The economist is so close to the Chancellor that his 10-year-old daughter Rosie was a bridesmaid at Mr
The economist is so close to the Chancellor that his 10-year-old daughter, Rosie, was a bridesmaid at Mr Brown’s wedding, and their son Ben, five, was a pageboy.Norman Baker, a broadcasting spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: “The BBC rightly stresses its political impartiality, but it can’t then acquiesce in the appointment of people with clear political leanings to key positions in its organisation. I think you will find that the BBC got the man that they wanted. This looks like it’s new Labour, new BBC.”Mr Davies, a keen fan of cricket and Southampton Football Club, will replace Baroness Young of Old Scone, who has held the position for two and a half years.Mr Davies, 50, is worth an estimated £150m and recently made £15m by selling shares in Goldman Sachs, where he is chief international economist as well as managing director.The economist usually shuns media attention but said yesterday that he was looking forward to taking up the appointment on the BBC’s board. He said: “The BBC plays a vital role in the culture of our nation and in supporting our democracy. I am excited at the prospect of helping to sustain the BBC’s impact and creativity in the future.”.
The BBC confirmed yesterday that David Coleman, a television sports presenter for more than 40 years, will not have his contract renewed when it expires this month. A spokesman insisted that “the door is wide open” for Coleman to make more programmes, but said that the commentator had indicated that his present contract would be his last. The BBC confirmed yesterday that David Coleman, a television sports presenter for more than 40 years, will not have his contract renewed when it expires this month. A spokesman insisted that “the door is wide open” for Coleman to make more programmes, but said that the commentator had indicated that his present contract would be his last.
So far, Coleman has been conspicuously silent on the matter.
And even if he is calling it a day, that might be easier done than said. He did, after all, once observe that “this evening is a very different evening from the morning we had this morning”. Or did he? Just as every other aphorism is attributed to Oscar Wilde, so is Coleman credited with every other mangled or ambiguous piece of commentary. And thanks to Private Eye, even the gaffes he didn’t make carry his name But as with Wilde, the best ones are usually his. “Linford Christie,” he once memorably opined, “has a habit of pulling it out when it matters the most.”The most tittersome line of the lot, and the one that inspired Private Eye’s marvellous neologism Colemanballs, dates back to the 1976 Olympics.”Juantorena opens his legs and shows his class,” he said Except he didn’t Ron Pickering did. “It wasn’t until three years later that I discovered I hadn’t said it,” Coleman once confided. But by then it was too late.Besides, Pickeringballs wouldn’t have had quite the same ring.
On which subject, Coleman did predict during a middle-distance race that “there is going to be a real ding dong when the bell goes”.Well, the bell has finally sounded on Coleman’s long career and, aptly, has caused a fine old ding dong. The BBC strongly rejects suggestions that its venerable presenter, who turns 75 in April, is in effect being sacked. Now would perhaps be the time for Coleman to open his mouth and show his class. But he seems to be letting the uncertainty fester.Whatever, this has been a sad week for sports enthusiasts, not to mention the pages of Private Eye, for on Monday another cherished broadcaster, the Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, announced his intention to take the chequered flag. Like Coleman, Walker sometimes gets his syntax in a terrible twist He, too, is a regular contributor to Colemanballs.
But both men deserve to be celebrated for much more than their ability to drop clangers, and for more, in Coleman’s case, than services to pastel knitwear during his long tenure as presenter of A Question of Sport.He was, after all, the BBC’s face of sport before Des Lynam was so much as a twinkle in his own eye. Moreover, he represented an important break with tradition, for when he started on Grandstand in 1959 he was the first BBC presenter without genuine or affected public-school vowels. Coleman was a grammar school lad from Cheshire, and had been an athlete good enough to win the prestigious Manchester Mile, which explained the fervour of his later commentaries. “Oh, fantastic run, oh fantastic run, magnificent, magnificent, magnificent,” he shouted, when Anne Packer won the 400 metres at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.His background as a runner perhaps also explains the competitiveness he brought to broadcasting. In 1964, when ITV’s World of Sport was established to run against Grandstand on Saturday afternoons, Coleman was unequivocal.”We’ll blow the bastards out of the water in six months,” he said. And he was magnificently condescending whenever he bumped into the ITV football commentator Brian Moore on FA Cup Final day, in the halcyon era when both main channels covered the match.
