Test Match Special - #40from40: Sid Waddell

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Darts commentary legend Sid Waddell chats to Simon Mann in 2005, reflecting on his life and career behind the microphone.

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Hello, this is Jonathan Agnew, bringing you another classic view from the boundary from Test Match Special. Well, over the years, I've been fortunate enough to work with some of the great sports broadcasters, Jim Maxwell, Brian Johnston, Chris Wan and Jenkins, Richie Benno, to name but a few. And the delight of view from the boundaries that we get the chance to speak to so many talented people from all walks of life, including commentators from many other sports. One of those was the late great Sid Waddell.

voice of darts for so many years. In 2005, Sid joined Simon Mann at his local ground in Durham as England took on Bangladesh in a series that preceded that famous Ashes contest. Well, I thought I was coming out of luxury, Simon, but so far, I've seen a few magic sausage rolls, Christopher Martin Jenkins Butler, bring it in the claret, and I'm sitting up on this lovely castle side, between two Joseo-Marine your lookalikes, and three spies girls in drag having a great morning actually well that's that's the Saturday of a test match everyone dresses up I bet a nun in the gents yesterday now your voice will tell us that you're a local lad obviously where are you from well

I'm a proud mining stock from the Ashington area well I may see the Harmisons used have a bit of a reputation the bad guys at Pond Street I've got some family pictures and an album that shows some Harmison celebrating a punch-up after a dance some years ago, so no one day he's stout fighting stock this take on the damn-nobelazis. How far does that go back then? I think that picture was tetan in the 40s. Armieson's a lot worth down the pits and

scrabbing in the dance halls afterwards just a bit like myself. Yeah, my father was down the pit for 42 years in the Ashton area at Lainmouth. We live in the village, a Limeouth pit village. And I first got to come across cricket there that my cousin Robert Waddell, who I was with last night, is in his 70s now. his brother Billy was our dynamite sort of blacksmith type batsman

big smoker and he used to keep Swan Besters in his back pocket and he wants to keep in screaming in on a run on his backside and there was fire all over he burnt half the wicket and was known as Firefox ever after so the family did have a little bit of cricket but I was all useless side it was pretty good runner and I was a very good rugby player and I went to the grandma school but I was usually in the cricket team from me fielded yeah I read somewhere that you could throw a ball a hundred yards is that right I think I've got the school record when I was about 14,

have thrown at 104 yards. Yeah, I can chug things, but I couldn't do anything sophisticated, like bat or fastball. And of course, my great heroes were FS tru me, whom I later got to work with on the Indoor League, and the great real Lindwall. And I had an action like Lindwall, but the ball never quite went where I expected

other than back over my head for six. You should have stick to Chucky then. That sounds that you can throw a hundred yards. So did you play much, Or did you watch as a youngster? As a kid, I used to watch, you'd be fascinated by, I think it's like some Martin Jenkins

and Vic were seeing earlier. You look for the great moments. So I remember as a kid, what we used to, it was crazy. We used to see pictures in the boys' annuals of people like Bradman, on their knee at the end of a pull, sweep slug.

But we did not that that was the end of the shot, we thought it was the start. So we used to kneel in the field like this. That was a hell of a lot of LBELB. W's in Allen games. And I remember Freddie, I've ever been in a working men's club up there when Freddie took the Indians apart, I think it would do all

traffic, you know, got about eight wickets. And just the sheer excitement of seeing this sweaty guy come roaring in, you know, all arms and bits of his shirt hanging open showing his manly chest. And I think, although I was never in love with the game, that's why it's good to see the real test match atmosphere here.

All the great commentating, I've just seen Mike Gatlin looking for the chutney, you know. first man at lunche. He was there at quarter past 12. He's there earlier than that normally. Yeah, see, I think the fact that you were worse, it was like I was in Newcastle as well, and watch Milburn, and Shackling. I've seen Shackling D. Tricks at St. James in the 50s.

