An Evening with Johnners

by Brian Johnston

  But when she got into the Irish State Coach he would pass over to me halfway down Whitehall, where I would be waiting. I would explain about the Irish State Coach and the Escort, the names of the horses and that sort of thing.

  So came the great day and I heard Richard in my headphones just as we’d planned. But as he was beginning to get to the end of his preparation, he looked up the river and said, ‘I can’t see the Queen arriving yet, it’s a bit misty up there. Still, perhaps as we’re waiting, I’ll tell you something about the Irish State Coach. It weighs thirteen tons, it was given to Queen Victoria, it’s made of gold and it is used on state occasions.’

  So I was crossing out my notes, as I was listening. Then he said, ‘The Queen still isn’t here but you might be interested to know the names of the horses. The front one is called Monty, the second one Eisenhower, and they were given to the Queen by Queen Wilhelmina. Well, it must be the mist up there … but anyhow, the Escort today are the Blues in front, commanded by Lieutenant Harcourt-Smith and in the rear are the Life Guards with their white plumes and red tunics …’ and so on.

  I was going mad, crossing things off on my bits of paper. Then he said, ‘Ah, here she comes!’ and he did all that he was meant to do, and described her coming ashore and the people being presented.

  When she got into the coach he said, ‘Over to Brian Johnston halfway down Whitehall,’ and do you know, the next day people said to me, ‘You did the best television commentary I’ve ever heard. Better than Richard Dimbleby.’

  I realised why because, when they came past me, I watched in silence on my monitors as they went into Trafalgar Square, turned left under Admiralty Arch and went about two hundred and fifty yards up the Mall. As they approached Buckingham Palace I said, ‘Over now to Berkeley Smith at Buckingham Palace.’

  That’s all I said! But what else could I say? They knew the Queen, they knew Prince Philip, they knew the horses and the Escort and they knew all about the Irish State Coach. So that was a lesson which I don’t think many people follow nowadays, and perhaps they talk too much.

  And I learnt another thing from that television time. In 1952 I was chosen to be one of the commentators for the King’s funeral, which wasn’t quite my cup of tea. I thought, Look, you can’t get out of it with a joke if you make a mess of things. You must get off to a good start. So for the first, and the last, time in my life I decided to write out my opening.

  I found out that the procession was going to be led by five Metropolitan Policemen mounted on white horses, so I wrote it down. We had about a week before the funeral and I learnt it every night before I went to sleep.

  On the day, Richard Dimbleby was in St James’s Street. He described the procession coming past and as it wended its way up Piccadilly and was approaching Hyde Park Corner he said, ‘Over now to Brian Johnston at Hyde Park Corner.’

  My television producer in my headphones said, ‘Go ahead, Brian. Good luck,’ and I said, ‘Yes, here comes the procession now, led by five Metropolitan Policemen mounted …’ and on the word ‘mounted’ I luckily looked up and they weren’t on white horses.

  It was no good pretending they were because at least there was black and white television in those days, even if not colour. So very lamely I said, ‘Here they are … mounted on horseback.’

  My producer, and remember this was a serious occasion, shouted in my ear, ‘What on earth do you think they are mounted on? Camels?’

  To let you know what sort of thing goes through a commentator’s mind, we have an expression we use when describing processions and I had to say to myself, when the cortège came past me, not to use it. The expression is: ‘Here comes the main body of the procession.’

  If I had said it then I should probably have got the sack. But those things do go through one’s mind.

  The other difference between radio and television is in interviewing. Now, if I am doing a three-minute interview with someone on radio, I’ll have a stopwatch. When we get to about two and three-quarter minutes I’ll show him the watch, dig him in the ribs or kick him in the shins, and hopefully he’ll finish and I can hand back to the studio.

  But in television it’s very different. If I’m interviewing someone up here, say, for television, the camera will probably be down in the second row and alongside it will be a chap called a studio manager who has headphones on, linked to one of those huge command vehicles. That’s where the producer sits and gives his instructions.

