‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,’ That thought tickled me this week after receiving a very generous invitation that instantly released a flood of memories from way back. It came from a source which was like hearing from a distant relative graciously offering me hospitality again after having been apart for such a long time. Only a fleeting visit, mark you, to relate myself to a significant date.
Thankfully I was sitting upright when, out of the blue, I was invited to cover a game for tonight’s Sportscene. I was reminded I had helped launch the programme for the BBC 50 years ago this weekend. And yes, I could understand it deserves public acknowledgement, not only for its durability in an increasingly competitive and financially constraining sporting broadcasting world, but for the Scottish element of the corporation showing the initiative to broadcast live some European games recently, even as they prepare to look affectionately back to a time when such football was part of our regular broadcasting diet.
However, the invite pushed me irrevocably further back in time to the broadcasting womb out of which Sportscene was born, to Sportsreel where we really did do things very differently there. And how. The new programme of 1975 was an outpost of modernity compared to its predecessor, but for which I have an obvious special affection. After all it placed me on the broadcasting starting-blocks in ’62 at a time when I believed only toffs had colour television.
So working for that largely monochrome programme in the ’60s required something of the pioneering spirit of those who valiantly took on the virgin wildernesses in days gone by. I’m still full of admiration for the skill of those cameramen, sound-men and editors working with 16mm film, to get programmes on the air.
But mistakes did occur, often. The doughty, but often apologetic Peter Thomson, the first presenter, used the word ‘Sorry’ so often people assumed it was his middle-name. Take the evening of the Scottish League Cup semi-final on 6 October 1965, between Rangers and Kilmarnock which I was asked to commentate on, ending in a 6-4 victory for the Ibrox side. If you watched our programme, and for whatever reason missed Thomson’s apology, you might have assumed the game had ended in a 1-1 draw. For between canisters of celluloid going missing, edits of the film with a razor blade perhaps being sliced in the wrong places – given the late arrival of the film from Hampden by taxi – getting at least two goals on to the screen was considered by us as something of a triumph. Such consolatory thinking was our version of John Wayne’s ‘True Grit.’
For we just kept going until we overcame our technical frailties and provided stand-up comedians with less material, as our outside-broadcast cameras became stanchions of largely guaranteed quality. And like the admirable Arthur Montford with STV, we realised we had a captive audience which demanded Scottish football be on the screens weekly without fail, and at a period when, in the early ’60s, not possessing a telly had now become the equivalent of cave-dwelling.
Read more:
-
Penge keeps the head and recovers from an opening eight with fine repair job
-
Forrest on fire as Scot shoots course record to seize lead at the Nexo Championship
-
Russell Martin in Rangers transfers hint and what he will prioritise
-
Brendan Rodgers bristles at Shin Yamada question as he explains Celtic selections
It was then I began to realise that the quality of a sports programme had much to do with what it had to transmit to the public even more than how it could professionally be presented. In that aspect history was on Sportsreel’s side. For between ’67 and ’72 the programme reflected on two European football trophies being brought back to our shores for the first time, and on our national team qualifying for the World Cup finals in ’74 after a lapse of 16 years.
The programme gained in stature simply by mirroring these events. That is why I don’t consider the emergence of Sportscene in ’75 as a simple name change but, coincidentally or not, a reflection of the dramatic changes that were taking place in our game at about that time and which made the programme’s appearance so markedly different from its predecessor.
Jock Stein, transformer of the Scottish game, was in decline. Rangers had just taken the title from him for the first time in nine years as the programme faced its new future. Other voices were being heard. For Sportscene was, in fact, heralding an era when the triumphs in football were to be more diverse than I could ever have imagined when I first set out with a mike.
The New Firm, indeed, seemed to flourish within the framework of the renamed programme. Indelibly etched in the mind is the sight of Sir Alec on 3 May 1980 running in ecstatic delirium towards Arthur’s Seat at Easter Road after he had learned Aberdeen had just become Champions. And I continually mull-over the memory, three years later, of pressurising the life-long teetotaller Jim McLean to take a sip of champagne from the league trophy Dundee United had just earned, with his accompanying words, ‘Forgive me mother!’
So the programme was now reflecting on a unique transformation in our game that demanded new assessments on Scottish football that we thought, perhaps indolently, we would never have to make. Of course, the Sportscene memories always fight an internal battle with each other to get onto my page. Archie Gemmill certainly achieves it for the Mendoza goal on 11 June 1978 and the Joe Jordan, ‘did he or didn’t he’ incident at Anfield on 12 October 1977 sometimes keeps me awake at night, so it can’t be left out. But these are mere fragments from a treasure trove of that period that would be longer to list here than even the book of Psalms.
Thus, after a quarter-of-a-century away I look forward to a brief encounter with a strange world for me. For in my time we had no Sky TV looming over us, no ubiquitous YouGov on the prowl to distract, no problem of un-glueing youthful ears from mobile phones. And most of all no financial problems in fixing contracts. For unlike my time, public-service broadcasting with its special responsibilities of providing for the wider community, can be blown away now in the free-for-all pay-per-view age.
So hopefully when I take my aching joints briefly into their service I hope, coming from that foreign country of the past, I still command the correct lingo for an occasion which will wed commemoration with resurrection.
