Barry Davies

For other people with the same name, see Barry Davies (disambiguation).

Barry George Davies MBE (born 24 October 1937 in London, England) is a British sports commentator and television presenter. He has covered a wide range of sports in a long career, primarily for the BBC.

Broadcasting career

Although best-known for his football commentary, Davies has commentated on numerous other sports, including badminton, beach volleyball, cycling, ice hockey, ice skating, tennis, gymnastics, hockey and athletics, and primarily in the BBC's Olympics coverage, where he twice (Sydney 2000 & Athens 2004) commentated on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Games. He was also the 'Voice of the Boat Race' in years between 1993 and 2004, until the BBC lost the rights to cover the event, and the presenter of Maestro in the 1980s, a series of interviews with retired sporting legends.

Davies was educated at Cranbrook School - which also numbers commentators Brian Moore and Peter West amongst its alumni - and King's College London, where he read Dentistry, although contrary to what has often been reported he never qualified as a dentist (he says in his autobiography that he "flunked out" due to spending too much time playing and watching sport). He started his broadcasting career with British Forces Broadcasting whilst doing his National Service in the army as a second-lieutenant in West Germany. His boss at BFBS was Gerald Sinstadt, who, upon their return to England, helped Davies get into BBC Radio in 1963, working concurrently as a sports journalist for The Times. Ahead of the 1966 World Cup he took his first steps into television with ITV. He made his debut on a Fairs Cup tie between Chelsea and Milan, before covering England's pre-World-Cup friendly with West Germany. During the World Cup in England, Davies covered all the matches in the North East (including Italy's infamous defeat by North Korea) although none of them were broadcast live, because in those days all the matches on the same day kicked off at the same time and in the days before multi-channel television only one game, invariably the one involving England, would be shown live (Davies would not make his "live" network football debut until the 1970 World Cup, when he commentated on Italy vs Uruguay for the BBC, although in May 1969 he had commentated on the Wales vs Scotland game in the Home International Championship when still with ITV, but this game was only shown live in the London Weekend and HTV Wales regions).

His spell with ITV continued for another three years, providing commentaries for ABC and Granada Television. Davies also covered the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, commentating on a number of sports. When LWT launched in 1968, he was the choice of the Deputy Head of Sport John Bromley to commentate on and present their new football show The Big Match. Bromley's boss Jimmy Hill won the argument though and installed his choice, Brian Moore, in the role, a role he would fill for another thirty years (Moore had commentated on the 1966 World Cup Final for BBC radio).

Most of Davies's career has been spent with the BBC. He joined the Corporation in July 1969. For the next 35 years he was closely associated with the Match of the Day programme, making his debut in unusual circumstances on 9 August 1969. The programme was to take up a new format, providing each region with its own second match. Davies was signed primarily to cover matches in the North of England and was assigned League Champions Leeds United's match with Tottenham Hotspur on day one. However, on the day before the broadcast, main commentator and presenter David Coleman lost his voice, succumbing to the same flu bug that had ruled Kenneth Wolstenholme out of covering that weekend's matches. Davies, who had stayed in the Queen's Hotel in Leeds on the Friday night, describes in his autobiography how he "barely had time to eat his cornflakes" on the Saturday morning before being put in a fast car and driven to London so he could commentate on the main match, Crystal Palace v Manchester United, and co-present the show with Frank Bough. His final appearance on the programme came on 25 September 2004 (Manchester City vs Arsenal). Davies's reason for retiring from football commentary was that he felt he was not getting enough "big" matches, and was being "downgraded". Indeed, the two-year extension he was being offered on his contract made clear that he would not be covering any "live" football, and there was no guarantee that he would have any involvement at all with the 2006 World Cup. He felt this unacceptable and declined the offer.

As a BBC football commentator Davies covered nine World Cups (he also covered one with ITV, in 1966, making a total of ten covered) – including the 1994 final – and seven European Championships. He commentated the final of the 1972 tournament in Belgium between West Germany and the USSR, but covered only two FA Cup finals in his career – 1995 and 1996 – as John Motson regularly landed the key games. Although Motson and Davies were often portrayed as firm rivals for the main commentary spot at the BBC, the pair have spoken of their respect for each other, with Davies insisting there has "never been any animosity" between them.

