Monday, 18 August 2014
The man I could not disbelieve: memories of James Alexander Gordon
James Alexander Gordon: a name as synonymous with an elegant authority as it was with the football results, which he read peerlessly for 40 years.There was something calming in his very name, which I, presenting the Saturday sports show on the World Service for the very first time, was immediately grateful for.
It had been an afternoon, shall we say, of learning. Instructions came from the producer like a hail of bullets: cue to this reporter, cue to that ground. Give that other score, the reporter will give that one. Get to White Hart Lane NOW. And then, at just gone 5 o'clock, an oasis. What was coming was not just the steadying voice of a football ever-present, but a break from the mayhem.
Slow down, enjoy the moment, don't fluff his name, breathe: "And now the football results from England and Scotland, with James Alexander Gordon". Words I'd grown up with, emanating from my own body - a chill down the spine. And then came that clear, measured, mellifluous, warm voice; a voice of incalculable authority that we loved despite the news it often delivered. It brought order, it brought calm, it brought with it many of our happiest yesterdays.
**
Behind the scenes, though, we on the World Service carried a dark secret. Every week, James Alexander Gordon read dozens of incorrect scores (although we were fully to blame). For James' results were never just broadcast on a Saturday, on Sports Report, at just after five o'clock. For many years, global sports bulletins throughout Saturday evening and into the night would contain what was known by producers as "a short JAG", a cut down version of the full classified results. (You really do need an acronym if you're going to get anywhere at the BBC, although JAG did always seem ridiculous for one so smooth).
It would be 90 seconds to two minutes long and would include only the results from the Premier League, the Championship and the SPL. But there was a problem, caused (as so many are, it seems, in modern sport) by a recent, TV-related development: the 5.30 kick off. We couldn't pay him to stay till 7.30pm - nor, I imagine, did he wish to hang around in the BBC caff.
The answer was for James faithfully to record a dozen or so possible scorelines, specifically for World Service use. Then, much later, with the result known, for the producer to delve into the recorded file, find the correct scoreline and edit it into the original. So it was that apparently unlikely outcomes - forgive the example, but "Chelsea nil, Reading FIVE" - would be brought to flickering life, all with that faultless intonation telling you the story, all long before the game itself and all bar one completely inaccurate.
It always seemed rather sad: those Reading fans never knew that, somewhere on a West London hard drive, their fantasy scorelines did exist for a short time, confirmed by the voice of footballing truth, before a casual press of the delete button removed them from the archives forever.
**
One other tale from those days, treacherous but true: JAG also scared me witless, once. It was the 10th February 2007.
I was at Deepdale - reporting, for the first time, on Five Live. It was just after five o'clock, I'd seen Wolves beat Preston by a goal to nil and I was scrabbling to compose wisdom for the "considered report" - desperate not to fluff my 30 seconds on Sports Report. As I jotted and erased, jotted and erased, I had half an ear on the full-time scores, when I heard something that turned me whiter than my notepad, the goalposts and the Lilywhites themselves. It went: "Preston North End nil." And I knew, instantly, like everyone listening, that Wolves hadn't won at all. Nobody had. He continued with the inevitable: "Wolverhampton Wanderers (tiny pause) nil."
Oh Lord above. My mind went crazy. When did the goal go in? The eighth minute. THE EIGHTH MINUTE! I've been giving the wrong score for nearly TWO HOURS! I won't just be fired, I'll become a national joke!
I looked for a scoreboard - the result was no longer there. I gulped, swallowed pride and took the unprecedented step of asking a colleague what the score had been. He looked at me as if I'd finally lost the plot.
"What?"
"The score, mate, what was the score?" I was getting desperate: "You know, of the match, er, we've just seen."
He paused, screwed his face into a ball and said: "1-0 to Wolves, mate. You ok?"
I nodded, as I considered the possibility JAG had read the wrong scoreline. No, it didn't compute.
Wide-eyed, I asked two more journalists what the score had been - in a match I'd witnessed with my own eyes. They both looked at me like I'd descended from space. But both told me Wolves had won - and I delivered details of a goal, a real, genuine, please-believe-me goal, in the eighth minute of the game.
I interviewed both managers later, too. And I flinched when I asked them for their views on the goal, half-expecting a hair-dryer: "Son, did you not hear what JAG said? There was no bloody goal!"
**
We met a handful of times in Television Centre. He was ever-smiling as he leant on his trusty cane, cheerfully enquiring as to our roles in the Saturday madness. Each time I almost told him of that day at Deepdale, but I'm glad I never did. I still think he might have been right, after all.