We all know the tune. Dee dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee diddly dum deedaaah! The definitive voice of Sports Report, which celebrates its 50th birthday tomorrow, is less straightforward. On BBC Radio 5 Live, where team spirit is the name of the game, they don't really encourage that sort of thing. Producers and presenters nevertheless concede they owe a large debt to one man's unique contribution.
This rare talent, it may surprise some housewives, is not Des Lynam who graces the front cover of the richly anecdotal book chronicling Sports Report's halfcentury. Nor is it the current presenter Ian Payne, a worthy successor to the distinguished cast of "anchors" stretching back to Raymond Glendenning. Nor even Stuart Hall, Cheshire's perspiring poet laureate.
Consider this visit to Barnsley. "To the press-box . . . where the charladies had been a trifle lax. The odd chip paper, sweet wrapper, gobbets of dust blown in on the Yorkshire Mistral. Alas, the plot went awry. With the gale at his back, the Birmingham fullback blasted a 60-yard kick through the Barnsley net and into Grimethorpe Colliery . . ."
Painting a picture for its listeners, wherever they are, is part of Sports Report's mystique; those in charge also know the nation cares not a jot for colour until it has heard the master's voice spell out the facts in black and white. ". . . And now it's time for the Classified Football Results, read by James Alexander Gordon."
No one has counted them all up on the coupon but the 62-year-old Scot concedes this weekend might well be his 1,000th reading. He's been doing it 25 years, around 40 weeks per annum, and apart from holidays, cannot recall missing a shift. He has steadfastly resisted all other temptations on winter Saturday afternoons, particularly the strange idea of actually watching soccer - ". . . the last game I saw was Falkirk against Celtic when I was 12" - for the simple reason he is still in love with the job.
The adopted son of a Grangemouth publican, he spent much of his boyhood in and out of hospital with polio. When he wasn't clanking around in leg irons intent on taking part in the street kickabouts with his friends - "At worst, I could be a corner flag with a hankie in my mouth" - he would listen to the results on the family radio set. "I'd like to do that," he told his Dad and, on leaving school, headed determinedly for London.
En route to Broadcasting House, he worked in the music industry during the 1960s as a record plugger. "Jimi Hendrix was in the office one day and someone asked if I would look after him. I was so naive. I went in and there was this haze, as if someone was burning tea leaves. `Hey, JAG,' he said, `do you smoke shit?' I smoked a pipe at the time, so I said: "No, I smoke Condor." Years later I was in Bond Street, this Roller pulls up and Hendrix hangs his head out of the window. `Hey,' he said, "It's the Condor Man."
He finally made it to the Beeb as a staff announcer and in 1972 "when they'd tried everyone" was prised away from the shipping forecasts. With support from then Head of Sport Cliff Morgan, he quickly developed into such an authoritative voice a Nigerian bank manager wrote asking if he could guarantee eight draws a week in return for 10 per cent of the winnings. Swedish universities have even used his broadcasts to teach inflection.
Tomorrow, as always, will find him in the studio with his customary hour to spare, a routine shaken only by the most unforeseen emergencies. He was once stopped for speeding on his way to Broadcasting House; the officer let him off after getting him to say "West Ham 12, I repeat 12" by the roadside.
For the 50th anniversary, though, things will be slightly different. A special tribute is planned for the start of an extended programme and Grandstand's cameras will pan across at five o'clock to capture the moment.
Those who know are confident little short of an earthquake will ruffle Alexander Gordon's composure. "Has he ever made a mistake?" wondered Payne aloud, looking across the table. The master's worst sin in broadcasting appears to be a slip of the tongue during a one-line newsflash into the Jimmy Young show on Radio Two. "The Chancellor has just announced details of his bunny midget . . ."
Certainly nothing on the scale of the raw Australian announcer, asked to read the football results within days of arriving in the country, who coined the immortal scoreline "Division 1 Arsenal 2". Needless to say, it would never have happened on Sports Report.
50 Years of Sports Report (Collins Willow, £9.99)