And it was that. It was the great players and the great moments. I was also at Hedley when both them was, you know, I smacked the ball into the hot dog and ice cream stand. And that's my great memories of watching great players. I suppose one of the problems up here is that you didn't have any top-class cricket, did you? To go down the watch that was just down the road, because Durham's only recently become a relatively recently become a county team.

You used to have good times. A class class-class county team, and test matches have only come here a couple of years ago. That's right, but Rohan Kanahig did come to Ashton, Ashington's scene, broke all the windows in the street along the cricket ground. And they went to the council and said you shouldn't be doing that, but most of the people in those houses were watching the cricket anyway, so they've appeared. But it is amazing how many people this wheel

used actually on the Headley tests. I've lived in the Putsi, Pudsey, I don't know, been a member Putsi St. Lawrence for many years. They've been the famous cricket team in the world. They tell me to say that. Keith Smith, he'd tell me to say that. And I've been amazed at how many Jordy's, how many of this lot here, used to show up with Hedley

on the Western Terrace, which I think got a really bad press, but in its hey day, what, 15 years ago, the Western Terrace was a good place to watch cricket. So would you go to the Headley, test every year or just now and then? I would occasionally go because that tend to work at the weekends. It tends to be weekends generally.

But I think spent a lot of time in the Bradford League and I suppose coming down with a jolly accent to Putsy. My son was a very good promising 10-year-old player, Pudsey St. Lawrence. Well, they take it very seriously, lots of juniors. I can't kill Roy Penny, like Keith Allenson,

Neil Allenson rather, train the kids. And I was amazed at the absolute love-fate relationship between the players and the spectators. It's tribal. And we've got a situation now in Putsi where the Doidge family had totally split between two teams. Andy Doge is captain at Putsi St. Lawrence

and his brother is captain of Pudsey Congs where Young Middlebroke, who plays for Essex at the moment, came from. And that generates such amazing tension in a family. And these people sat on the terrace as we here. I mean, my son was 14, he's fielding for the second team. And they're shouting,

we shouldn't be paying you, lad. That's obeless! At 14-year-olds. I mean, these were people who I don't think they put money in collections. They used to take money out of the collections. But I think this sort of accepted me as a sort of tribal bloke, anyway, because that's the essence of Yorkshire cricket is that it is completely tribal. So your son, your son's a good cricketer, isn't he? Didn't he play age group cricket for Yorkshire, I think, under 50? Daniel scored 98 in the final against Lancashire, Yorkshire and a bit of a story about that because I'd burnt his neck

with a sunreelamp than I before. And this match was in England trial. What were you doing with a sunray lamp from the night before? He got a crick in his neck, and his mother was away. Iron, my wife was away. He said, I might not be able to back number three against Lancashire tomorrow for the Yorkshire on the 15s. Because he got a crick in my neck. See, I got the sunray lamp that I didn't know how to work. So I just flicked it up to the higher setting and sampled it on his neck or half an hour.

He worked over the next morning and says, Dad, the good news is I can sort of dip my neck. But the bad news is I've got third-degree burns. And he's supposed to have Ronnie Errani. Bowling at him then, really was quite quick when he was 15. He slowed down a bit now, like. And Daniel, there's an early wicked fellow, and Daniel had to go on in number three, and he scored 98 because he couldn't turn away from the fast bully.

His head was locked in perfect line with the bully. So we had to take them on. Yeah, he did, yeah. I see Arani and, what's his name, Curley, were the same north of England team as a result of that. And then Daniel there was in the Texaco team when they won the under 16 championships. And there's a great kid called Mark Nicklin,

Daniel got out on 68 when we were about to have the winning rooms and he should have stayed in and Mark Nicklin walked past Bob Willis with his bat every shoulder the Yorkshire captain this kid's 16

and he said to Bob Willis he said I think you might have you might have finished it now Yorkshire and I think he had to win Siddy just watch my first couple of smacks and he fluked the four and then he hooked the four really sweep slugged the four

and put his partner in his arm back as Bob Willis and said right to tell you we'd win that How did you get into darts When I was at Cambridge, I was supposed to get an athletics blue because I had won 100 yards in 10.3 against the champion of Scotland a year before I went, so I couldn't get an athletics blue. Geoffrey Archer had got an athletics blue, I could get one.

