Blofeld is a throwback to a fading world of privilege
Commentator’s popularity is partly nostalgia for the power of the class system, writes Jonathan Liew
enry Blofeld was born in 1939, on the landed Norfolk estate where his family have lived since the 16th century. He attended Eton and then King’s College, Cambridge, despite not passing any A-levels (“my family had been going to King’s forever”, he explained).
He failed his Cambridge exams and dropped out. This, however, did not deter a merchant bank in London from taking him on at the persuasion of his uncle, a wealthy City financier. After a while, however, Blofeld began to get bored of that.
At a cocktail party in Knightsbridge, he met John Woodcock, cricket correspondent of The
Times, who arranged for Blofeld to write some county reports. And, thus, began the tale of Blowers, which ended at Lord’s on Saturday after a 45-year career with a boundary lap of honour.
It has been a good life, and an easy life, too, as these things go. Naturally, Blofeld was self-deprecating to the last: “Listeners will be relieved to know that their chances of being told the right name of fielders have greatly increased,” he wrote.
This seems to sum up Blofeld’s broad and lasting appeal: a cherished broadcasting persona based on two parts upper-crust charm, one part winking incompetence.
This is to make no personal slight on Blofeld himself: a clever, erudite, well-read, well-travelled man who has endured genuine strife, and whose buffoonish radio guise is, you suspect, only a well-rehearsed fraction of the whole.
I wish him the happiest of retirements. Equally, however, I think his journey matters, because it raises important questions: about the type of public life we want, the public figures we want, and who can prosper in a society we occasionally and amusingly describe as a meritocracy.
Was Blofeld the best man for the job over his 45 years? Or was he simply in many right places at many right times? How many potential commentary greats from less privileged backgrounds never enjoyed his fortune, never knew the right people, never had the luxury of being able to give up a good job, never got to go to the Knightsbridge cocktail party? We shall never know.
At every stage of Blofeld’s life, his path was smoothed, facilitated, expedited. Doors swung open; you can hardly blame him for walking through them.
Blofeld’s good fortune continued to inure him in the commentary box. Over the years, his melodic Old Etonian vowels and kooky gift for description earned him a certain kooky affection.
His mistakes were invariably explained away as foibles, bloopers, part of the endearing, vaguely-bewilderedposh-man shtick that Boris Johnson and, latterly Jacob Rees-mogg, have exploited.
Only the privileged white man has this luxury: of being cast as a “lovable eccentric”, “a distinctive voice”, “a bit of a character”. The young female commentator who keeps misidentifying fielders will not last long. Nor will the workingclass black commentator who frequently gets the score wrong and refers to Jonny Bairstow as “David”. This is the gift of privilege: you need only be half as good as another to earn twice the acclaim. The world is changing.
Test Match Special is changing, too: the culture of chattering “ex-public schoolboys”, as the late Don Mosey put it, is slowly eroding. And you suspect that a good deal of the affection towards Blofeld is actually nostalgia, not so much for one man, as for what he represented: a place of pigeons and buses and cake and laughter, where the cream always rose to the top, and everyone knew their place.
At every stage, doors swung open – you can hardly blame him for walking through