 0:51:55 | 0:52:00 | |
He decided to. I made a whip-round in the local village and he came. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
Made a terrible start, poor kid. Couldn't get a run for a month. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:08 | |
He'd never seen these slow, sodden, muddy wickets. Anything like it. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:13 | |
And then, all of a sudden, everything came good for him in May, end of May. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:18 | |
And he actually finished with more runs than Garfield Sobers in that league, in his first season. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:24 | |
And, I mean... | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
if you'd seen - I mean, I almost wept - his amazement | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
at sitting down to eat with white people | 0:52:31 | 0:52:33 | |
in the dining car of the train, at the airport and so on. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:39 | |
And yet, he kept utter and absolute dignity and good nature. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:44 | |
And, I think, through all the troubles, probably better than anybody else. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:48 | |
And, well, as you know, he became a British citizen. | 0:52:48 | 0:52:53 | |
He played for England. Shook hands with the Queen. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
And he never, to my mind, made a fool of himself, | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
which would have been so easy. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
But I just think he behaved with infinite dignity. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:08 | |
You see, what I think was important about Basil was that | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
he gave hope to his own people. Millions of them. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:15 | |
It isn't going to happen to them but they knew there was hope. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:18 | |
It was possible, if not for them, for their children. Or their children's children. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:22 | |
And this was the important thing about him coming here. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
To prove that it wasn't inevitably bondage. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:27 | |
Mind you, I think anybody else might find it a bit difficult to get out. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:31 | |
But he did that and he did show them. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:34 | |
He was not only dignified, he was actually reticent, wasn't he? | 0:53:34 | 0:53:38 | |
-Yes, he was. -I mean, I remember feeling I wished he would come out with what he felt about it. | 0:53:38 | 0:53:44 | |
And I had no idea until recently, after the big row had subsided, | 0:53:44 | 0:53:51 | |
-just how passionately he always felt. -My word, he did. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
And people used to try to goad him into exploding about it and he wouldn't. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
This was where the dignity was immense because | 0:53:57 | 0:54:01 | |
anybody who's lived under that kind of bondage has got to hate it. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:04 | |
And he never showed that hate. | 0:54:04 | 0:54:06 | |
From the cricket point of view, how can you see Test cricket surviving, hanging on? | 0:54:06 | 0:54:12 | |
I mean, it's a slender thread all the time, isn't it? | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
Desperately so, yes. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:17 | |
Because of the men, of course, | 0:54:17 | 0:54:18 | |
who will do anything for money, even a little money. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
But this agreement was voluntarily entered. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:28 | |
And I think we must stand by it. And, if we do, I'm also sure that | 0:54:28 | 0:54:35 | |
that is the likeliest way of producing an improvement. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:41 | |
-It's the way that has produced some minor improvements in the last 10 years or 12 years. -Yes. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:46 | |
It's the only thing that's reversed the tide. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
And it's very questionable how far the tide has been reversed. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:53 | |
But it's been just pushed back a little bit in some areas. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:57 | |
-You wouldn't want to go again? -I'd never go again. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
Well, I was on the last MCC tour there, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
as a young hopeful who did all right for a while | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
and then had a terrible end to the tour, from a cricket point of view. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:15 | |
But I stayed on and went around and saw whatever I could see. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:20 | |
The banta stands and the Transkei. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
And met politicians of different hues. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
Political hues, as well as visible ones. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:33 | |
And, like you, I mean, I was appalled. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
It was much worse than I'd imagined. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:40 | |
And that was what made me feel that I didn't really want to have anything to do with it again. | 0:55:40 | 0:55:44 | |
And that I didn't know how to make any difference. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
But I didn't want to have any more to do with it than I had to. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
And the other thing I felt was that we're trying, in this country, | 0:55:49 | 0:55:53 | |
to be multi-racial in every way | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
and it's also a symbol for black people in England, and Great Britain, | 0:55:56 | 0:56:03 | |
that we don't put South Africa, and dealing with South Africa, first. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:10 | |
In a sense, I'm sure that's absolutely true because | 0:56:10 | 0:56:15 | |
one of the things that few people ever mention is the great necessity, | 0:56:15 | 0:56:19 | |
in an increasingly multi-racial society, to convince of our sincerity. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:25 | |
And, if this were done, there'd be far less doubt, far less anxiety, | 0:56:25 | 0:56:32 | |
on the part of the people coming in, especially from the West Indies, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
as to, in fact, where we do stand. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:38 | |
And to say that we must keep politics out of sport is ludicrous. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:53 | |
Politics control everything we do, whether it's our attitude to sport, | 0:56:53 | 0:57:00 | |
to money that's made available for sport. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:04 | |
Literature. What we eat. What we drink. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:07 | |
What is prohibited coming into the country that we might eat or drink. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:12 | |
Absolutely everything we do is controlled by politics. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
It's impossible to say that sport isn't, or can't be. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
It must be. It always is. | 0:57:18 | 0:57:20 | |
In fact, it's only when you live in a relatively free society that | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
you don't notice it, isn't it? | 0:57:23 | 0:57:25 | |
The luxury of not noticing it. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:28 | |
Pushes him out on the off-side. He's caught. Caught and bowled. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
At second slip. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:39 | |
He was one of those who'd had | 0:57:39 | 0:57:41 | |
none of the booty until then. | 0:57:41 | 0:57:43 | |
Massie's technique, bowling, | 0:57:43 | 0:57:45 | |
sliding it across the right-hander, | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
has worked again and this is | 0:57:47 | 0:57:49 | |
a record that puts him on his own, | 0:57:49 | 0:57:51 | |
taking 13 wickets in his first... | 0:57:51 | 0:57:54 | |
COMMENTARY FADES | 0:57:54 | 0:57:55 |