And I was also possibly a chance of getting a rugby blue, although I had found Voxes bitter and the racy young ladies at about that time, so I wasn't quite dedicated. And I pulled me right hamstring playing soccer, which I'd never played organised in Jordan, because I went to a grammar rugby, school and when I got there I had there I was injured after a month so I wanted this

public house called a volunteer in Green Street I was playing dart with some guys from Sydney Sussex College and suddenly a kid white named Cal Phil Coates who was reading Chinese and he said you're good how do you like to be captain in the St. John's College dance team so I did say in this three months I was injured we should go in the all the pubs in Cambridge playing the local to darts and the great tradition was that you did not picked the darts team it was the first eight guys who worked in the bar so some of them started not have puddings you know he'd come running in so we once went out with a john lug goddard fan in shades and the goal was a couple of iranian lads who thought it would be a good night out and three

of my pilots had totally come in so the tradition was the st john's going to dart team it wasn't selected it was the first eight guys in the bar and we organized Cambridge university championship and we got in the final against four vicars from selwyn college and we went in this pub at six clock and the bloke said, oh, you'll murder these lots, Sid, you'll murder them. They're vicas, they didn't drink. They'll only be coming at seven, you'll hammer them. So we, of course, go to hammert. We drank with four pounds of Green King each. We couldn't get the double 13 to start.

We fell out in lumps. And I remember there around, it was three, three halves of orange and a half shandy. And the winner actually smoking a me as shown pipe, and he had a dog collar rods, yeah? It was quite traumatic, my first entry into dart. And then when I went to Yorkshire, tell you some years later, We had a pub game show called you in Dolly Inc. You worked with Fred Truman on that, didn't you? Did I ever?

He was the only man to present it, was arm wrestling, men and women. It was table football, and it was the dance. So we wrote these amazing scripts for Freddie, which... He never said, I'll sit there in a tick. I've got bobbas and scrubbers and potters and sloppers. And this is Fred, said, I don't talk like that, Sid. I'm going to try and 20 years, to be posh, and you've just ruined me. And Freddie came in this time, and he'd never done AutoCube before.

And remember, he'd try to be a comedian. so he'd had a heavy night at the Fiesta Club up here he'd had a load of beer and he came in at the end of the studio at 9 o'clock in the morning to day links off a telepromp which he'd never done before and a girl at me said wait a minute he says he recorded the programme Fred has got to have alcohol in his hand to pretend he's still there

well he still got alcohol coming out of his nose so Fred stood there with this and said what do we do now give him beer hey up then here we are pubs and scrubbers the indoor league hey up and said I cut more continuity So Fred's drinking more and doing it. He's half cut by five past ten. And we had a guy there from Chelsea,

known against Chelsea people, who's called Mark Sinclair Scott, who had a black hat on it, like, Freddie Mercury looked like. It came in on a motorbike and was an arm wrestler. And we wrote on the otter cue, here he is, the narcissus of the knotted knuckles. Which came out as, here

he is, the Nancy boy with the knotted knuckles. This was recorded. Sir Fred's career was set for five years. I went some great, great lines in that There was a kid I had there Who was one of David Bellamy's guys He was a biology student

We got him doing Shovapney And he got carried away with all this patter From Dave Lannin and the other commentators And he stayed up all night To describe a Shoveyoply player As the Spassie of the sliding small change And all that is seriously wasted brain, Simon Might say a lot about mew and predicament

