Affable broadcaster who fronted World of Sport
Dickie Davies 1928-2023
Dickie Davies, who has died aged 94, was a giant of British sports broadcasting, said Jeremy Wilson in The Daily Telegraph, and for a period in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the most recognisable figures on British television, with his “bushy moustache, thick sideburns and magnificently coiffured brown hair – interrupted only by a patch of entirely natural white running through the fringe”. For almost 20 years, he was the affable host of World of Sport, ITV’s slightly downmarket rival to the BBC’s Grandstand, covering everything from the FA Cup and athletics to badminton, hang gliding and wrestling.
Richard John Davies was born in Cheshire in 1928 and educated at Oldershaw Grammar School. After completing his national service, he took an office job with the Cunard Line but, finding that boring, asked if he could go to sea instead. He ended up working as a purser and entertainments manager (a “glorified redcoat”, as he put it) on the Queen Mary – which proved his first taste of showbusiness. After ten years, an American TV executive spotted his talent behind a microphone, and helped him get a job at Southern Television. It was there that he met a vision mixer called Liz Hastings, who became his wife, and who survives him, along with their two children. He started filling in for Eamonn Andrews as the host of World of Sport shortly after the show launched in 1965, and when Andrews left in 1968, he took over the job full-time. In the early years of his career, he was known professionally as Richard Davies. It was Jimmy Hill who suggested that he ask to be known as Dickie (his nickname at home). “The difference it made was phenomenal,” Davies said.
The BBC had the rights to many of the big events, including Five Nations rugby, Test cricket and Wimbledon, and it did not expect its upstart rival to last, but viewers enjoyed World of Sport’s lively, varied format. Smooth and unflappable, with a mellifluous voice and a broad sporting knowledge, Davies seemed to appreciate “every tournament that came his way”, said The Times. He fronted three Olympic Games and the 1966 World Cup. But World of Sport was five hours long, and took in a variety of more niche sports too, such as kart racing, log rolling and cliff diving. Later, Davies admitted that he’d never viewed the wrestling as a real sport, but had gone along with it, because the entertainment provided by the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks drew in millions of viewers. Tastes, however, started to change in the 1980s; then racing went to the newly launched Channel 4. With its ratings falling, World of Sport was cancelled in 1985. Davies was disappointed, but carried on working, at Eurosport, Classic FM and Sky. Reflecting on his career last year, he told The Daily Telegraph: “I loved it. I really did. I’m a lucky boy.”