THE HERALD WRITES

DOUG GILLON, Athletics Correspondent March 17 2008
We've had the pleasure of this year's Calcutta Cup, and the squirming commentary of English pundits to grasp the reality that the visitors were actually the poorer of two rather bereft sides.

It was by no means the first time a partisan commentator had been challenged thus. It's 70 years on Wednesday since the first televised Calcutta Cup match at Twickenham. France did not play in those days, and Scotland, having beaten Wales and Ireland at home, faced England for the Triple Crown.

In what became known as Wilson Shaw's match, Scotland won 21-16, outscoring England by five tries to one. It was the first Scottish victory at Twickenham for 12 years. The Scots' captain, Shaw, scored twice, the second try three minutes from time, and he was chaired shoulder-high from the field.

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Shaw died in 1970, aged 60, never having witnessed another Scotland Triple Crown, and only one more Scottish victory at Twickenham. Since that day 70 years ago, Scotland has won there only twice.

The BBC commentator that day was Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam, and in the crowd was a teenage Hawick laddie, Bill McLaren.

Born in 1893, Wakelam was a sports broadcasting pioneer. In 1927 he delivered the first radio running commentary: an 11-9 rugby victory for England over Wales at Twickenham.

The producer prepared an unsuspecting British public with a special insertion in the Radio Times. It was a plan of the pitch, divided into eight numbered squares. Listeners were advised to keep it on their laps as they listened to the game.

Wakelam described the run of play as a voice in the background said which square play was happening in. The phrase "Back to Square One" is believed to have originated from this.

A week later, with CA Lewis, he did the first radio football commentary, Arsenal v Sheffield United. He also covered cricket, boxing and Wimbledon, and had a justified reputation for unflapability. On one occasion he set his notes on fire but commentated through the conflagration without batting an eyelid. A former Harlequins rugby player, Wakelam was rugby correspondent for The Morning Post and wrote several books.

Before 1927, the football authorities and Fleet Street media proprietors jealously guarded matches from the electronic media in the belief that it would keep spectators from matches and drive down newspaper sales.

Bill McLaren retired after 50 years behind the microphone in 2002, but the Borderer who became the doyen of rugby commentators still remembers Wakelam well.

"HBT? I used to go into the spare room at our home in Hawick, or into the bathroom, and impersonate him," said McLaren from his home last week. "I used to practice doing it just as he'd do it. He was part and parcel of my life. I started doing it when I was a laddie in primary school.

"I remember he had an unusual voice, as if he was talking through a pipe. I don't want to be impertinent, but it was a sharpish voice. HBT was very much a southern English gentleman, very patriotic."

This article was posted on 17-Mar-2008, 08:02 by Hugh Barrow.