Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend

Thanks, Johnners

An Affectionate Tribute to a

Broadcasting Legend

JONATHAN AGNEW

This book is dedicated to my friends and colleagues on Test Match Special, and to our many loyal listeners

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Foreword by Stephen Fry

Introduction

Chapter One - The Guest Speaker

Chapter Two - A Radio Man

Chapter Three - Up to Speed

Photographic Insert 1

Chapter Four - The Leg Over

Chapter Five - ‘What are You Two up to Now?’

Chapter Six - Not Cricket

Photographic Insert 2

Chapter Seven - Noises Off

Chapter Eight - Handing Over

Chapter Nine - The Legacy

Index

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

by Stephen Fry

Whenever I worry that the growing vulgarity, coarseness, ignorance, roughness, meanness, pessimism, miserabilism and puritanical stupidity of England will get me down, I invent a certain kind of Englishman to put all that right. He is entirely a fantasy figure of course. He must be charming, gallant, funny, courteous, kindly, perceptive, soldierly, honourable and old-fashioned. But old-fashioned in the right way. Not in terms of intolerance, crabbiness or contempt for the new, but in terms of consideration, amiability, attention and open sweetness of nature. Able to walk with kings nor lose the common touch, as Kipling put it. On top of that, this paragon must also, to please me, have a love of laughter, theatre and the world of entertainment. He should, of course, know, understand and venerate cricket.

Impossible that such an ideal could ever exist in the real world; and yet he did, and his name was Brian Alexander Johnston. Gallant? Certainly: the Military Cross is more than just a ‘he turned up and did his bit’ medal; it is an award only ever given for ‘exemplary acts of gallantry’. Johnners won his in 1945 after taking part in the Normandy landings. Naturally, if you ever tried to talk to him about it, he gently glanced the subject to leg. Funny? You don’t need me to remind you of that. I have his ‘Stop it, Aggers!’ moment as a phone ringtone, and I turn to it whenever I feel homesick or unhappy.

The fact is, Brian Johnston was the most perfect and complete Englishmen I ever met. His education at Eton and New College, Oxford, and his commission in the 2nd Battalion, the Grenadier Guards might mark him out in your mind as one of a class who expected to rule and to be respected and obeyed as a matter of course, as a birthright. He had no such pompous expectations. Life was good to him, but it dealt him hardships too. Aggers will take you through those; they tested him as few of us would want to be tested.

I first met him when I was invited to appear on the Radio 4 quiz game Trivia Test Match.

‘Ah, Fryers!’ he cried as I entered the pavilion of the cricket club where the show was to be recorded. ‘Welcome. This is your first time, so perhaps we ought to have a net.’

‘Fryers’? Only he could convincingly abbreviate my name by doubling its letter-count.

Within seconds of meeting him, I felt we were . . . not friends, that would be silly . . . we were the kind of warm acquaintances who would always be glad to see each other again. We spoke of Billy ‘Almost a Gentleman’ Bennett, Sandy Powell, Robb Wilton, George Robey and other music-hall stars, most of whom he had seen many times, and some of whom he knew personally from his old In Town Tonight days. The greatest light came into his eyes when he told tales of the Crazy Gang, his favourites from the golden age of British stage comedy. It was a mystery to many of his TMS listeners as to why he always referred to a Pakistani cricketer called Mansur as ‘Eddie’. Only aficionados of the Crazy Gang would know that the craziest of the gang was always called ‘Monsieur’ Eddie Gray.

To bump into Brian at Lord’s, in the part of London I shall always think of as St Johnners Wood, was the greatest pleasure of a British summer. With him passed something of England we shall never get back.

Introduction

There are many people who have had an impact on my life – while I was growing up, as a professional cricketer, as a journalist and a commentator. But, my father apart, none has been as significant as Brian Johnston.

One of the most natural communicators and broadcasters there has ever been, the man known around the world simply as ‘Johnners’ was a seasoned entertainer on a wide range of programmes on the BBC. He began his career at a time when up to twenty million people would crowd around their radios every Saturday evening. Whether he was spending the night in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s, lying beneath a railway track as an express train thundered overhead, or gently interviewing a nervous resident of a sleepy village on Down Your Way, Brian Johnston’s decades of broadcasting made him a household name, and every one of his listeners felt as if they knew him, even those who had never met him and were never likely to. But he was best-known as the legendary friendly, welcoming voice of Test Match Special.

Brian was more than merely the presenter of TMS; he was the heartbeat of the programme. He brought to it humour, colour, drama, the ability to establish personal contact with an audience, and, of course, a deep love of cricket that lasted a lifetime; ingredients that made his commentary burst into life in a way that no one had ever quite managed before. Listeners knew, too, that lying just beneath the surface the spirit of a schoolboy was bursting to get out. Be it deliberately waiting until his colleague had stuffed his mouth full of cake before asking him a question on air, or sniggering at even the most contrived double entendre, Johnners was a big kid at heart. And yet, at the age of only ten, he had watched helplessly from a Cornish beach as his father drowned in front of him, while during the Second World War his bravery under enemy fire was such that he was awarded the Military Cross.

Brian was nearly fifty years older than me when I joined Test Match Special in 1991, following in his footsteps as the BBC’s fourth cricket correspondent. We had never met before, but as with many who knew him, something immediately clicked. For someone of my age, Brian was like a kindly old grandfather who the youngsters can quietly tease, but who never loses his temper. Within a few weeks of starting to work together we inadvertently created the notorious broadcasting cock-up now known simply as ‘the Leg Over’, which is still replayed as much today as it was when it first brought much of the nation to a standstill.

Johnners and I will always be linked as a double act because of those ninety seconds of madness, but the impact that living and working alongside him left on me was far greater than the effects of just one giggling fit, however famous it may subsequently have become. I, and many others in commentary boxes around the world, continue to seek to emulate Brian’s relaxed and informal description of cricket, and his ability to make everyone who is either listening or working with him feel welcome.

This book is not a biography of Brian Johnston. The journalist Tim Heald has written the authorised story of Brian’s life, while Brian’s eldest son Barry beautifully recorded every aspect of his father’s full and varied time at the crease in The Life of Brian. I am especially grateful to Barry, and all the Johnston family, for their help and support in the writing of this book.

Thanks, Johnners is a tribute written from the perspective of a man who was fortunate enough to work alongside such a talented and genuinely warm-hearted individual at a key time in his life. Brian Johnston liberated me as a broadcaster, and gave me the confidence to commentate without apprehension or nerves. He showed me how easy and welcoming communication ought to be. Now, in a world governed by brief soundbites, Test Match Special can sometimes seem to stand virtually alone in the broadcast media in allowing conversation, good company and colourful description to flourish in a way that still makes radio intimate in a way that television can never be.

For some who read this book, ‘the Leg Over’ may be their only memory of Brian Johnston. If that is so, well, it is a start at least. But if today’s Test Match Special brings the wonderful game of cricket alive for you, makes you feel involved and, through gentle humour and leg-pulling, puts a smile on your face, then we have succeeded in preserving Johnners’ legacy.

Jonathan Agnew

June 2010

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