  He says, ‘Right, tell Brian to go ahead,’ and you get a signal to start and begin the interview. Then, when he wants you to finish, he gives you a wind-up sign, or if he wants you to go a little longer he signals you to stretch it out a bit. If you overrun, he goes qweeck with his finger across his throat, meaning, ‘Cut!’

  But it doesn’t always work. I was doing a programme from an exhibition in the Horticultural Hall and on one of the stands was a jet engine. It was my job to interview a very well-known scientist called Sir Ben Lock-Spicer and in three minutes he had to describe basic things about the jet engine such as what goes in the front and what goes out behind. We rehearsed him and he did it very well indeed.

  When they handed over to ‘Brian Johnston’, I got the signal to go ahead and I said, ‘Yes, we’ve got Sir Ben Lock-Spicer to tell us all about the jet engine,’ and he did it absolutely right. When he had finished, as we’d rehearsed, the chap was winding me up very confidently and I said, ‘Well, thank you very much to Sir Ben, that was very interesting.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘this is far more interesting,’ and went up to the other end of the engine. The studio manager was now going qweeck, making cutting signs, so I waited for Sir Ben to draw breath and said, ‘Well, thank you very much, Sir Ben, we’ve learnt an awful lot.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you haven’t learnt half of it yet,’ and went up the other end! The chap was going crazy, going qweeck, qweeck, qweeeck, and we overran. So it doesn’t always work. Nowadays they don’t worry. They say, ‘Sorry, time’s up,’ and cut someone off in mid-sentence. In those days we tried to be polite.

  Another thing is, if you’re interviewing someone and they say something that isn’t meant to be funny, at least on the radio you can hide your smile and hopefully suppress your giggles. But on television, if someone says something funny and it’s not meant to be, you mustn’t be seen to smile.

  In 1952, when the Indians were here, I was down at Worcester. We always did the first match of the tour on television and inevitably it was raining, as it always did. About lunchtime my producer said, ‘Right, go out under an umbrella and interview the Indian manager. We’ll try and fill in some time.’

  The Indian manager was a little man called Mr Gupta, a bit of a volatile chap. I don’t know how much English he understood. Anyhow, I got him under the umbrella and said, ‘Mr Gupta, have you got a good team?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’ve got a very good team.’

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Any good batsmen?’

  ‘Seven very good batsmen.’

  ‘What about the bowlers?’

  ‘Six very good bowlers.’

  I thought this was getting a bit boring and I’d better try another tack, so I said, ‘What about yourself. Are you a selector?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’m a Christian!’

  So I pretended not to laugh and said, ‘So, tell me about your wicket-keeper …’

  But I was meant to laugh on the occasion when I interviewed Uffa Fox at the Boat Show. Do you remember Uffa Fox? He was the great yachtsman who taught Prince Philip how to sail, a great old sea salt. Sometime before, he’d married a French lady. Nothing very odd about that, except that she couldn’t speak a word of English and he couldn’t speak a word of French.

  So when I was interviewing him at the Boat Show I said, ‘Before we talk about the boats, excuse me asking a rather personal question. You married this lady, who doesn’t speak your language and you don’t speak hers. How does a marriage like that work?’

  ‘Oh,’ he s
aid, ‘it’s quite easy, my dear chap. There are only three things in life worth doing. Eating, drinking and making love – and if you talk during any of them, you are wasting your time!’

  A lovely bit of philosophy, isn’t it?

  Now things often go wrong. Sometimes you know they do, sometimes you don’t. I’ll give you two instances which luckily you didn’t know about.

  In the late forties and fifties we used to go live in the evenings at about eleven o’clock at night to a wood at Hever Castle in Kent. We used to broadcast the birds singing. If it wasn’t raining, the nightingales would sing and so would the other birds.