So you were producing and writing scripts at this time You weren't actually commentating at all, were you? No, me and Dave Lannin, I decided for some reason to go out to Iran to produce TV programs because he'd be a film director as well as a producer of stuff. And me and Dave Lannin sat in a Suu upholstead soa called the Capricorn Club. It was about 1972, and Dave Lannan was the doyen of sports commentators. And he said, you know, if it ever got really pushed, you could be a dance commentator. several years later

a fellow who would be known to some of these people in here on Nick Hunter who had a sport in Manchester the man who had persuaded the babysit to spend millions on snooker he said let's have a go at the darts and I'd been bending everybody's here it's like mousers wandering around the wilderness

and everybody was listening to me you know darts is great, Leighton Rees, Alan Evans, John Lowe put them on the telly and they let me have a go at it did my first commentary at Place Carlton at Richard Preston with David Vine

who was expert and he suddenly says and here we have our new young dots commentator Sid Waddell and I said thanks dad went down like a book of the sick that did I meant daddy you I was trying to be flipping hip but David Vion chose to see it and I started a rabbit known on this balcony which was not you might be aware I've got quite a loud voice and I'm shouting here he is the block from Durham 116 and there's six guys from Durham sitting down below me rather like on that terrace where I'm sitting there and said if he even shut up while I had come up and fill it

you win. It's live on grandstand. I think I'm a chin me. So you nearly got into a fight in your first commentary? Yes, even with the players. The seven players on the stage certainly clock me. So did the referee and so did the supporters. Baptism of a fire kid at that. So how did you convince the BBC you were the right man to do it then? Well, it was one famous occasion in 1980, I think of in people in 1984. When I let her up at Stockton on a Jockey Wilson game and I got in everything. The Bible, the Koran. Rod Stewart. Don't think Springsteen was on the go, I had him in as well.

You know, it was, oh yes! Top of the treat, Darts will leave, Slovakia, chuck him like that. I would give me left hand away. And at the end of the night, Nick Hunter came in and said, you're going to watch it, he said. Part music, the Quran, the Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, he said he got them all in five minutes, don't. So I chewed me,

Biana, put it to him. He came back with a large whiskey and says, the controller of baby. BC2 just been on. She says it's the finest commentary review, I don't know, oh yeah. So a year later, I did Bristair, and I said Bristair was winning his fourth world title. And I says, when Alexander of Macedonia was only 33, he cried because there were no more worlds to conquer. Bristow's only 27. So I wouldn't have said that.

I think they more or less realized that Darts is, want to be carefully how we have wordage. This is a bit like the Stryd Mastricht. Darts is repetitive, rather than. monotonous. You cannot have a commentary that is straight. Oh, this person. So when you set out to do that that commentary, that first commentary, did you, you went in there knowing exactly what you were going to do and how you were going to do it? Because you wanted to do it that way and you wanted to make a name for yourself? Or did it just sort of happened? That was the personality that you had? If you're not too good one, say, I'm a turtle over the top, sort of

loudmouth. I'd tend to be another other top character as part of me. But I've also got another side which is fairly reflective. With darts, it's the sheer excitement of new and, I mean, for Techville Till at the minute, it's been 12 times world champion. We just finished the tournament three days ago where after five months he's played 188 legs and he's still averaging 100.

So really, if you're a novelist they're sitting down or a scribe describing this match, you have time to revise your use of English. So I just tend to go out of the most evocative use of English that I can. On the shortest, and being asthmatic, I tend to sound as though I'm somewhat inarticulate.

But I'm not quite as in articulate as me speaking, screaming on the darks is, because you shouldn't drown it. No, there was never any idea of putting over a persona. What you get is what you see. It just happened like that. And people latched onto it and they liked it, and they kept on employing you, what, 27 years later? Except you think it's some amazing hate mail.

