Test Match Special - View from the Boundary – Peter White

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

Jonathan Agnew is joined by award winning broadcaster Peter White who’s been contributing to Radio 4 Consumer Affairs programme “You and Yours” for almost 50 years.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Bring more gear, carry more passengers, face greater challenges. Welcome to the world of Defender, with seating up to eight, ample cargo space and legendary off-road capability. It's built to make the most of every adventure. Learn more at landrover.ca. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. You're listening to the TMS Podcasts. from BBC Radio 5 Live. Now it's Saturday, it's for you for the boundary time, of course,

and our guest today is an award-winning broadcaster. He's been involved with the Radio 4 Consumer Affairs Programme, you and yours, since 1974. He's presented it regularly from the mid-90s onwards. He's also worked as a BBC Disability Affairs correspondent. He was the first totally blind person to produce reports for television news. He's also presented programmes like Pick of the Week and a series entitled Blind Man on the Rampage,

I'd rather like the sound of that. It's a very one welcome, of course, you'll have guest by now, to Peter White. Peter, it's lovely to see you. Lovely, you plucked me from the crowd. I was sitting there quite happily. Well, I know that you're a Test Match special fan as well, so I hope you're happy to be up here

and talk about your love of cricket, and I'm happy because I know that if I've got a fellow broadcaster for this next half-hour or so, that you'll look after me. I'm lucky to sit here, like to serve up the occasional little question, to prod you in the right direction because that's what we rambling broadcasters do? Absolutely. There's nothing we like more than an interviewer who won't stop talking.

And I'm exactly right. No, it's great to have you. So are you in that enormous stand with all those thousands of people over there that we keep talking about on the radio? No, not quite. I think they're a little bit over to our left. We're in the lightning stand. I don't know why it's called the lightning stand.

But, no, I mean, I'm waiting for the first rendition with sweet Caroline, which... You won't have long to wait for that. I mean, it feels from up here, we're a bit cut off, but we have our headphones on, of course, and you hear the sound, I mean, it does sound like a terrific atmosphere. No, when Anderson

knocked Elgar's off stump out of the ground, there was an absolute explosion. And I mean, you listen to it on the radio and it's great, but when you're right in the middle of it, this is why people say, why why'd you bother to go to cricket? You know, and you go to cricket and you take the radio with you,

point when you stay at home and have the radio there but um there is nothing quite like it's it's like when my uh football team southampton score a goal i went for i was determined to get them in even on a cricket playing mantrasy united as we speak they are yeah we'll see you the scores i need to know the score but i mean there is nothing like that explosion of sound i as i say a first experience at football at the little dell yeah lovely little ground that Sanhampton had is like a bomb going off if you're seven

and you can't see that's part of the fascination I guess you feel it it's not the question of seeing it you feel it from your feet upwards it's as if the world is exploding and that would either terrify you

and put you off for the rest of your life or it would entrance you which is what it did to me I was on when that wicket fell and I must say even by my standards I shouted quite loud so I hope I didn't startle you but it was so dramatic and the stump flying out of the ground

and that crowd noise so I mean do you listen at the same time then you're there in the crowd but you do have your radio on and actually I because the problem is that if you're listening on DAB there's a delay so you it happens in the crowd

before it happens on your radio so I don't I still listen to dear old long wave radio so that there isn't a delay so it happens at the same time so you know and that's really quite cunning well you've got to do it really because the trouble is and you can

imagine if you're listening to a cricket match with somebody who is watching it on television and you start twitching because a wicket's gone off before it's actually you actually see it on the television which is what happens because television sound is behind for all sorts

of technical reasons you're very annoying to people because you're giving the way, the fact that something is about to happen. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. Yeah. So when did you, can you remember when you first started listening to Test Match Special then? I mean, was it, presumably, it was your love of that program, was it, that got you into cricket?

Because you wouldn't have seen cricket or played it. Oh, no, no, no. No, I was into cricket before Test Match Special, because I think I'd be corrected by you Test Match Special officiades. But I think it started in 1957. It did. full scale. I mean, before you had to

dive backwards and forwards between the light program and the London Home Service and you have to know exactly when it was going to be on. So to find out that we actually had ball by ball commentary.

