James Alexander Gordon, the voice of BBC radio's classified
football results for the past four decades, has died after making his final
broadcast last year. The 78-year-old Scot first began reading the football
results in 1973, a year after joining the BBC. Gordon said last month that it
was "great sorrow that I have to give up the most exciting part of my career,
the classified football results", adding: "They have been my
life."
The announcer's "wonderful inflections and
stresses" were loved by many listening to the Saturday evening scores on
radio. Many listeners said that Gordon's inflection would reveal the result of
a match before he had completed the sentence. Nobody will be able to say
'Wolverhampton Wanderers' with quite such mellifluous tones.
Gordon was born in Edinburgh in 1936 and spent much of his
childhood in hospital after contracting polio as a baby. In 1999 a link with
school parent and MP David Mellor brought JAG to Charterhouse to help the
school celebrate the Millennium football season. The school played a local club
under the old rules of football in the first half and then the modern laws in
the second half. Both teams wore 19th century kit and retired FA
referee Ray Lewis (who refereed the Hillsborough disaster semi-final) blew the
whistle. JAG read out the weekend Premier results at half time.
JAG was succeeded on the 5pm Saturday results on
BBC Radio 5 Live by Charlotte Green, the former Radio 4 newsreader; the
first woman to read them. She is carrying on the tradition.
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