I’m nervous about it being my last Wimbledon, but I’ve been a lucky so-and-so!
BARRY DAVIES ON HANGING UP HIS MIC AT THE AGE OF 80
FOR someone who has always found the right words, it is unusual to find Barry Davies momentarily stumped. But the 80-year-old is struggling to comprehend the fact that the next fortnight at Wimbledon will be his final job in broadcasting.
As will his millions of loyal listeners, for whom he has been the voice of sport for the past halfcentury, bringing 10 World Cups, 17 Olympic Games, more than 30 Wimbledons and countless Boat Races to life.
A documentary has been made about the veteran hanging up the mic, but when reminded of his impending retirement, he says: ‘I am a bit sort of, shall we say . . . I can’t think of the right expression.’
Finally, he admits: ‘I am a little bit nervous about it being the last Wimbledon. I am hoping I am lucky and get a few decent matches to end with.
‘I suspect that this will be the last thing I shall do. There has to be a finish somewhere.’
His famous lines still move grown men and women. He immortalised Great Britain’s victory in the men’s hockey final of Seoul 1988 by asking after the decisive goal: ‘Where here were the Germans? But frankly, who cares?’
To Gareth Southgate’s missed penalty at Euro 96, he reacted in the same way as so many watching across the country on their television sets, simply saying, ‘Oh no’.
And such is the lasting popularity of his ‘interesting, very interesting’, to describe Derby’s Franny Lee scoring against his former club Manchester City in 1974, that it was the title of his autobiography, published 33 years later.
Memorable for a different reason is the sensitive tone he struck when describing the tragic scenes at Heysel in 1985, before, remarkably, having to commentate on the match.
Reliving that day for a BBC programme about his career, which will air on Wednesday, he said he scribbled down six versions of what to say. But when he went on air he threw them away and spoke from the heart, as he has so often done since. ‘For the last 50 minutes the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, has been a sickening and bewildering sight,’ he told the television audience.
‘As a result there is, for certain, serious injury when a wall collapsed, and maybe worse. I have seen at least two stretchers carried away and the stretchers were covered from head to foot.’
It was a day, Davies says now, ‘when I went to watch a football match and found myself having to talk about a disaster’.
His wife of 50 years, Penny, with whom he has two children, said of her reaction at home: ‘ To me there were two horrors, not just one. There was the horror of the actual thing but there was also the horror for me that Barry was there.’
Davies was not always destined to become broadcasting royalty, and had hoped to become a doctor, and then a dentist.
Yet his first taste for broadcasting — and the end of his nascent medical career — came when he was called up to do national service, and started working for British Forces Broadcasting.
On returning from Germany he was given a job by BBC Radio, working on Sports Report, and later television at ITV before the 1966 World Cup. But it is his work for the BBC since 1969 for which Davies will be best known.
Looking back at archive footage from his career with Sue Barker, he remembers commentating on the 100metres final of the IAAF World Cup in Dusseldorf in 1977 ‘blind’ after the sound cut out on his original version. It was the night he ‘came of age’, producer John Shrewsbury said.
Then Torvill and Dean’s Olympic gold in 1984, and how they were ‘cheated’ in Lillehammer in 1994, when they won bronze.
While his great rival John Motson’s style was information-heavy, Davies’s was measured for the most part, with bursts of excitement to illuminate the great sporting moments. Almost like the old friend sharing the sofa.
The competition between the two broadcasting greats is well documented and, perhaps, Davies suggests, over-egged.
‘We weren’t throwing things at each other and we were perfectly friendly without being bosom pals,’ he told Barker.
Davies has been more than a football commentator. He has been the man who could commentate on anything. The variety of his career has not, as some have speculated, been a result of Motson getting the big games and cup finals ahead of him. In fact, he took the opportunity to diversify long before their tussle for supremacy began.
‘It wasn’t a question of feeling I had to look elsewhere,’ he says. ‘It was that for other reasons people asked me, “Would you like to do so-and-so?” I have really enjoyed the variety.’
Yet he is open about some disappointments in his career, not least when he was told he was doing the 1977 FA Cup final, and
then told he was not. ‘I was lied to,’ he says now, still clearly hurt.
His moment finally came in 1995, with his son Mark next to him in the gantry.
‘We got to the end of the match, he put the microphone down and he held his hands out and gave me a big hug, and he said, “We’ve done it”,’ Mark said.
In 2004, Davies stepped down from Match of the Day, where he had worked since 1969 and risen to be the senior football analyst.
Since then he has been openly critical of the modern style of football commentary.
‘I once said every generation gets the commentary of that generation. People speak more quickly these days. There tend to be no gaps for just hearing the atmosphere and sound of the crowd.’
Would he occasionally like today’s commentators to stop talking?
‘Yes. If you and I were at a football match together sitting in the stands, if something happened that interested you, we would talk about that for a few moments. But if you were talking to me all the time, I would say, “Shut up a bit, I want to watch this match”. That is how I feel when I am watching on television.’
One change on television, and radio, that he welcomes is the progress of female commentators. He fondly remembers Jacqui Oatley becoming the first female
Match of the Day commentator in 2007, and was caught somewhat unawares by Vicki Sparks’ historic role at this World Cup.
‘I didn’t know that Vicki Sparks was on the team and I tuned in for that match,’ he says. ‘After a few moments I thought, “I don’t recognise that voice. I think that’s a woman’s voice”. Then I listened. I think she did a very good job.
‘The difficulty is, and this is a dangerous thing to say in this modern age, accepting the fact that a woman’s voice is higher than a man’s voice. So therefore if the woman gets over-excited she has got to work harder at controlling that excitement.
‘I don’t think that is being rude to women, that is a fact of life. There is absolutely no reason why there shouldn’t be female commentators.’
At his home in Berkshire, Davies has a table stacked high with press accreditation passes from the past 50 years, and he looks fondly on his large collection from Wimbledon.
When he was first handed a commentary role at SW19, he told his agent the head of sport ‘must be off his head’. After all, he had been presenting on tennis at a much lower level, and had never been given a role, let alone as a commentator. Indeed, his only experience of Wimbledon had been queuing up with the public to get in.
But his lack of playing experience has never mattered at Wimbledon, nor has it in whichever sport he has turned his hand to.
For a generation of listeners, who grew up with Peter O’Sullevan, Bill McLaren, David Coleman and Richie Benaud, his retirement will be another example of the declining crop of those honeyed voices from the past.
Yet, with his brain a ‘bit slower than it used to be’, he accepts it is a good time to move on.
Asked how he wants people to remember him, he says: ‘That lucky so-and- so, he got to talk about so many different sports. He was a bit greedy I think.’ Barry Davies: The Man, the Voice, the Legend is on BBC One on Wednesday at 10.45pm.