So I was about 9 or 10 and it was the England series against the West Indies and the first thing really that absolutely captured my imagination on TestMax Special

I suppose was that that huge stand between Cowdery and May. where May got 285 and Cowdery got, I think, 154, something like that. I'm sure you're right. But, yeah, that's, but I was interested. I just got interested in hearing odd bits. The first thing I remember, even goes back further,

there was Frank Tyson in Australia, 54, 55. And you had the, in those days, of course, the commentary from Australia was almost impossible to listen to because you could hear the waves rushing over the wires, I think. Yes. You know, it's a completely sort of distorted sound. But did that take you there, though? It's funny because people say to us, no, oh, you know, I know you're in Australia,

but it sounds as if you're broadcasting just down the road. And actually, those old four-wire circuits and so on, and the way that the commentary came back in those days. Oh, yeah. No, I loved it. And then they'd lose it. And they'd say, at the moment, sorry, we've lost it. We're going to have to try and divert it through colloquium. in Sri Lanka.

And you lie there, because I often, of course in Australia, you were tending to listen to it early in the morning because he didn't do, again, in my early days, they didn't do ball by ball. They came on about half, six, quarters of seven in the morning just towards the close of play. But you were lying there, just waiting for thinking, when do they get this thing sorted out through Colombo?

They're all waiting for. Well, I have cranked a handle. We used to have, when I first started, I think I was in Pakistan, and you arrive at your point and have a box of gadgetry, with the big handles, you crank the handle. Well, like an old grandma say. Yes, someone say, hello. I say, hello, this is the BBC in the cricket ground in Islamabad, or I was, hello.

I need to be put through to London. Oh, yes, sir. So you then hear, hello, hello, this is Islamabad, Islamabad calling Tehran. Hello, Tehran. After much cranking of this handle, hello, hello, on here. Yes, this is, this is Lamopad. Can you patch us through to Berlin? Yes, yes, yes. They go to Berlin, hello, and no, patcher us. So finally you get through to the tower in London and you get patched through to the BBC. And you actually hear it going on in your

headphones while you're waiting. Imagine these people as plugging things in on this huge switchboard to put you through. These days it's dial a number up. In fact, don't dial a number up anymore. It's on the internet. That's how it's incredible they do. But you can imagine when you only were going to get about 45 minutes. the end of play and then they had to divert it through Colombo it was kind of

really annoying I wonder what TMS did what do it do for you then I mean it just brings everything alive well oh yeah I mean

it's still the ball by ball thing that is the best was the best part about it and I think I don't know whether Britain was the first country to have ball by ball

commentary I haven't got the faintest idea about that but to be able to follow it all through the day at any time of the day and turn it on and get the score. So that was fantastic. Yeah, you get the atmosphere.

But all the things that people say about Test Match Special are true, that it's kind of unique in a way because it's far more than just commentary. And you've gone on reinventing yourselves. Who would have thought that Philip Tufnell would become a kind of idol of the nation? Well, if you really want me to be honest,

I'll say I didn't. No. Well, I mean, no one knew his versatility. Actually, you reminded me of something about Phil, which was that I first met you, and you probably don't remember this, but I went to Barbados in 94 and managed to worm my way into the Test match special.

I do remember you at the back of our box. I was in the back of your box, not doing any interviews, just sitting quietly, because I think I might have asked if we could go. And we were with a friend, a local Barbados fan, and he wanted to come up as well because they all, you know, listened to our commentaries. And I sat there for about an hour.

It was basically sort of a wooden hen house on top of a chicken shed on top of the roof. It did feel a rather a little unstable. It was rusty. I do remember you being there. But what I do remember is going down afterwards and they said, okay, you've been here long enough. I'll have to get rid of you now.

I went down and I was walking back to our seats and Lara was batting. It was the last day of the fourth test and Lara was batting. They had to get, I don't know, about 240 odd I think and they were struggling. We got early wickets, but everybody, we all thought if Lara gets going,

that's the end of the matter. And he suddenly skyed the ball and it was in the air. I was walking, again, with test match, especially in my ear. I remember this. And they said... I know whose name you're going to say. They said, Tuffanil is under the ball.

It was awful, wasn't it? Oh, no. It was sinking feeling. And there was about, I don't know, it felt like about 10 seconds. It can't possibly have been told it, but it felt that. And then, I don't know if you were commentating, actually, you might have been, I'm not sure. And then the sort of sound of amazement. Guffel's caught it.

I think I was on at the time You're on the air It was one of those roller coaster emotions Laura's going to be out Oh no it's tough London Oh no well we might as well forget it That was the implication Whether you said it or not

No I know But I mean that has swung the game It actually yeah It was a good catch And they did win the game Alex Stewart scored 200 that match They did yeah The first time we won in Barbados

For years So how did you enjoy that I mean that I mean a trip to Barbados To watch cricket Is like every cricket I've been planning that think for about two years to actually get there and get the time off.

