Perfect scoreline finally becomes reality
The scoreline which long-time British football fans have yearned for finally happened last week — sort of. In a Scottish League Cup match at the Bayview Stadium, the final score was East Fife 4, Forfar 5.
There is a slight caveat, however. The game went to penalties after a 1-1 draw and Forfar went on to win the shoot-out by that famous scoreline.
For football fans it will immediately bring to mind two personalities — James Alexander Gordon who for 40 years read out the classified football results on BBC Radio, and much loved comedian Eric Morecambe.
Morecambe, who died in 1984, was a huge football fan and in his show did a spoof on stumbling while reading out the results, using East Fife 4, Forfar 5, as the ultimate tongue-twister. If you read that scoreline quickly you will get the idea.
The late comedian would surely have had a chuckle if he had heard the recent result. He and Gordon actually became good friends. Gordon, who died in 2014, recalled: “Eric would never call me James. Whenever I saw him he would say ’East Fife 4, Forfar 5’.”
Sadly Gordon never had the opportunity to read out that magical score, although he did have an “East Fife 4, Forfar 3”, which wasn’t far off. There was a Forfar 5, East Fife 4, in the old Scottish Second Division, but that was a decade before Gordon joined the BBC and the “wrong side” were at home.
Outside of Scotland, East Fife and Forfar are probably better known for this slice of trivia than for their footballing prowess. Both teams currently play in the Scottish third tier (League One). East Fife did achieve 10 seasons in the top flight between 1948-58 and also won the Scottish Cup back in 1938.
It is worth recalling Gordon’s unique, if sometimes idiosyncratic, role in British football culture. “Jag” as he was known, was someone who would have made reading out the telephone directory a dramatic experience.
His name would not be familiar with many outside Britain. After all he was not a reporter and only read out the footy results, a seemingly mundane job.
But it was the way he delivered them that led to him becoming a veritable institution. The inflection he gave when he read out the home team would immediately indicate to seasoned listeners which team had won, or if it was a draw, even before he had got to the away team’s name and score.
Gordon, who confessed to not knowing much about football, admitted that he introduced the inflections to make it more entertaining for listeners — and it worked. As one fan put it: “He told stories without using any verbs.”
Any self-respecting British football fan must have sat with mates trying to imitate the way Gordon delivered the results. Radio sports presenter Mark Pougatch commented when Gordon retired in 2013: “Nobody else will be able to say Wolverhampton Wanderers with quite such mellifluous tones.”
The late Jimmy Armfield once observed: “He did it all with perfect enunciation. That lovely voice with that little trace of Scots in it, with the highs and the lows.”
When Gordon took over the job in 1973 it was a different era. In those days there were no cellphones or internet and we had to rely on TV or radio for the results. Although it might appear a simple task, it is all too easy to stumble over scores. The results had to be read in exactly 270 seconds, and if they overran, the announcers were in deep trouble with their producers.
“I was terrified at first,” Gordon admitted in an interview. For trivia buffs, the first result he ever read out was “Arsenal 3, Manchester United 0” on Aug 25, 1973.
There were two main reasons people were interested in the results at that time. The obvious one was simply to know how their team had got on. But equally important was that millions of Britons played the Pools, a system of gambling on football results. Gambling was as much a national past-time as football itself, and the classifieds was the first official confirmation of how predictions had gone.
That was why at 5pm on a Saturday, millions would tune in to the familiar jaunty strains of the Out of the Blue signature tune to hear the results “read by James Alexander Gordon.” His distinguished Scottish voice acted as the messenger for many people’s dreams of getting rich on the Pools.
Gordon’s stature was reflected in the number of comedy shows that performed spoofs of t he results programme.
The Two Ronnies featured the announcer reading out: “Dumbarton 1, Dick Barton 0. Motherwell 2, Dad’s sick-as-a parrot 1.”
Another comedy series, Alas Smith & Jones, had a sketch in which by the time the announcer Mel Smith reaches the lower leagues he is bored, stifling yawns. When he gets to the Hereford v Mansfield result he announces: “Same boring old market town in the middle of nowhere 1, obscure mining village 1.” Then instead of Southend 2, we hear: “Dreary seaside resort 2” and so it went on.
Of course with all the modern technology available to fans, the classified do not carry anywhere near the same impact as four decades ago. These days most fans know the results within seconds of the final whistle. But there are still those who like to hear them being read out officially on the radio.
And no matter who read the results, many listeners will always hear the “mellifluous” tones of James Alexander Gordon in the background.