Jack Burnicle – the talking man
The much-loved TV voice of BSB for the last 13 years and a whole lot more besides
Sundays on the sofa watching BSB wouldn’t be the same without Jack Burnicle. Sitting in the booth alongside James Whitham, Jack’s been commentating on the British championship for over a decade, and before that applied his enthused commentary to Eurosport’s coverage of WSB in the Foggy and Frankie Chili era.
So it’s probably some surprise that Jack’s first biking love was scrambling and his initial foray into media was taking photos of bikes rather than talking about them, and also working as a designer on magazines ranging from Vogue to The Sunday Times. “I never set out to be a commentator in BSB,” he says today in his familiarly warm, northeastern lilt. “Good lord that didn’t happen until 2007!”
Instead Jack, whose first interest was cars, fell in love with motocross in the early 1960s after accompanying a bike-owning friend to a local meeting near Ripon.
“I was hooked. The noise, the smell, the speed… the panache of the people who did it but also how friendly they were. I started taking my mum’s Kodak Brownie along to try to snatch pictures.”
That interest continued alongside life as an art student then jobs in graphic design in London (“I was always going off to motocross, which baffled my friends because it was uncool to be into motorbikes in those days”) before beginning to make his mark in bike photography. The early 80s, with the likes of Neil Hudson, Jem Whatley and Dave Thorpe on MCN’s front page, was a heyday for British MX and Jack’s pictures (and words) spread not only into TMX and the new Dirt Bike Rider but globally and even mainstream magazines such as Bike. “That’s how I first got to know commentator Julian Ryder who was on Bike at the time.” Jack’s first taste of commentary came in 1983 when he was asked by no less than Murray Walker to assist with the BBC’s coverage of a Fox and Hounds motocross near Newbury. But it wasn’t until 1991, after voicing a video review for Kawasaki, that Jack got his first, ‘proper’ commentary job – via Ryder. “Jules and Keith Heuwen were getting their first sniff of work at Sky but didn’t want to lose what they had at Eurosport so asked me to cover a couple of events they couldn’t do,” says Jack. “And that’s what started it because they went on
‘I was hooked. The noise, smell and speed…’
to be Sky’s main men and it gave me a foothold at Eurosport.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. “I was as nervous as hell but just kind of liked it. And throughout the 90s any work I did for Eurosport was in Paris, so I had lots of lovely times over there.”
In 1998 Eurosport took on WSB and asked Jack to commentate. “We had a ball, but there were a few sticky situations,” Jack remembers. “Whit and I were commentating in Brno, and our box was at the back of the main stand. Every time the riders came through these big Czech lads kept standing up in front of our window so we couldn’t see the start/ finish. I tapped on the window and told them, in no uncertain terms, to clear off. To which they all then stood up and started looking for a way to get into our box. We were live on air and the pair of us were panicking trying to lock the door!” In 2007 he added BSB, first with ITV, then Eurosport again, and since 2016 has focused on BSB, winning legions of fans with his passion and lucid, lyrical and fact-packed style. “I just love motorcycle sport – but I also love the homework, the preparation. There’s always stuff you’re finding out about people, about places. I’ve also got immense admiration for the people who do it. The human side of the sport: I really enjoy trying to portray that.”