Tim Gudgin
Broadcaster whose reading of the football scores on television was a tea-time fixture for millions
TIM GUDGIN, who has died aged 87, possessed one of the most familiar voices in broadcasting; his reading from 1995 of the classified football results on BBC Television’s Grandstand, the scores intimated by his characteristic rising-and-falling intonation, was for millions of viewers as much a part of Saturday tea-time as buttered crumpets.
Gudgin’s reassuringly capable tones had been heard regularly in a presenter’s role on the wireless since the 1950s and on screen since the 1960s, doing voice-overs for clips on Sportsview (later Sportsnight). It was hosted by Frank Bough, who had got the job in preference to Gudgin.
Gudgin went on to appear on Grandstand, the BBC’S Saturday flagship sports programme, following a tragedy at its Lime Grove studios. The regular announcer, who also ran two restaurants in London as well as a Bentley, failed to appear. Then a policeman came to the studio door.
“The chap had financial difficulties,” recalled Gudgin. A desperate last bet had failed to come off earlier that afternoon. “It turned out that he had gone upstairs and jumped out of the window.” Gudgin was brought in to give the team a much-needed fillip, initially announcing rugby and racing results, while the Australian Len Martin took care of soccer.
On one occasion, Bing Crosby came in to the studio. The pair had noticed that a horse called Uncle Bing was due to race that day and when they told the entertainer he insisted that they put on £20 each way for him. Uncle Bing romped home, at 10-1.
When Martin died in 1995, Gudgin took on football as well. Soon he became as much identified with the job as was his counterpart James Alexander Gordon on radio. Although this was largely due to their habit of signalling a result by modulating their inflection – rising for a win, dropping to commiserate in defeat – both men were in fact following the method pioneered by John Webster.
Webster had read the results in Sports Report, presented by Eamonn Andrews in the days when the nation’s favourite flutter was the pools. The varied intonation was to help viewers keep their eyes on their coupons. Even after the onset of the National Lottery, Gudgin managed to command audiences of up to eight million in the 1990s, though that dwindled as the internet became a rival medium.
Much of the attraction for the neutral viewer was Gudgin’s unruffled air of calm despite the fact that he was broadcasting live, with all that potential for catastrophe. He never had to essay the dreaded tongue-twister “Forfar 5, East Fife 4” (though Martin did), although he admitted that it took a while to master the smooth saying of Hamilton Academical.
The worst that happened was a computer failure which left him with a blank screen for a few seconds, which he managed to cover up, and an “idiosyncratic” contribution from Mark E Smith. The singer with the band The Fall was once brought on to help to read the results on the BBC’S interactive service, although not without first having resorted to some medicinal brandies.
After Grandstand was scrapped, Final Score became a standalone programme from 2004. Gudgin announced his retirement seven years later, when he was almost 82. His decision was prompted in part by the BBC’S move to Manchester, when he lived on the South Coast. He was delighted that his final set of results included the euphonious “Airdrie 11, Gala Fairydean 0”, and to be presented with a retirement present of a BBC Sports Personality of the Year trophy.
And he had a confession to make: having not played football at school, he did not entirely comprehend its rules, nor was he much of a fan.
Timothy Andrew Leonard Gudgin was born at Croydon, then in Surrey, on November 25 1929. His father worked in an insurance company. Tim went to school, first in Dorset during the war, then finished his education back in Croydon at the Whitgift School.
There he told the careers master of his ambition to enter broadcasting, having become entranced by his brother’s collection of 78rpm big band records. He was peremptorily told that there was no hope of realising his dream since there was no prospect of his getting a First Class degree from Oxford or Cambridge. As it was, he never went to university, and instead in 1949 was called up for National Service.
Yet, having been posted to Hohne, Germany, he beat 200 other applicants to win one of four posts for newsreaders on the British Forces Network.
He was based first in Hamburg and afterwards in Trieste, Italy, then under an Allied military administration. In 1952, his service over, he moved with his boss to the BBC’S European Service as a studio manager and newsreader.
By the Sixties, he was an established presence on the Light Programme and Home Service. He hosted shows such as Top of the Form, Music Box, Housewives’ Choice and Friday Night is Music Night, as well as Hancock’s Half Hour. For many years, he read the news for Terry Wogan’s show. His voice was also heard accompanying the animated Bleep and Booster stories on
Blue Peter.
He especially enjoyed presenting late-night music shows, such as You and The Night and the Music, which allowed him to indulge his love of jazz (and of a glass of red wine). He was known by colleagues for not tolerating any management nonsense and, when a nannyish memorandum appeared banning certain practices, he read it out on the air while audibly contravening it by lighting a cigar.
In the mid-1960s, Gudgin turned freelance after establishing that he would thus get more work than as staff. It also enabled him to accept employment from the independent sector, for instance fronting an in-vision commercial for Square Deal Surf washing power, which enabled him to buy his house. In the early Seventies, he had a spell based on the Isle of Man as a public relations consultant to its government before returning to the BBC.
After retiring, Gudgin occasionally stood in for presenters on his local radio station and voiced talking newspapers for the blind. He remained an avid watcher of rugby, cricket, golf and tennis. Because of his origins in South London, he supported Crystal Palace at football, but confessed that he had never seen them play a match.
In 1956 he married Jenny Daly, whom he had met at the BBC. She predeceased him and he is survived by five daughters and a son.
Tim Gudgin, born November 25 1929, died November 8 2017