Despite all BBC TV’s at one time extensive coverage of sport, I doubt whether many people thought of Alan Yentob as a sports fan.
However, when both of us were in the weekly BBC programme review meeting I praised a film marking the 40th anniversary of the Munich air disaster of 1958. In it, 23 people died, including eight Manchester United players. Alan had also liked the film, saying it was good to see the BBC treating the subject with due respect.
At the end of the meeting Alan came over to me. He said he lived in Manchester as a boy and regularly went to see United at Old Trafford, standing at the Stretford End. He saw the famous “Busby Babes”, many of whom died at Munich, and some of the heroic matches as the club tried to re-build – he noted that the sound of Old Trafford was extraordinary.
Alan watched tennis from Wimbledon on TV with his father, when both knew that the latter was dying. On one occasion Alan phoned up Television Centre to ensure coverage of the match to the end, and reckoned his father was more impressed with that than anything else he had done.
