A. C. HUDSON (Brian Johnston’s housemaster): You won’t get anywhere in life if you talk too much.
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SEYMOUR DE LOTBINIERE (BBC radio producer) to John Arlott, 1947
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This was John Arlott’s final piece of TMS commentary …
JOHN ARLOTT: Bright again going round the wicket to the right-handed Boycott, and Boycott pushes it away between silly point and slip, picked up by Mallett at short third man. That’s the end of the over, 69 for 2, nine runs off the over, 28 Boycott, 15 Gower … 69 for 2. And after Trevor Bailey it will be Christopher Martin Jenkins [applause].
TREVOR BAILEY: Well, the applause is … I’m very lucky, really, to have been on while John completed his last commentary and on behalf of the Test Match Special team and listeners we thank him very much indeed. And will he open that bottle of champagne a bit quickish?
England v Australia, Lord’s, September 1980
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PETER BAXTER (former TMS producer): It’s been suggested very often to me, usually by people trying to make changes to the programme, that our audience is very old … it is very interesting to see how much across the age range, and how far across the social range of the country, it does go. We have occasionally, from places like New Zealand in the middle of the night, wondered about and been fascinated to know who’s listening. Because you do reach the point where you think there are two lorry drivers on the M6 who are the only people awake. And the raft of extraordinary things that come in from listeners … There’s a vet fitting a pacemaker into a Scottie dog; there’s a man who decided to save the maintenance of his lawn mowers until the middle of the night so he could listen to us while he worked on them … then there’s this huge raft of students …
Date unknown
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TMS has jumped around the stations and schedules during its history, not always to everyone’s approval …
[Orchestra finishes playing] ANNOUNCER: You’re tuned to Radio 3 FM and that was the last scheduled music on this frequency until, if all goes according to plan, about ten past six. Because in three minutes or so music gives way to cricket … Well, that’s doubtless part of the National Arts Strategy, which we’ve been hearing about in Third Ear all this week. Don’t blame the BBC, it was the Radio Authority, as was, who took away our medium-wave frequency … So you lucky cricket fans are spoilt for choice. Here on BBC3 FM, though, you do have the extra advantage of stereo cricket for the first time, which means that in a moment or two Jonathan Agnew will be where the first violins were. And Trevor Bailey will be approximately where the double basses were. Unless that is you favour the Stakhovsky or Kestrel layout with the basses in the middle … it’s now known as the Brearley Position.
BBC Radio 3, 1992
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JOHN ARLOTT (in interview): One doesn’t invent things about cricket commentary because you don’t need to invent them. There is so much happening all the time. You’ve got two things … three things. The actual mathematics of the game – they’re essential, those you must keep up to date. Then you’ve got the mechanics of the play, which you’re observing … and you have the background of the play, the buildings outside, the people around the ground. And finally you have the history, of the whole game, not just this match. Sometimes the play itself is so dramatic that you have only time for the mathematics and the action … nothing of the surrounding circumstances and nothing of back history. But on other occasions when the play is quiet, surroundings and history … One tries to talk interestingly as if one was talking to a friend who couldn’t see or who wasn’t there and you were talking over the telephone to them.
Date unknown