  I used to do this with Henry Douglas-Home, Lord Home’s younger brother, who was known as ‘The Bird Man’. We would run microphone leads from a van to various parts of the wood and one night at about ten o’clock (remember we were on live at eleven o’clock) he said, ‘We’ve just got time to check the microphones.’

  So he asked the engineer, ‘Will you bring up the one by the bluebell glade,’ and the engineer turned it up and there was a willow warbler, or some other bird.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘that’s working. Now, the one by the little bridge by the stream,’ and he brought that up and there was a wood pigeon. Then he tried the one by the fir tree and there was a cock pheasant.

  Finally he said, ‘We’ve just got time. Let’s check up on the one over the rhododendron bush, where we’ve got the nightingale.’

  The engineer brought the microphone up and we heard a girl’s voice say, ‘If you do that again, Bert, I’ll give you a slap in the kisser!’

  He just had time to run round and say, ‘Please come out.’ And a very disgruntled couple came out, doing various things up and saying, ‘You might have let us make love in peace.’

  He pointed out that in about five minutes time we’d have said, ‘Let’s hear the dulcet tones of the nightingale,’ and goodness knows how far they’d have got by then!

  There was another occasion when it was lucky we weren’t on the air. I used to do these things in In Town Tonight for about three or four minutes each week where I’d do something live and exciting. One of the things we thought we’d do was see what it was like lying under a train. We found out from Southern Region that, if ever you go into Victoria, about a mile outside the station there are some planks between the lines. If you take up the planks, there’s a well about three feet deep where the workmen can crouch.

  They said I could go in there with my microphone and one of their men and they’d try to get me the Golden Arrow. So there I was, and when the studio said, ‘Where are you this Saturday night, Brian?’ I said, ‘I’m lying between the lines outside Victoria Station. We were going to get the Golden Arrow but I’ve just heard that it’s late and we’ve got an electric train instead.’

  The whole ground shook and I described how the lights from the train were coming towards us. Then the driver blew his horn, because he knew I was there, and the train went over me. It was really such a noise; you wouldn’t believe how loud it was. I was having to shout into my microphone.

  After it went over me, there were the stars above (we used to do it at night, of course) and I said, ‘Well, that’s what it’s like lying under a train. Back to the studio.’

  ‘Now we can leave,’ I said to the man with me, but he said, ‘No, you mustn’t. The Golden Arrow is coming in a couple of minutes and there’s a live rail, and with your microphone lead you might trip up. Let’s keep still.’

  And the Golden Arrow did come over us and the reason it was lucky we weren’t on the air is because when it went over us someone was washing their hands – at least, I hope they were! Dreadful! I was absolutely soused.

  One story, which you may have heard, was famous. Wynford Vaughan-Thomas was doing the commentary for television when the Queen Mother was launching the Ark Royal at Birkenhead. Before it started the producer said, ‘Look, I’ve got three cameras. When we start the broadcast, the first camera will show the Queen Mother breaking the champagne bottle and saying, “God bless all who sail in her.” Don’t talk during that.

  ‘The next one will show the Marine Band playing, the bunting and the crowd cheering. Don’t talk during that. Number three camera will show the chocks coming away and the Ark Royal gliding very, very slowly down the slipway. Don’t talk during that. But when it reaches the water at the bottom, then go into your commentary.’

  It went perfectly. They had a lovely shot of the Queen Mother, then they had the band playing and the bunting, and the chocks coming away. But while the Ark Royal was gliding down, the producer happened to look back at his number one camera and he saw the most lovely picture of the Queen Mother waving, as she does.

  Forgetting what he had told Wynford, he pressed a button and brought up on the screens at home a close-up of the Queen Mother just, unfortunately, as the Ark Royal hit the water.

  But Wynford was watching the ship and not his television monitor, so he said, ‘There she is, the huge vast bulk of her,’ … and there was the Queen Mother!

  She loved it, of course.

  On the Mondays of a Test match at Lord’s, the Queen always comes in the afternoon. It normally rains and there’s hardly anybody there, but the teams are presented to her during the tea interval.