I've had hate mail from Colonel because I once said, here's John Lowe. Now, here's all in heaven's thrown with United Nations flights. And here's John Lue, who couldn't give us stuff about United Nations. and I got a letter from a major general in Surrey seeing I was trying to start World War III These Russians have everything tape, you see So occasionally you're stamping and also

There's quite a lot of people, dance anorax Who don't think you should have commentary anywhere Just let the arrows hit the board and that's it And I don't think that would work I think you can never get away with it Did cricket or rugby They think you were disrespect in the sport But sadly see a dance is never far away from a laugh

I remember the graveyard truck You always seem to blew a lot of drink down in not realizing he'd won a game and when the ref told him it was on a nightclub in Middlesbride Jockey went to shake his opponent's hand missed and landed up in the drum kit that they did used to play

with an enormous amount of post time so darts to me has never ever far away from a bit of a laugh so the fact that you can't occasionally crack a joke also they're much more approachable than a lot of sportsmen you wouldn't have a beer or a game of pool with Roy Keene than I'd before

or indeed Michael thought whilst dance players don't have to live like monks. You know, you can actually, they will play a pool with the public the night before it came, something like that. That's why I like them. A couple of things really interesting. And one of them is your use of

language. I mean, I've just written down a few phrases just to remind myself here. There's only one way to describe that magic darts. There's one word to describe that magic darts. I mean, that's, you've said that knowingly, didn't you? Didn't you? Didn't you not? You just came

out. And the other one, the other one, which just means bristow reasons bristow quickens ah bristow that old you didn't see it probably it's got to be oh you say it then a bit of bronchitis all right you say and you can brist uh bristair reasons bristow quickens ah bristair so it's it's more in what you see than in what's written down about the actual words this is what i'm interested the actual words did you think of that before you went on because that was there was a famous gravy advert wasn't there at the time yeah No, that's the gravy advert. But did you think, if I could use that in advance,

or did it just come off the cuff? Somebody once said, I think it was my wife, I've got a logical bone in my body, I tend to work, my association of ideas. So quite suddenly, Brist Dewar sounds like Bistur, it's like the graveyard advert, whack it in. And I think you've got to have immense self-confidence to do that because you suddenly got to see 137.

That's treble 1960, double 10. You suddenly got to go back into the mood of one of these guys in here, Vic or Ian, saying, you know, There's a lovely cover drive there. He angled at two feet past where the field that was standing, just enough pace to take it on this fast outfield. You've still got to be able to have the mathematics of the game

as well as use the jokes. Although I do admit that I used to steal jokes than I. I was known as the bubonic plagiarist at one time. Tony Green used to try and date me co-commentator. And he once wrote down a thing with Bob Anderson, he noticed they were taking the close-ups of the hand. So he had written down The Hands of Anderson

And he went to the toilet And by the time he came back I had used it I said the hands of Anderson Weaving their fairy tale Things looking grim for his opponent That did not breed happiness In the Commonwealth

No I bet it didn't I can imagine that Is this true that you deliberately tried to get into Coleman Bulls Oh yeah In private eye Oh yeah I was getting so much so

That people were sending me things To get in to see I'd said Journalist from Samhampton He said, I bet you'd dance here they are the crowded jollies, their eyes pierced on the dance board. So I said that and they got into Coleman Paws and then the mate of mine called Mike Wood, you know the historian who jumps over walls.

A very famous BBC historian, young guy. He went to the private eye luncheon and you say, you shouldn't put that guy stuff in, you're not. He's saying that just to get in. The pendulum swinging back and forward like you met Renewan. And many more as well. His face sagging with tension. I mean, there's a lovely use of language.

I mean, do you think you could have been a cricket commentator? No, I don't think so, as I say, for that reason, is that I think it's partly to do with your personality being part of it. I'm part of the eddy wearing sort of tradition. The bike cut, I'm also feeling part of the bike got tradition. I think Bikes is a great commentator because he's not scared, you know, to say what he thinks. Oh, my granny, could have hit that halfway to Barnsley, With a frying pan, well, he's got a gun back in there and talk to Vaughan and Bill and those guys

and Boyk still says it. I wish I had the timing of Richie Benewa, but in the humour of, I don't know, John Madden, the Great American football commentator. But there's a slight difference, isn't there? Because Boycott played 102 test matches or whatever and scored 8,000 runs, whereas you never played the game professionally or, you know, you're an amateur player.