And I went with some friends. And it was great, not only because of the cricket, which was great, but going into sort of the gin shops at night and talking to the locals about it. And I'd bet some chap that I met in the kind of equivalent of a Barbadian pub the night before, that we would get them out for 240 odd, and we did. so I went and claimed my glass of rum it sounds as if you

you've savoured it we embraced it tell me Peter how do you see the game of cricket how do you visualise the game of cricket given that you've never seen a game of cricket in your life it's funny you should say that because it's quite a complicated thing

I mean as you know blind people play cricket you advertise it regularly yourself with the with the primary club but of Of course, what I gradually came to realize is that our idea, I mean, when I played cricket, it was with a bat and a football with sort of, you know, things inside it, make it rattle. The first ones had bells, and then they had sort of lead shot in there.

But I gradually realized that, of course, the things that you were describing, the commentators were describing, like a hook and a cut, and it was nothing like I actually thought it was. I mean, for a start, you didn't play hooks, and you just swung the bat and hoped to hell you would hit something as a blind person. Mind you, there are some sighted cricketers who play like that as well. That's right.

But, you know, I realised that I didn't know what I was talking about, really. When I was, you know, if you said that, oh, God, that sounded like a really good cover drive by Peter May. I didn't know what a cover drive was. I actually did a program on Radio 4 with David Gower.

And I, because David used to, I was in Hampshire and he was in Hampshire for quite a long time and he used to pop up on our local radio station quite a lot. So I contacted him and said, would you do a program with me explaining what these shots are to a blind person? And I had no idea that people had that, I'm waving my arm round to the, I had no idea when people played their bat was that high and it sort of came round. I didn't know that until David explained it to me and illustrated it. and we tried to do this on the radio and then I ended up at the end a bit

bowling of one of those footballs with lead shot to David and of course we had to fix it so I got him out of course. So I mean I'm not sure now that my concept

my concept of cricket is all about the sounds it makes so it is about the sound of the bat on the ball it is the sound of an edge again you can tell that when you can tell When you're listening or when you're at a match and even there isn't any radio

and if you're sitting at a Hampshire game for example, you can have a sense of what's going on? I did this with, you'll know Kevin James. Yes, of course. You know Kevin, who now does the Hampshire matches. That and was played for Hampshire for quite a while. And we did an experiment that I went up in the commentary box

and said, well, I know who suggested this, whether it was me stupid enough to or Kevin, brave enough to. So try commentating on an over. the blind person. And, of course, you do do it. It's not foolproof at all. I mean, it's not miraculous stuff. But, I mean, you can, there is all sorts of things

which kind of give it away. Like a sort of glide behind the wicket. It sounds completely different to a cover drive or something like that. It's difficult to, I'm not sure you could tell the difference between a hook and a cut. So I didn't try to do that. But I got, and you also get a very clear idea,

from the crowd reaction of how many runs, whether it is going to go to the boundary or whether it's going to be a two or a three. So I didn't do bad. I got about four out of six balls in the over, reasonably accurate. Having not being able to see them. Couldn't see a thing.

No, not being able to see them. It is. Just listening to it. Yeah. Yeah. Because we have a lot of blind listeners. Yeah, I will have. People are mad about sport.

Yes. Yeah. And so, you know, I remember Brian Johnston, well, probably one of the only pieces of advice he ever gave it because he wasn't like that, but he said, you know, think of the blind listener. And I remember fairly early on a blind listener. I met him. I think he's at the Oval.

And he says, it's one thing actually. He said, yeah, we like it, getting things fairly well right. Can I just say something? He said, in my mind, he said, there's no such thing as a straight drive. I said, oh, okay. He said, because a straight drive will hit. the stumps at the bowler's end. I need to know more than what you're saying.

You can't just say someone's been straight driven for four. Which side of the stumps did it go? That was what I was just going to say. Exactly. And I thought, you know, you're so right. So it's detail like that. Actually, because most of our listeners in a way are blind listeners because they're not here.

That's right. So they don't see it. They're sitting in their car driving up the M1. They still have the same description. of the game and the minds that you're getting. So actually, I think that a blind listener is our best coach, actually. But I suppose, to be fair to you, a straight drive in a way, the suggestion is the straightness with which the bat is held.