  Robert Hudson was doing the commentary when the New Zealanders were being presented to the Queen and he said, ‘It’s a great occasion for these Commonwealth teams. It’s a moment they will always forget!’

  Who am I to talk? At the royal wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana, I was on Queen Anne’s statue just in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. She was called Brandy Annie, I was told, because she was a bit keen on the grog.

  So I had a marvellous view standing there, because all the coaches and carriages drew up about six feet below me. I could see the Queen, with a rug over her knees, being helped out and so on.

  I looked over my shoulder and said, ‘I can see Lady Diana coming up Ludgate Hill, in her coach with her two escorts. The coach will come below me here, a page will open the door and she will be greeted by her father, Earl Spencer. Then they will walk up the steps together, into the pavilion … I mean, cathedral!’

  There are some very good stories about dear old John Snagge. In 1939 John was deputed to go and commentate as the King and Queen left on a trip to Canada. They were going in a big warship called HMS Vanguard, from Portsmouth. He was told he had about a quarter of an hour, because the tugs would have to push the ship out, and he was just to describe what was going on.

  So he wrote a lot of notes, and read them all out, saying where the voyage was going, where the royal couple were to visit in Canada, the history of the ship and everything. He began to run out of things to say, so he looked around.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I can see the King and Queen up there on the bridge. There they are, waving to the crowd. They won’t be back for two months. They’re saying their farewells.’ And he couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘Oh,’ he added, ‘I see the Queen has gone below now. She’s left the bridge and she’s gone down below for some reason.’ He looked around and still couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Then, ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I can see water coming through the side of the ship!’

  John’s a marvellous chap. He’s still alive, he’s about ninety now. He was the voice of Great Britain. Every big occasion – the Allied landings, Winston Churchill’s death, the King’s death – he was always the voice they put on the air and he represented us all really.

  He was a tremendous announcer in that way, but he didn’t normally do the sports news. One day he was asked to read it and he got as far as the cricket scores, when he said, ‘Yorkshire two hundred and fifty-nine all out. Hutton ill … Oh, I’m sorry, Hutton one hundred and eleven!’

  He joined the BBC in 1924, and those were the days when Mr Reith had just started the BBC. He became Sir John and later Lord Reith, and was a very serious minded Scotsman, highly religious and very puritan. Everything
had to be above board.

  He was going round the studios one evening, when he opened the door of a drama studio and, to his horror, he saw one of the producers making love to one of the actresses on a table. He rushed back to his office, summoned his assistant and said, ‘I’ve just seen a producer making love to an actress on a table. Get rid of them both!’

  And the chap said, ‘You can’t, Mr Reith, you can’t. It’s in the Radio Times: the play’s going out next week. Think of the scandal.’

  Reith thought for a moment and said, ‘No, no, you must get rid of them both.’

  ‘But you can’t, Mr Reith. You see, she’s our best actress and he’s our best producer.’

  Reith thought for a bit more. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Get rid of the table!’

  There’s a marvellous story about John Snagge. He did the Boat Race for fifty years. The Boat Race was John Snagge. I helped him for about forty years and took over from him in the last nine years, which was great fun.

  When you commentate on the Boat Race, you’re in a launch and you’re always about thirty yards behind the crews, possibly fifty sometimes, if one of them is leading by a lot. So it’s very difficult to judge exactly if they are a length up or two lengths up, or whatever it is. But John was always helped when he approached Duke’s Meadow, which is on the Middlesex side, before you get to Barnes Bridge.

  There were two flagpoles, and there was a man there who had a dark blue flag and a light blue flag, and he used to pull one up, depending on who was in the lead. If Oxford was going ahead, he’d put one flag up, or if Cambridge were drawing level he’d put two together, and so on. Because John was so far behind, he thought this chap must have a better view, sideways, than he did, so he used to watch the flags.