Henry Calthorpe Blofeld
(born at Hoveton Home Farm in Norfolk on 23 September 1939) (known as Blowers
, thanks to the late Brian Johnston) is a sports journalist. He is best known as a cricket commentator for Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra.
Blofeld had an exceptional career as a schoolboy cricketer, cut short by injury. Since then, he has created a reputation as a commentator with an accent and usage of English commensurate with his background as an Old Etonian. He also writes on cricket.
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HENRY BLOFELD TICKETS
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Early life and cricket career
Blofeld's family were landowners in Norfolk. He was the youngest of three siblings. His older brother, Sir
John Blofeld, became a
High Court judge. Henry Blofeld's father went to school with
Ian Fleming, and his name was the possible inspiration for the name of
James Bond supervillain,
Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
[1] Blofeld's uncle was the
Honourable Freddie Calthorpe, who
captained England on their first-ever tour of the
West Indies in 1929/30.
Henry was educated at
Sunningdale School and
Eton College, and played cricket at both. He was
wicket-keeper for Eton from 1955-57. In 1956, playing
against Harrow at Lord's, he was the third Eton batsman dismissed in as many balls by Harrow bowler
Rex Neame. Later that year Blofeld was one of only three batsmen for Public Schools to score a century against Combined Services (the others being
Peter May and
Colin Cowdrey)
[2] and he was given the
Cricket Society's award for the most promising young player of the season.
Selected as Eton captain in his final year at school in 1957, Blofeld suffered a serious accident, being hit by a bus while riding a bicycle to the Eton cricket ground - he remained unconscious for 28 days. His injuries curtailed his subsequent cricketing career, though he did go on to play 16 first-class matches for
Cambridge University in 1958 and 1959 (his team captain in 1958 was
Ted Dexter), kept wicket for
Free Foresters in their match against Cambridge in 1960, and played one
Gillette Cup match for a
minor county,
Norfolk against Hampshire in 1965. While playing for Cambridge he scored a
first-class century against
MCC at
Lord's in 1959. He won his
Blue in 1959 "as an opening batsman of sorts… the worst Blue awarded since the war" according to Blofeld himself.
[3] He attended
King's College, Cambridge, but left after his first two years, and did not formally receive his degree.
Sports journalism
Blofeld took a job at the
merchant bank, Robert Benson Lonsdale,
[4] but it was not to his taste and he drifted into sports journalism. He reported on the England tour to India in 1963/4 for
The Guardian
, and was close to being picked as an emergency batsman to replace the ill
Micky Stewart for the 2nd Test in
Bombay. When he was told by
David Clark, the tour manager, that he may have to play, Blofeld replied "I would certainly play if needed, but if I scored 50 or upwards in either innings I was damned if I would stand down for the Calcutta Test".
On the day of the Test Stewart discharged himself from hospital and was picked despite his illness. After tea on the first day Stewart was rushed back to hospital and played no further part in the tour.
Blofeld continued as a print journalist until 1972, when he joined the Test Match Special team. He has remained a regular commentator for Test Match Special, except for a period at
BSkyB from 1991 to 1994. He also commentated for
ITV in the 1960s.
Blofeld's cricket commentary is celebrated for his plummy voice and his idiosyncratic mention of superfluous details, including cranes, pigeons, buses, aeroplanes and helicopters that happen to be passing by.
[5] He is also known to talk about the food on offer, in particular cakes, for extended periods of time after the tea and lunch breaks with occasional interruptions of the situation on the field. He also uses the phrase "my dear old thing", or variants thereof, to address fellow commentators and guests.
He frequently makes errors, for example failing to identify players correctly (one example was calling the England spinner
Monty Panesar "
Monty Python", and paceman
Ryan Sidebottom "Ryan Stringfellow"), and is quite often lost for words in the more exciting passages of play. This doesn't detract from the love that many loyal listeners to
Test Match Special the world over have for him, demonstrated in the Test against
Pakistan at
Headingley in 1996 when a flat overlooking the ground was draped with a huge banner proclaiming "Henry Blofeld is God"
[6].
Blowers has been commentating less recently; he did not commentate at the
2007 World Cup despite having covered the opening ceremonies of the two preceding World Cups in 2003 and 1999 for TMS to popular acclaim. Many TMS fans wondered whether he was choosing to step aside, or if the BBC was gradually reducing his commitments. Speaking to
Michael Parkinson on BBC Radio 2 on 26 August 2007, when asked by his interviewer why he was commentating less these days, after initially attempting to side-step the question Blowers observed that "they obviously want to bring in new faces", and added that during the Ashes tour in Australia during the winter of 2006/7 "I felt in a funny way that I wasn't part of it any more". That said, as of summer 2008 he appears to have resumed his full quota of commentary stints on (at least home) Tests and ODIs, with his enthusiasm undiminished.
In 1995, Blofeld was censured for an
antisemitic comment made on-air at
Headingley:
He referred to onlookers watching a match from the balcony of a tall building outside the ground at Headingley as being at “the Jewish end” [7]
Blofeld and the BBC both apologised for a comment that was "not spawned by malice".
Outside sport
Blofeld was awarded an
OBE for services to broadcasting in 2003. The following year he appeared alongside
Fred Trueman in the "
Tertiary Phase" of the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
radio series playing himself.
Blofeld has written a partly autobiographical book entitled
My Dear Old Thing: Talking Cricket
. He undertakes an "Evening With Blowers" theatrical show and has been successfully touring it all over the UK for the last few years, as well as many other public speaking engagements.
Notes
References
- Was Ian Fleming the real 007?
- Blofeld (2001), pp.37-39
- Blowers on the brink
- Blofeld (2001), p.50
- Good morning and welcome
- http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/brothers-in-arms-raise-the-pakistan-standard-1308911.html
- http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1026799.ece