And so a few inches to the left or to the right, it doesn't stop it being a straight drive. It's still a straight drive, isn't it really? Yes. And are you visualising in your mind, that sort of description, though. I don't think, I don't think, some blind people might. I mean, there are no rules, really. We're all, I mean, blind people like everyone else.

They're all individuals. I think I am much more into the flow of the game, the scores that I like my statistics. Oh, right. Not to the extent that Andy does. He's obsessed by them. But it's a great obsession. It's wonderful.

And you've had some. wonderful people. I mean, Andy now and Andrew Sampson and, you know, Bill, Frindle, going up. He started it without any internet. Yes. Yes. He used to arrive with boxes of files and folders and books. I know. You'd ask him a question and he'd have to delve into those

and most of them, he had to update all the time with his writing and so on, while watching and scoring a cricket match at the same time. That's why he'd sometimes ignore you completely. Often. Yeah. Yeah. Did you get the sense of it being a bit of a community as well, test match special, that actually you know, it is a kind of a team.

Yeah, but also I think the listeners are part of the community. That's the thing. I think that's the sense you always get out of it. And yeah, I think it is. And, you know, somebody moves on and you think, oh, it'll never be the same again.

It's like somebody like John Arlott. I grew up listening to John, and idolizing John Arlott, partly because another Hampshire man who lived about six miles up. the road, also because he was very nice to me. There was a pub that my parents used to go to and the landlord and landlady

knew that I was obsessed by cricket and John Arlott would pop in there for a bottle or two of wine and they rang me up one day and said we've asked Mr Arlott if you come down, we've told him about you I was about 12 or 13

and he very kindly because he was known as a bit, could be a bit grumpy but he apparently agreed and I went down there and he talked to me for about two hours non-stop about cricket a wonderful moment so you know

he was a great describer wasn't he but not that he somehow built characters up he described bowlers and batsmen of course in a way that was unique really I think Groucho Marx chasing a pretty waitress and all those sort of things It's not about a fast bowler, I mean.

Those sorts of things, again, must really be very evocative in your mind. Well, it was wonderful use of language as well with Arlott. I mean, because, of course, he was a poet, you know, a second-rank poet maybe, but a published poet, he had been the BBC poetry correspondent. I think he'd done those programmes. He's very rounded man, wasn't he? And, you know, he'd been a police officer. He'd done all sorts of things, really.

Do you like one-day cricket as well? I mean, you're obviously a test-match man at heart. Yeah, I've learnt, I haven't quite learned to love the 100 yet. Am I allowed to say that? There's still time. You've gotten until 2027. I think that those one-day competitions have evolved. And even, I mean, the problem, and this is a cliche,

but as with a lot of cliches, it's true, which is that every test match is different. from another test match. You never get a repeat. And in some senses, all one-day games are the same. And people will say, oh, people officionados will deny that. But it's true, basically. It can be formulaic. It can be very formulaic.

And because they're one innings, that's the subtlety of, because it's a two-innings game. And you can see things happen like the Headingley test of 1981. It's a classic example of it, isn't it? And we had a classic example with the first test, with England's reaction, or Stokes's reaction to facing 553, which was not to sort of take any notice, really, and just go crashing on and completely turn the game round. So, I mean, a one-day game is a comedy sketch.

A test match is a novel, I would say. That sounds very fair. point. How did you get into broadcasting, Peter? I mean, there can't be many, many blind broadcasters back in the day. I was at university. I wasn't enjoying myself very much. I started to do law and realised there was no way I was going to be a lawyer. I think I could have done it, but it felt very formulaic. I finally got around to thinking, what do I really want to do in life? It's no good just doing the jobs that are offered. And I thought, what I really want to. I mean, I'd been listening to radio.

Well, you know that from talking about Testimac Official, but I listened to everything, you know, news, music, everything since I was about five or six. And it suddenly dawned on me, I want to do local, we're not local radio, I want to do radio. But I didn't know many blind

people who were doing it. It wasn't on the kind of list of things that we were supposed to do. And I, it was the beginning of local radio that did it. The stage were being announced and I think

there must be opportunities because you work for local radio didn't you? Yes, I did and you're absolutely right I mean it sounds familiar this

Yeah I thought there must be opportunities I was sort of really in the depths really not knowing what I wanted to do and I hitchhiked down the University of Kent

I hitchhiked down to Southampton By yourself? I used to hitchhike a lot By yourself? Yeah, I'm yourself Yeah That's fairly trusting

Drivers were very nice on the hole I got a few dodgy ones Well you better not hear about that No you're probably better not You'd stand on the side of the road A blind fellow with a stick And you'd be hitchhiking Yeah absolutely

Yeah I'd started that at school At Blindske I terrified my mother once By turning up in the middle of a term Because I'd hitchhiked home She was up the step ladder in the larder She fell off it I walked in the door

But on this occasion But how did you get to the road? How did you start the road? What was the process? How did you start a hitching? Well, you know, I mean, you did your research, Jonathan. You know about your research. You knew where the main road was that you had to get to.

