James Alexander Gordon, voice of BBC radio's football results, dies at 78

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/18/james-alexander-gordon-bbc-dies

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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.

He had surgery to remove his larynx in 2013 after being diagnosed with cancer, which left him with a voice too weak to stay on air. 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."

Richard Burgess, head of BBC Radio Sport, said: "James was an iconic radio voice, who turned the classified football results on BBC radio into a national institution. He was also a true gentleman, who was loved and admired by his colleagues. He took enormous pride in his work and I know he was greatly touched by all the tributes he received upon his retirement last year."

When Gordon retired last year, Burgess highlighted the announcer's "wonderful inflections and stresses": "Nobody else will be able to say 'Wolverhampton Wanderers' with quite such mellifluous tones."

Corrie Corfield, the Radio 4 newsreader and presenter, was one of many who took to Twitter to pay tribute to the announcer: "Always smiley, always the perfect gentleman, always a bit naughty. And what a voice."

Gordon's distinctive Scottish accent and idiosyncratic style attracted legions of fans, including comedian Eric Morecambe.

Many listeners say that Gordon's inflection would reveal the result of a match before he had completed the sentence.

He once told the Edinburgh Evening News: "Dad used to get really irritated by football announcers when he was filling in his pools coupon, because the intonation in their voices misled him.

"So I decided to gather all the results on a Saturday before he checked his coupon, and I would go into a cupboard with a torch and some kid-on radio equipment, and read them out in a way I thought was more realistic. "When I did my first broadcast, Dad cried and said 'the wee bugger's finally done it'."

Gordon was born in Edinburgh in 1936 and spent much of his childhood in hospital after contracting polio as a baby.

He lived in Berkshire and is survived by his wife Julia, their son David, and grandchildren Molly and Martha.

The broadcaster was succeeded on the 5pm Saturday results on BBC Radio 5 Live by Charlotte Green, the former Radio 4 newsreader, who is the first woman to read them.