Do you have that hostility from players that you were making these judgments, you know, you were criticizing them? No, because I think in 28 years, I've never had a real fallout with any player because Darts is not, there's no finer point, it was that a fluke or was that LB, or did that get

a touch on it, deflection into the net? With Darts, if you throw 140 and I throw 47, I'm rubbish, Darts comes down to numbers. So you do not get the professional saying that any amateur commentator, in fact, generally the guys

who are good at it do not make, with the exception of John Pott, Canadian twice world champion, particularly good commentators. Because I think you have to, it's, you don't say the obvious. It would be like Chris or Vic Mark saying, that's a four, that's a two, that's just a one. In darts, there is no need to tell them because they can see. They can also quite often see that the guy's furious. So you're sometimes got to say that's the wrong shot on 121, you should have gone for the bull first rather than the 60 or the 51. There are some areas where you've got to be

an expert, in some areas where you've got to hold their interest. If two guys are average and 140, that's when you would go funny or pick up on the crowd or something to try and focus their interest, partly by your use of language. So it's not as scat, scatological as it appears. Do you think you could do darts on the radio? I've done it on the radio, yeah. I think many years ago there was... Would it be successful on the radio, do you think? No, I don't think so, because you've got to see their faces. I think you've got to see the upset. the agony or the ecstasy. You've taken a voice coach, haven't you?

I've got a voice coach all these years. Yeah, a kid called Stuart Theobald who lives in West Beach because I lost my voice at the World Championship. And he was listening to me and he said I was in serious danger of permanent damage to me of vocal cords, which are not particularly strange, but they're like little bits of fingers because of screaming occasionally.

Oh, well, no, I wish I could do that. It's your heart out, Springsteen. That is rock. If you do that, you then know you, self five minutes of town time and he's taught me how to start relaxing and doing oh ohms and all mantras to calm down instead of playing dominoos at the back of the commentary books because you I mean sometimes you're on for ages and ages and ages I did five to quarter hours a year ago there was some games that

were up and ended so you had got two legs clearly on he did a 34 leg a 34 leg had a cup of tea in a sandwich and then did a 36 leg of dance and I'm still doing well at the end but I think it'll it'll calm you down a bit. But I suppose, I don't know, I'm 65 now on. I'd like it last as long as Murray Walker, who was still standing up to commentate when he was 73. And if you think, I'm crack as a lot of people think Murray's a bit wilder. Well, Sid kept on commentating until 2012, before sadly succumbing to illness later that year at the age of 72. There's so much more to look out for in the TMS archive. How about this? From 2004, when Henry Blofeld

spoke to the legendary news presenter Sir Trevor MacDonald. Now, what are the most important attributes for a newsreader? Well, it's very, very difficult, and I'm not sure that a newsreader is the person qualified to give it. I'm told that you must, at all costs, be accessible. That's obvious. That's true about all broadcasts. What do you mean you've got to turn up on time? I think you have to turn up on time.

That's probably very, very good idea. It's rather important, it's terribly, terribly important. I'm also told that you must in some way have what people call loosely, but desperately important, I suspect, credibility. People must believe what you say. They must think that what you say is credible and they must be able to take it to heart. So we don't all think you're telling porkies?

Precisely. So it boils down to that. And I suspect that on grave occasions when one is announcing sad news like the death of members of the royal family, or presidential elections and things like that, one must also have something which is called gravitas, which I'm not quite sure what it means or what it signifies, but I think I know what is intended by the expression.

But you have it in space, I'm not sure. Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I can define it. To make sure you don't miss a thing from TMS to subscribe to our podcast via BBC Sounds. TMS podcast. Classic View from the Boundary. Alan Shear and Ian Reiter in my kitchen. What's going on here? The all-new Match of the Day Top Ten podcast,

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