Good grief. And you could walk to that point. And sometimes I would, sometimes as I got older, I'd get someone to give me a lift to a decent starting point. You know, I sort of just off around about or something like that. And the rest of me, yeah, you just did it in the way everywhere. Wow. And the white stick was a very useful way of getting lifts

for the point where people cited people started to borrow them off me. Get it off. No, they did. No, I also had a friend who used to use my white stick to travel on the buses for a year. It's a terrible world. It's a terrible world. But I went down to Southampton to hitchhike to answer the question you asked me and went in and got sort of more or less sent on my way.

Have you, you know, have you written to the BBC? I've done all that. I've just had rejection letters and sorry, there are no jobs available, as if an organisation of 20,000 people had no jobs available. It was obviously rubbish. But a man called Ken Warburton and I am internally great. Do you know him? I'd certainly know of him.

I think my wife's had more. Well, he saw my white stick trailing rather just constantly into the lift at BBC Radio. Solent and I was back in Winchester. I was just getting ready to hitchhike back and the phone rang and it was Ken and he said it was clear I've got this job doing a program for blind people on BBC Radio Soland I saw you leaving and I said the last thing I want to do is a program for blind people I want to do a program for everybody I don't want to do special

programs but anyway Ken persuade said come down and see me so I didn't hitchhike back I went back down to Sanhampton the next day. My dad gave me a lift that time. That's nice. Didn't hitchhike the second time. And to cut a very long story short, after about 10 minutes talking to Ken, he said, well, here's a ewer tape recorder.

Oh, yes. O'est. We weighed a ton. Oh, they did weigh a lot. It's amazing. I've still got any back muscle. He said, he showed me how to use it. He said, go and do a recording for me,

and we'll see where it goes for me. And I went to interview a blind girl who was horse riding. And I always remember her. I said to him, what are the risks for a blind person horse riding? She said, well, you've got to be wary of low-flying aircraft. And I thought nobody's taking this seriously. But I brought this back to him, and he said, oh, that's quite funny.

And this wasn't quite how I'd imagine my program for blind people to be. No. And he said, would you like to present it? So, and that was the start. That was the start. But meeting people and talking to people and that, I mean, that's clearly what you're very good at. You're a great communicator, aren't you? That's what I've always enjoyed meeting people and having listened, used radio so much.

Because obviously for blind people, it's kind of everything really. You know, it's a newspaper. It's your music in the same way as it is for everybody else. but perhaps it's changing a bit now with technology and so forth but at the time it was a window onto everything really so I'd picked up I suppose the way the really you know the good broadcasters did it and I had an idea what I liked and what I didn't like about broadcasting you know people who described straight drives and didn't tell you exactly where the ball was going

that's actually that's the rule that's a terrible terrible crime so and it just one thing led to another, basically. So Solent gave me the opportunity to do stuff, begin to do stuff for the news program. And then I thought, I'm actually getting there now. But writing, how about scripts and things? I mean, we're not very scripted up here, if I'm honest. But there are a lot of the sort of programs...

A lot of the things that you would have been doing, presumably, would have required some scripts. Yeah, I'm a very good brailist. I was very lucky to be a good brailist. So I would write all my own scripts. So half the time the staff didn't know what I was going to do, which rather unnerved them for a little while. But, I mean, that's how I did that. Of course, computers had changed all that and made it possible for us to write scripts.

And, of course, you've now got speech, which enables you to, and you can get newspapers and books in a way that I couldn't at the time. So in those early days, it was a bit hit and missed. but I managed to, and a bit of ad-libbing when I was in trouble, which, of course, you need to be able to do anyway. And it gradually grew, and it's much more sophisticated now. In some ways it's more practical, and in some ways it's more difficult because computers, to be honest, present as many challenges as they solve. Yes, of course.