Davies was to enjoy most of his leading games in the finals of the European Cup, which was covered by BBC in alternate years (by agreement with ITV) during the era of English dominance in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He commentated on twelve in all - including triumphs for Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, and the horrors of Heysel in 1985. He also tended to commentate on the draws for the World Cup and European Championship and on the Football League Cup final on the rare occasions it was shown on the BBC.

Despite missing out on commentating on any International tournament final apart from that of 1994, Davies would normally be chosen for at least one England match if they qualified. England matches he commentated on include the quarter-finals against Argentina in World Cup 1986 and Cameroon in World Cup 1990 and the semi-final of Euro 96 against Germany. He was also often the BBC's choice of commentator for broadcast to English viewers if Scotland were involved in a World Cup match, such as the opening game of World Cup 1998 against Brazil.

Davies continued to work for the BBC on a freelance basis, covering the 2006 Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games and in the summers of 2007 and 2008 could be heard commentating on the French Open (when in both years he covered the Men's Singles Final), the Wimbledon Championships before covering the hockey and beach volleyball at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. That same year, he also reprised his role as the voice of the Boat Race by leading the commentary team on the radio station LBC, renewing it in 2009 - the last year that LBC has the radio rights to the contest. He has also appeared as a guest panellist on the long-running BBC game show, Call My Bluff.

After he was dropped from the 2009 French Open tennis and the World and European Ice Skating Championships, and the following year was not involved at all with the 2010 Winter Olympics (after working on every Olympic tournament since 1968), and did not cover that year's Boat Race when the contract returned to the BBC, there was speculation as to whether his links with the BBC had finally been severed. However, he reappeared on the BBC in June 2010 for what was his 25th Wimbledon, but his only involvement with the 2010 World Cup was to voice over television commercials for a supermarket's beer promotion, and to introduce a mock line-up of comedians in the structure of a football team for a UK satellite television channel. In September 2010 the BBC announced that he would be going to that year's Commonwealth Games in India to commentate on the hockey tournament.

On 23 August 2007, Headline press published his memoirs of 40 years in sports broadcasting, entitled 'Interesting, Very Interesting' after a commentary line from a match between Derby and Manchester City in 1974. When promoting the book on Talksport programme Hawksbee & Jacobs, Davies revealed that he was a fan of Tottenham Hotspur. Davies said he did not want to be accused of bias, so did not want to reveal who he supported during his career, or even where he was born. He revealed on a radio interview with Simon Mayo in 2007 (after he had retired from football commentary) that he also supports non-league side Windsor & Eton, and currently serves as their President.

Davies once again commentated on the Wimbledon championships from the BBC in 2011. The BBC announced in July 2011 that Davies would commentate on the Hockey tournament at the 2012 London Olympics, meaning that Davies will have commentated on 12 Summer Olympics, overtaking the record held by David Coleman for a UK sports broadcaster

Guest appearances

Davies brought his talents to the comedy world in cult BBC sketch show Big Train, commentating with his distinctive enthusiasm on the fictional "World Stare-Out Championships" with Phil Cornwell.

In 1995 Davies put his voice to Actua Soccer by Gremlin Interactive. He also provided commentary in sequels to the game, including the UEFA European Championship official video game of the 1996 UEFA European Championship (Euro '96). Trevor Brooking joined Davies as co-commentator in the later titles.

Since 2003, Davies has voiced the various football video games produced by Codemasters: the two Club Football titles released in 2003 and 2004, England International Football (also 2004, released to tie in with that year's Euro 2004 competition), and the LMA Manager series since LMA 2004.

Personal life

Davies makes no mention of when he was born, his early years or even his place of birth in his autobiography, although official public records give his place of birth as Islington in London. During the war he was evacuated to Gloucestershire.

Davies lives near Windsor in Berkshire, England, with his wife, Penny, a former British Airways stewardess, to whom he has been married since 1968. They have two children: a son, Mark, who briefly followed in his father's footsteps as a sports reporter on BBC Radio 5 before becoming a senior executive with the on-line bookmakers Betfair; and a daughter, Giselle, an amateur gymnast, who moved into public relations with the Jordan Formula 1 Team before becoming the IOC's Director of Communications.

External links

• 'just look at his face' commentary
• Where British football fans put Davies in the pantheon of commentators and commentary lines

Bibliography

• Smith, Martyn (2004). Match of the Day: 40th Anniversary. BBC Books. ISBN 0-563-521813.