‘Robbo’ bows out still a delighted little boy at heart
Ian Robertson calls time on commentary career with sense of fun at its core, writes Mick Cleary
It was 47 years ago that John Arlott came knocking on Ian Robertson’s door with a bottle of claret proffering some advice for his nearneighbour in north London. A hand-written letter from another BBC grandee of the airwaves, Brian Johnston, arrived a few days later with similar words of wisdom for the new boy behind the mic.
“You’re joining a great team where virtually no one is teetotal,” said Johnston. “Just remember to commentate on what you see, not what you want to see, and you’ll be fine.”
On Saturday at Twickenham, some time around 5pm, Robertson – “Robbo” to generations of players and colleagues – will lay down his microphone for the last time and pass on that advice.
One by one, the voices of our youth are being stilled, fading into memory banks. Robbo’s Edinburgh burr belongs in the pantheon of Arlott and Johnston in cricket, Bryon Butler and Peter Jones in football and Peter Bromley in horse racing.
Today is the 15th anniversary of England’s World Cup triumph in Sydney: “He drops for World Cup glory… it’s up… it’s over… he’s done it… Jonny Wilkinson is England’s hero and there is no time for Australia to come back… England have just won the World Cup.”
If Kenneth Wolstenholme’s words on television have become the soundtrack to 1966 glory, then it is Robertson’s radio commentary that is the celebrated accompaniment in rugby. It is not just finding the right words, it is about investing them with emotion and perspective. That is what makes great commentators stand out: first the basics, then the elevation into something else.
Robertson did have a presence on television but, as he puts it himself, with “a face for radio”, as well as the fact that Bill Mclaren and Cliff Morgan were doing a good job putting words to TV pictures at the time, he knew his place.
He was due to continue through to the World Cup in Japan but he realised a year or so ago that neither his eyes nor even his heart were in it. Once the identifying of the action gets blurry, then any commentator is doomed.
“You can’t make up the action, can you?” he says over coffee and sandwiches. If anyone could, it would be Robbo, a master also of the after-dinner circuit (with a terrific put-down line for hecklers that involves a dying hippopotamus), a prodigious fundraiser for charities, too, such as Wooden Spoon, as well as a great emotional and financial supporter for Alastair Hignell, his one-time charge at Cambridge University, Robertson switching him from scrum-half to full-back where he was to represent England, who later become a valued colleague before multiple sclerosis forced him into early retirement.
There are many tales to tell, many of which are to be found in Rugby: Talking A Good Game (£20 Hodder & Stoughton), a romp through the Robbo years, featuring his teaching of English literature to Tony Blair at Fettes College, to his own fly-half play for Cambridge and Scotland (eight caps before his knees gave way and he had to make a tackle), being mentored by It is only right that tributes have been paid from Blair himself (whom Robertson is none too complimentary about), saying “you were the person who taught me to kick properly and to sell a dummy, and in politics that’s been pretty useful”.
Robertson is not a man rooted in the past, even if he does believe Gareth Edwards to be the greatest of all time. “If he were playing now, he would be as fit as the modern professional is, and his passing, his running and his decision-making would still set him apart,” said Robertson, who admits these final few days will probably get to him. He’s a softie at heart. “It will be a bit odd. It’ll be sad to be suddenly on the outside, looking in. I fear for the Lions but not the game itself. What I will miss is travelling the world with the media corps, the very best of companions.”
Likewise, Robbo, likewise.