So in the end, it's still about talking to people in an accessible way and welcoming them in and enjoying what you're doing, doing and trying to convey that adjoignment to other people. So you and yours then, how did that come about? I mean, you've been involved with that program for 50 years. When I started to work at local radio, I thought, this is all right, but they haven't got any money. It was very clear that they didn't have any money.

You had the same problem, I think. You had to work for nothing to my phone. There's not a future in this. And I, a chap called Dennis Skillicorn, it was a lovely man. it's an island it's a manx name and Dennis wasn't I think with best will in the world he wasn't a very good broadcaster but he was a very good salesman and Dennis was a freelancer and he said you've got a freelance Peter you've got to sell your stuff it's no good just giving it to local radio you've got to go out to all the other stations and you've got to find other programs to work for and so I looked around thinking who are the programs that are using other people's material and one of them was you and yours and they seemed to have quite a program every day and quite a fast turnover. So I just approached them.

And the other thing that helped me a lot was in touch, which is the program that I've done for blind people for nearly 50 years now. High time they got rid of me, I suspect. But working for that brought me to the attention of other Radio 4 producers, including you and yours. So initially I went to them and said, I mean, I think the first piece I did was something to do with mushroom farming.

I didn't know. And that was when I realised that you could broadcast the thing about things you knew absolutely nothing about. Absolutely. As long as you did your research, enough of it. So that's really how you and yours started in the very early days, just freelance pieces. And that grew to longer pieces. And also, to be fair, the other thing that happened was that disability became a far more, a subject. that people stopped ignoring.

I mean, when I was there, when I started, it was almost, it was never mentioned, and if it was in a kind of entirely kind of sort of sympathetic, oh, isn't it sad kind of way? But things changed. Legislation started to come in, people began to think about opportunity for people, and suddenly it crept up on us

that disability was something that people wanted stuff material about, to put it bluntly. And so I was in the, again, I've had an awful lot of luck in my career, and I seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Do you think people are getting more educated

to disability and better to cope with it? I mean, you talked about people being uncomfortable about having a person presenting a programme. I mean, you can imagine perhaps in those days, the studios having to be special people. Watch out, or Peter, oh, I've got Peter coming in, right? Better make sure that's there and so on. Do you think people are

Well, I know more relaxed with disability now and better, much better at just dealing with it. This is a hard question to answer because there's definitely more thought given to it. But when it really comes down to it, I mean, I did a programme one in touch only the other day about some of the Darth questions that people ask us. You know, and these are questions that kind of seem. Their whole attitude to us is dominated by this one thing, the fact that we can't see. And I can understand why this is fascinating to people. But, you know, the fact is we're multi-dimensional people like everybody else, and that's only one thing.

So, you know, if you meet somebody, for example, and the first thing they say to you is, where's your dog? Where's your dog? Or is your dog? My dog, which is a pet Labrador, is lying asleep at home. Clearly, the implication is that surely you've got a guide dog. Probably there are about 5,000 working guide dog partnerships in the UK. There are about 350,000 registered blind people.

But I guess you're right. It is a fascination. I cannot imagine living my life without being able to see anything. And that is why I suspect you... No, I understand. You cited people. Yeah. Cannot imagine it.

I know. But if you had to answer those questions... Well, you probably have to answer questions about what it's like to do, Test Match Special every day. But if you have to answer those questions every day... Yes. You know, I got off a train once, and this guy was walking along. He was helping me...

I was at Oxford Circus. I was going towards... I knew the way, but he was being helpful. And we're walking along. And he suddenly said, where's your dog then, mate? And I said there was a pause And I thought before I knew what I was doing Oh my God, I must have left it on the train

And that led to utter chaos I mean it ended in the suspension of the Baker Lula While they tried to find this non-existent dog And in the end they said to it Somebody said to me when they discovered but they said, why did you do that? And I thought, what can I say? Because I've always wanted one,

which wasn't true. Peter, there's a very naughty side to your character, as we've discovered today, and it's been an absolute pleasure meeting again. Barbados seems a long time ago. It's great to catch up. And just congratulations for what you've done. You've inspired so many people, I know.

And it's lovely to hear about your love of cricket and what this silly old program does for you and many others. So thank you so much for coming. coming in. I'll go back to my day out. Well, the great thing is you won't have to hitchhike back, I don't think, because your wife's here, isn't she? Yeah, but I'm trying to think what, if I've said anything about her to upset her. No, no.

I think I have, actually, managed to steer off that. I think you're off the hook. You're listening to the TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live.