Blofeld: posh accent has ‘disadvantages’ for BBC career
HENRY BLOFELD, the broadcaster, has said his distinctive Old Etonian accent now carries a “certain disadvantage”, saying it would work against him if he applied for a BBC job today.
Blofeld, who has announced he is to retire from the Test Match Special commentary box after 45 years, said employers would now take a view that his voice was “not right at all” for the modern world.
Saying he had never been specifically asked to change his pronunciation, he hinted that his on-air career had only endured because of his long service. “You may ask why do I speak in the way I do,” he told Radio Times. “I speak in the way I do because my family do. Everyone did at school and so one naturally did.”
Suggesting that it was not the public that had a problem with his accent but the BBC, he added: “If I came along now, what would people think of me? They might take a view and think: ‘This chap’s not right at all.’ I’ve got a voice now that I think is against me, but because of long usage, I’m there.
“Even more pertinently, if Brian Johnston or John Arlott came along now as young men, what would people think? Arlott had a wonderful voice, but would he fit in with Radio 5 Live? I don’t know.”
Asked whether his voice provoked “anti-toff feeling”, Blofeld said: “There’s a certain disadvantage, probably. I understand that. It’s a changing world.”
No one at the BBC had criticised him outright, he said, adding: “But one isn’t entirely stupid. You look, you see: how many people around talk in the same way I do?” Blofeld added that the BBC had read about his retirement in the newspapers, after he announced it on his own terms.
In an interview with the Telegraph, he said he could no more retire entirely than “fly over the moon”, saying those who stopped work too often just “play bad bridge and drink far too much”. He also said that if in old age he became a burden to others, he would “keep a supply of baseball bats so someone can come and hit me over the head with one”.