Radio history made from scratch
Teddy Wakelam had no experience of commentating on a rugby match because no one had ever broadcast a commentary on a game. His BBC producer Lance Sieveking had no idea of the rules of rugby. Yet at Twickenham on January 15 1927 they made sporting and radio history, thanks to the machine-gun delivery of former rugby captain Wakelam and the broadcasting genius of Sieveking. On the following Saturday,
Wakelam scored another world first, this time for a commentary on a soccer game, Arsenal vs Sheffield. Having been a part-time tennis umpire, he was a natural choice for the Wimbledon commentator and
on August 8 was battling to adapt his quick-fire delivery to the more leisurely pace of a cricket match. He became a regular BBC
Jack-of-all-sports commentator. He was back at Wimbledon in 1937, now for the BBC’s embryo television service. Sieveking was also expanding
his repertoire to include other commentators and other sports. He organised the BBC’s
coverage of the boxing at the Albert Hall, the Boat Race and, clinging on to the fork of a tree overlooking the River Cam, the Cambridge Bumps. The Derby and the Grand National followed. In its very early days, the BBC
did not broadcast live sporting events, so as to avoid ‘unfair competition’ with the newspapers. At the races, a broadcaster could not have revealed even the names of the winners; the most that could have been said into a mike was, “If you listen
carefully, you may be able to hear the horses’ hooves as they gallop past.”
commentator that he was addressing an audience that, like the man from St Dunstan’s, could see nothing of the game. On the morning of the match a small hut (‘ramshackle’ according to Sieveking, ‘rickety’ in Wakelam’s eyes) was seen to be perched on poles 20 feet above the pitch, like a cross between a Punch and Judy show on stilts and the crow’s nest of a ship that had run aground. Wakelam and Sieveking scrambled up the improvised ladder, as did “a man named Lapworth, a general filler-in- of-pauses-when-necessary”. (Charles Lapworth, a former editor of the Daily Herald, was described as being the Dr Watson to Wakelam’s Sherlock Holmes.) The blind man was manhandled up this structure; health and safety regulations were presumably more flexible in 1927. At 2.30pm, the broadcast kicked off with a few
words from Sieveking, a man who didn’t know the rules of rugby, followed by Lapworth, who didn’t know them either (but was a whizz about American football) followed by a man who knew nothing about broadcasting (apart from the instruction pinned up in front of him: ‘DON’T SWEAR’). Sieveking had persuaded the editor of Radio Times to print a half-page diagram of the pitch divided into eight squares; he now explained that he and Lapworth would be indicating the position of the ball by calling out the number of the relevant square. Lapworth took over the microphone, reading out the names of the players and chatting about the crowd. It was Wakelam’s turn when the whistle went at 2.45pm. Before the astonished eyes and ears
of his two colleagues, he poured out an inspired torrent of magical words. As Sieveking put it later: “The faster he talked, the clearer it was.” Of the game itself, Wakelam remembered nothing. Nor did Sieveking, except that the two hours were among the most exciting of his life – and he was, remember, a man who had piloted and been shot down in a biplane bomber. He was hard pushed to follow the ball as it whipped around the pitch, let alone blurt out the number of the square as a kind of footnote to Wakelam’s staccato commentary. As he and Lapworth gasped out the relevant numbers in a haphazard sort of way, it seemed to the amused listeners following on their diagrams as if the teams were enormous fleas soaring over the pitch in giant hops. Reith rang up mid-game to demand more frequent square info, which did not help. He rang back later to say how pleased he was with their efforts, as did countless listeners. Incidentally, England beat Wales 11-9. Wakelam went on to commentate on other
games and sports. Sieveking too went on to other sports then to radio plays and a bewildering variety of arts productions. The match that saw the start of Wakelam’s career as a commentator saw the start and finish of that of Lapworth, who returned to the world of print. This was just as well since, during a brief gap in Wakelam’s well-informed commentary, Lapworth could be heard asking his colleagues, “Do they always play with an oval ball?” Many of us have asked ourselves that question – but not out loud, on air and while commentating on the first broadcast of a rugby international.
theJournalist | 17
THE PRINT COLLECTOR / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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