I Should Have Been at Work. Des Lynam
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the tests that a military messenger might have to encounter during a battle. In the fencing section, Fox discovered that his Soviet opponent, Boris Onishenko, seemed to be recording hits electronically when Fox knew that no contact had been made. The British competitor reluctantly reported his misgivings to the authorities – reluctantly, because Onishenko had been a fellow competitor at many championships and Jim had counted him a friend. It was subsequently found that Onishenko had cunningly rewired his weapon in such a way as to allow himself to record hits when none had in fact occurred. He was thrown out of the Games in disgrace.
After the Games, Phil King and I decided to take a break in New York, taking a train, the ‘Adirondack’, down through southern Canada, through Vermont and New England. The journey was most comfortable and slow, but it was all the better for that, allowing us to enjoy the splendid scenery.
We had arranged to stay in the apartment of a New York-based BBC man who was going off on holiday elsewhere. It happened to be in the same apartment block, and on the same floor, as the film actress Angie Dickinson. She said ‘Good morning’ to me one day. I could hardly get over it. Kingy and I resolved to ask her out for a spot of dinner if we bumped into her again. Pipe dream. Phil and I enjoyed the bars of Second Avenue and one or two parties at the British Airways ‘Speed-bird’ Club. I was offered a joint one night, but as a non-smoker couldn’t handle the inhaling and my career as a drug-taker lasted all of two minutes. I was content enjoying a few beers.
Back home, I returned to the routine of presenting the radio sports programmes and endeavouring to see my son as often as possible. He was growing up fast.
I had given up trying to commute from Brighton to London each day and, while keeping my own flat on the coast, was sharing an apartment in London with a lovely lady called Patty Smith. I met her through her daughter, Jenny, who had told me her mother, who was divorced, was looking for a p.g., as she put it – a paying guest. Things got a little tricky for a time, because Patty was as glamorous as her daughter.
Later I shared a house with a great friend, Mike Greenlees, who went on to become a huge player in the world of advertising. We were two Jack the Lads for a time: nice house in Putney, which he owned, two sports cars parked outside, ready for action. We were rather like the Jack Lemmon–Walter Matthau pairing in The Odd Couple, advertising man and sports journalist, one tidy and organised (Mike), the other messy and disorganised (me).
As well as the sport, I was now asked to present a radio quiz programme called Treble Chance Quiz. The programme took two team captains around the country and they competed against each other with members of the public from the town we were visiting against an ‘away’ team. The team captains were usually Patrick Moore, the astronomer, and the late Ted Moult. The producer was a long-term BBC man, Michael Tuke-Hastings. Michael was fun but an absolute snob. Once, recording at Warwick Castle, he described our host, who seemed to me to be a perfectly charming and well-educated man, as ‘strictly minor public school’. Another time, we were staying in a small hotel when the receptionist announced there was a telephone call for ‘the Duke of Hastings’ instead of Tuke-Hastings. Michael certainly acted like he should have had a title.
The next year he involved me in the overseas version of the show called Forces Chance, which as well as going out on Radio 4 was broadcast on the Forces network. This took me to Gibraltar, Malta, West Germany and the then divided city of Berlin. The show’s next producer was Patricia Ewing, who went on to become the Head of Sport and Outside Broadcasts, and afterwards ran Radio 5. Pat was an ex-WRNS officer who introduced me to the delights of the old naval drink – a ‘horse’s neck’: brandy with dry ginger. Ted Moult was involved in this show too, in which the celebrities took on teams from the armed services in general knowledge. Neil Durden-Smith, the husband of Judith Chalmers, plus the BBC’s first female television newsreader, Nan Winton, were the other team members, although Sue Lawley soon took over from Nan. Some years later Ted, who seemed the happiest of men, took a gun and shot himself. No one understood why, least of all his large and loving family.
While in Germany we made a poignant visit to the museum at Belsen, where they say ‘no bird ever sings’. We were treated royally by the Forces: the army breakfasts in the officers’ mess, and getting our shoes cleaned by someone else, almost made joining up seem attractive. In West Germany we spent some time with a tank regiment and both Sue and I were given instruction on how to drive a tank. Later, when we went to Berlin, another tank regiment made us the same offer. I asked the corporal appointed to give me instruction if the tank in question was the same model as I had driven a few days before. It was. I told him to say nothing to the officer standing by, got into the driving position, started it up, shot around the compound a few times, over a few hills and humps, and delivered it back to the feet of the officer. He was white. ‘Nippy aren’t they?’ I said. The corporal loved it.
My ongoing love affair with boxing continued apace, and it was around this time that I covered Jim Watt’s period as the World lightweight champion. Jim had been a useful boxer in a domestic sense until joining the Terry Lawless stable. Lawless helped him hone his skills to international level and had the connections to steer him to the world title.
Jim was a hugely attractive proposition for those of us in the media. He was very articulate and gave great interviews and of course has gone on to become an outstanding broadcaster on the sport. One of his title defences took place in the open air at Rangers’ Ibrox stadium in Glasgow. His opponent was Howard Davis, the man who had been voted the outstanding boxer of the 1976 Olympic Games. Watt was too good for him though.
In 1981 I went to Houston, Texas to commentate on Pat Cowdell’s challenge for the World featherweight title held by the Mexican Salvador Sanchez. It was a tough call for Cowdell. Sanchez was considered by many experts to be the best ‘pound for pound’ fighter in the world at the time. A few days before the fight, I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel and noticed that the glass was missing in one of the side windows in the back of the car. It had been replaced by a piece of cardboard.
‘What happened to your window? I asked the driver.
‘Oh, some crazy guy is taking pot shots at cars in the city,’ the driver replied, seemingly unconcerned.
‘Have they arrested him? I enquired.
‘Nope, haven’t found him yet.’ I slunk down in the seat.
Later that evening it wasn’t the sniper’s gun I was worried about.
Suffering from jet lag, I had trouble getting to sleep but eventually nodded off with the light on. At around 3 a.m. I was awoken when the door to my room sprung open, held only by the security chain I had remembered to attach. Then, to my horror, a gun was poked through the gap and a voice said: ‘Please come to the door and open it.’ I thought, ‘This is it. I’m in a violent city and am about to be robbed at best, and maybe shot as well.’
I managed to get a few words out. ‘What the hell is going on?’
The voice replied. ‘This is hotel security. According to our records this room should be unoccupied.’ An accreditation badge was eased through the gap. The check-in receptionist had recorded that I was in another room. Her mistake could easily have resulted in a Lynam heart attack.
In the fight, Cowdell put up a valiant challenge before losing on points over fifteen rounds. Not long after, Sanchez was killed in a car accident.
I first came across Finbar Patrick (‘Barry’) McGuigan at the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton Canada in 1978. He was just seventeen years of age and boxing for Northern Ireland. This was an anomaly because Barry was actually from the Irish Republic and two years later he would compete in Moscow for the Irish Olympic team.
He was a sensation in Edmonton and made it all the way to the bantamweight final, in which he had to box a tough customs officer from Papua New Guinea called Tumat Sogolik. It was boy against