‘Lobby’ and the Formative Years of Radio Sports Commentary, 1935–1952

Abstract

This article traces the professional career and influence on sports broadcasting of Seymour Joly de Lotbinière, known within the BBC as ‘Lobby’. Lobby was the BBC's Director of Outside Broadcasts from 1935 to 1939, and then again encompassing radio and television from 1946 to 1952, before concentrating on television OBs from 1952 to 1955. He is widely credited with transforming the codes and conventions of radio running commentary as the BBC expanded its radio coverage of sport in the late 1930s and in the immediate post-war years. The article provides a brief biographical sketch of Lobby's upper-class background and privileged education and how this influenced his eventual career in broadcasting. Drawing on papers held in the BBC Written Archives and on autobiographical accounts of BBC commentators, the article analyses Lobby's development of the core principles of running commentary, the recruitment and management of commentators and his relations with the producers of sports coverage in Broadcasting House and the BBC's regional centres. The article concludes that Lobby's meticulous management and analytical approach to sports commentary had a significant influence on the institutional practices of the BBC's outside broadcasting department, an influence that continues to reverberate today.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff of the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, in particular Jeff Walden. This research was supported by awards from the Carnegie Trust for Scotland and the AHRC Research Leave Scheme.

Notes

1. S.J. de Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’, 1942, BBC Written Archives Centre (hereafter WAC), R30/428/1.

2. H.B.T. Wakelam, Half-time: The mike and me (London, 1938); George Allison, Allison calling (London, 1948); Rex Alston, Taking the air (London, 1951); Raymond Glendenning, Just a word in your ear (London, 1953); Max Robertson, Stop talking and give the score (London, 1987); Gareth V. Wynne-Jones, Sports commentary (London, 1951).

3. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Ball by ball: The inside story of cricket broadcasting (London, 1990); Dick Booth, Talking of sport: The story of radio commentary (Cheltenham, 2008).

4. Christopher Wrigley, ‘The impact of the First World War’, in C. Wrigley, ed, A companion to early twentieth century Britain (Oxford, 2003).

5. Anne Pimlott Baker, ‘Joly de Lotbinière, Seymour (1905–1984)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51249, accessed 15 Feb. 2008.

6. Ross McKibbin, Classes and cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 1–2.

7. J.A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian public school: The emergence and consolidation of an educational ideology (London, 2000).

8. J.A. Mangan, ‘“Oars and the man”: Pleasure and purpose in Victorian and Edwardian Cambridge’, in J.A. Mangan, ed., A sport-loving society: Victorian and Edwardian middle-class England at play (London, 2006), p. 96.

9. Private correspondence with First and Third Trinity Boat Club, Feb. 2008.

10. Pimlott Baker, ‘Joly de Lotbinière’.

11. Asa Briggs, The history of broadcasting in the UK, vol. 2: The golden age of wireless. (Oxford, 1965); John Snagge and Michael Barsley, Those vintage years of radio (London, 1972).

12. Richard Haynes, ‘“There's many a slip 'twixt the eye and the lip”: An exploratory history of football broadcasts and running commentaries on BBC radio, 1927–1939’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 34 (2) (1999), pp. 143–56; Mike Huggins, ‘BBC radio and sport 1922–39’, Contemporary British History, 21 (4) (2007), pp. 491–515.

13. I'll eat my hat, BBC Radio Five Live, 25 Dec. 1995.

14. Peter West, Flannelled fool and muddied oaf: The autobiography of Peter West (London, 1987), p. 122.

15. Peter O'Sullevan, Calling the horses (London, 1994), p. 105.

16. Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Trust to talk (London, 1980), pp. 129–30.

17. Robert Hudson, Inside outside broadcasts (Newmarket, 1993), p. 11.

18. Haynes, ‘“There's many a slip”’.

19. John Arlott, ‘A new way’, in Bryon Butler, ed., Sports Report: 40 Years of the best (London, 1987), p. 21.

20. New York Times, 9 Oct. 1914.

21. Wakelam, Half-time, p. 261.

22. Draft script for talk by Teddy Wakelam, BBC Services Network, 8 Aug. 1943, BBC WAC, H.B.T. Wakelam Talks.

23. Booth, Talking of sport.

24. Robertson, Stop talking, pp. 45–8.

25. J. Snagge to regional directors, 3 Dec. 1937, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

26. L. Wellington to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 23 Nov. 1937, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

27. Martin-Jenkins, Ball by ball.

28. S.J. de Lotbiniere to L. Wellington, 25 Nov. 1937, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

29. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

30. Andrew Crisell, Understanding radio (London, 1994), p. 44.

31. I'll eat my hat, BBC Radio Five Live, 25 Dec. 1995.

32. Crisell, Understanding radio, p. 132.

33. Radio Times, 4 June 1937, p. 12.

34. S.J. de Lotbiniere to Assistant Controller of Programmes, 29 Dec. 1938, BBC WAC R30/428/1.

35. Wakelam, Half-time.

36. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

37. Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby: A biography (London, 1975).

38. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

39. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

40. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

41. De Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

42. All quotes from de Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

43. All quotes from de Lotbiniere, ‘Some notes on commentary’.

44. Wakelam, Half-time, pp. 331–2.

45. Selected commentator test reports, Aug. 1936–Oct. 1936, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

46. Commentators report, 27 Oct. 1936, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

47. Phil Drackett, Flashing blades: The story of British ice hockey (Wiltshire, Ramsgurg 1987).

48. Stewart MacPherson, The mike and I (London, 1948).

49. Stewart MacPherson, The mike and I (London, 1948)., p. 36.

50. Stewart MacPherson, The mike and I (London, 1948)., p. 37.

51. Stewart MacPherson, The mike and I (London, 1948)., p. 38.

52. Commentators report, 27 Oct. 1936, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

53. I'll eat my hat.

54. Glendenning, Just a word in your ear.

55. J. Snagge cited in memorandum, Assistant Controller to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 16 March 1937, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

56. S.J. de Lotbiniere to MRD, 7 June 1938. BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

57. De Lotbiniere to Smythe, 20 Jan. 1938, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

58. V. Smythe to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 28 Jan. 1938, BBC WAC, R30/428/1.

59. Alston, Taking the air, p. 89.

60. Wynne-Jones, Sports commentary.

61. A. Watkins Jones to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 20 Oct. 1947, BBC WAC, R30/428/3.

62. A. Watkins Jones to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 22 Dec. 1947, BBC WAC, R30/428/3.

63. A. Watkins Jones to S.J. de Lotbiniere, 2 Jan. 1948, BBC WAC, R30/428/3.

64. S.J. de Lotbiniere to A. Watkins Jones, 6 Jan. 1948, BBC WAC, R30/428/3.

65. Richard Haynes and Raymond Boyle, ‘Media sport’, in Neil Blain and David Hutchinson, eds, The media in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2008), pp. 253–70.

66. Asa Briggs, The BBC: The first fifty years (Oxford, 1985).

67. Garry Whannel, Fields in vision: Television sport and cultural transformation (London, 1992).

68. Richard Haynes, ‘A pageant of sound and vision: Football's relationship with television, 1936–60’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 15 (1) (1998), pp. 211–26.

69. Crisell, Understanding radio.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Haynes

Richard Haynes, University of Stirling