Raise a glass to cricket’s Dear Old Thing
As Henry Blofeld announces he is hanging up his mic, Tom Cary says, love him or loathe him, we shall all miss him
‘His voice is so posh he even makes the Queen sound common’
Of course, he did it in his own inimitable style. After nearly 50 years in the Test Match Special commentary box, My Dear Old Thing, Henry Blofeld, announced it was time “for the last of the old farts” to hang up his microphone. After the Lord’s Test against the West Indies in September, Blowers’ voice will be heard no more on our airwaves. “Listeners will be relieved to know that their chances of being told the right name of the fielders at third man and fine leg have greatly increased,” he added in a statement on his website.
That may be so, but English summers will never be the same again.
There is a danger of becoming overly sentimental when the likes of Blofeld bow out. Remembering those halcyon days when life was less complicated and it was all seagulls and pigeons in the outfield and cakes being sent into the TMS box, and Beefy was biffing the Aussies. When, in fact, you were probably sitting for five hours in bank holiday traffic on the way to Devon and your parents were furious with one another.
But, really, that was – is – the beauty of TMS. It is the backdrop to many of our lives at such moments; rumbling on in the background while we avoid work, or sit sweltering on the M4, or lie in bed at 4am listening to the action from the MCG. There remains an innocence to it that is not to be sniffed at in today’s world.
Blowers was part of that soundtrack. As with Bill Mclaren, or Harry Carpenter, or Murray Walker, his voice – “so posh it made even the Queen sound common,” as one caller to Radio 5 Live said yesterday – was instantly recognisable; as quintessentially English as the fruit cakes to which he often alluded.
Everything in his world was “marvellous” and “splendid”. Some could not stand the plumminess, regarding him as a pastiche of himself; the Old Etonian, cricket-loving, bow tie-wearing buffoon. Others grew exasperated with his inaccuracies (he suffers from macular degeneration) or witterings about double-decker buses behind the Nursery End (his fascination may stem from the fact that he was hit by one while at Eton, rendering him unconscious for 28 days).
But whether you like him or loathe him, one suspects we will all eventually pine for the days when the BBC employed such characters. As pundits, Geoffrey Boycott and Michael Vaughan and Graeme Swann provide incredible insight into the game. They, too, are an essential part of TMS. Blofeld, though, was from a rich lineage of ‘journalist-enthusiasts’; EW Swanton, John Arlott, Brian Johnston, CMJ. “They are the ones we should be most grateful for,” Jonathan Agnew noted yesterday. “These enormous characters who were also outstanding broadcasters. And I’ll hold my hand up to this. A lot of us are former professionals now. When you have been a professional at anything, it is a job. You lose that almost childish enthusiasm.”
Blowers had it in abundance, still performing his one-man show at venues around the country at 78. “I could never retire,” he joked a few years ago. “If I did, I’d drink myself to death even quicker.” Now that he has declared his innings, he has changed his tune. “I shall be able to come to the cricket without worrying about who is lurking down at third man,” he wrote yesterday. “I shall also be able to have a drink without feeling I am being politically incorrect. And hallelujah to that!”
It would take a cold heart indeed not to raise a glass to My Dear Old Thing.