MORNING SERIAL
I did not then know the full circumstances, but some part of me divined his hurt. When others brought it up in company, he expressed not the slightest bitterness, simply changed the subject or withdrew. He said he was proud of the support he had received, but he was a man putting on a face when he said it. Now I am convinced he would have lived longer had he remained in the centre of things, for no sooner had he abandoned the safety of the institutionalised life with its set meals, ordered routines and not too demanding schedules, than he developed the eczema which became his cross.
However, it was the media which sought him, and he began his new career with a flourish. Leaving Trinity College, Carmarthen, in 1974, he did a series of television interviews for Harlech Television when he was seen in conversation with Neville Cardus, Willie John McBride and other famous sporting figures, including cricketers. They were programmes of instant appeal, but not least because he was himself a celebrity for whom other celebrities would make themselves immediately available and, as always, he took part in each interview as an enquiring equal rather than an interviewer proper, for conversation was his forte.
He also broadcast frequently for the BBC and, by the time he became BBC Wales’s rugby correspondent in 1974, he had written for the Guardian and also the Western Mail in which the ‘Carwyn James At Large’ column gave him the opportunity to cover a broad range of subjects. He must have had thoughts about journalism long before he became a freelance for he was already a spasmodic newspaper contributor and frequent broadcaster and, no doubt, even when he was lecturing saw an alternative way ahead. It was nevertheless an added complication in his dealings with rugby officialdom. Unlike the Warden of Llandovery College who was proud of his housemaster’s broadcasting fame, an official body would have reservations, especially as some of his articles revealed his capacity for taking the occasional sideswipe at what displeased him.
In the Western Mail you would be as likely to find an exhortation to the Welsh team before a forthcoming international as a dissertation on the overpowering AngloAmerican culture which was creating a rootless proletariat in urban Wales.