Des Lynam - I Should Have Been at Work

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Entertainment 2005

Copyright © Desmond Lynam 2005

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Extract from ‘Another date with Nigella’ by Victor Lewis-Smith.

© Evening Standard Newspaper, 2005

Extract from ‘More gush than guts’ by Victor Lewis-Smith.

© Evening Standard Newspaper, 2005

All photographs courtesy of the author with the exception of the following:

Army Public Relations Photo Section/Klaus Marche 13(t); Bente Fasmer 9(t); BBC Photo Library 9(b), 14, 16, 23(b), 24(t), 25(b), 28(b); Empics 11(b), 23(t), 26(b), 29(b); Snowdon/Radio Times 27(t); Rex 32; Reuters 19(t), 27(b).

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007205455

Ebook Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9780007560370

Version: 2017-01-18

For Rose and Patrick

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

1. Daddy Who?

2. Not a Complete Banker

3. Taking the Mike

4. Not as Dumb as I Looked

5. A Face for Radio?

6. All Tanked Up

7. Gun Trouble in Texas

8. Gerry and Dean

9. Our Man in Moscow

10. A Call from Ali

11. Finding a Rose

12. That Was No Lady

13. Breakfast with Brisbane

14. Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

15. SPOTY

16. ‘A Signed Affidavit’

17. A Touch of the Dimblebys

18. Mr and Mrs Merton

19. See Naples and Dry

20. The King of Denmark

21. Sexy Football

22. Have I Got a Singer for You!

23. National Disasters

24. If I Could Keep My Head

25. Front Page Fool

26. Undiplomatic Service

27. A Briefcase Full of Money

28. ‘Use Your Sense of Humour’

29. Helen and Jill

30. Saturday Nights Again

31. ‘F*** It, We’ll Go at Seven’

32. Sir Alex is Unhappy

33. The D.G.s and Me

34. Good Cop, Bad Cop

35. ‘Herograms’

36. Orchestra or Chorus?

37. Anyone for Tennis?

38. Anyone for Table Tennis?

39. Retiring? Me?

40. Afternoons with Carol and Susie

Photo Section

List of Credits

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

It was the second of August 1999. It would be the most momentous day in my broadcasting life. That evening I would be all over the television news, the following day’s front pages and be the subject of columnists’ opinions for weeks. What was I doing to attract so much attention?

I was changing jobs. I was shocking myself in the process and obviously, to my amazement, a lot of other people too.

I had made my decision, although my partner, Rose, had been very circumspect about the move. She knew how much I had loved the BBC; how I had worked hard to get to the position I occupied, aided by a good share of luck; how I had fought battles to defend the organisation when it was under attack from outside, and often waged war when the sports department was being battered from inside the Corporation itself. But now I would fight those battles no longer. As I went up to the office of my agent, Jane Morgan, in Regent Street, I kept wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my working life. I had one of the best jobs in broadcasting. The BBC had always looked after me. I was never going to get rich working for them, but they were family. I worked with a great number of wonderful and talented people, and I knew for the most part that I was popular with them. There were laughs every day. I had been given awards for doing my job, which I loved. Now I was about to throw it all in.

Had I lost my sanity? The day before, in the back garden of my house in West London, I had shaken hands with ITV’s Controller of Programmes, David Liddiment, their Head of Sport, Brian Barwick, and their lawyer, Simon Johnson. I had confirmed I would be joining them. The deal was that I would not accept any counter-offer from the BBC to stay. ITV now needed confirmation that I had resigned.

‘There’s the phone,’ said Jane. ‘Take a deep breath and the best of luck.’

I was born on 17 September 1942, in the new hospital in the town of Ennis in County Clare, Ireland. For the privilege of being born in the country of my heritage, I am indebted to Adolf Hitler.

My mother and father had both left their homeland before the Second World War to forge careers in nursing in England, where they had met. Unemployment was rife in Ireland at the time, and would continue to be so for many years until the economic boom brought about by Ireland’s membership of the European Community in the Eighties. Like many before and after them, my parents had become economic migrants when still in their teenage years. Both, and entirely independent of each other, had been close to making their new lives in America but had been prevailed upon by their families to stay within reasonable reach of home.

They had begun their training in Bournemouth but had moved to Brighton in Sussex, where my father had become a senior mental health nurse at the Brighton General Hospital and my mother a nursing sister. But in 1941 my father was called up by the British Army to do his duty on behalf of his adopted country and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. Initially, he was posted to Northern Ireland, and so my mother decided to go back to the bosom of her family in Ennis so that they could continue to see each other from time to time.

Shortly after my mother found out that she was expecting yours truly, Dad was posted to the Far East. I would not meet him until I was nearly four years old.

Mother, Gertrude Veronica, was from a large family, eight children in all, of whom she was the youngest. Her father and my grandfather, Packo Malone, was a famous local sportsman when a young man, excelling in particular at the Gaelic sports of football and hurling, representing the county at both, and playing in an all-Ireland final before the First World War. He was well over six feet tall and as strong as an ox. Of all his grandchildren, I am the only one to match him in terms of height, and I also seem to have inherited his rather large conk as well. When he was young, he had enjoyed a few drinks, but on his fortieth birthday he had suffered an almighty hangover, subsequently ‘took the pledge’, and never did a drop of alcohol pass his lips for the next half-century.