BBC Sports Persnality of the Year

As a youngster, one of my highlights of the televisual calendar was the BBC’s Sports Review of the Year.  I may have grown out of the Christmas Day Top of the Pops  and the FA Cup Final has definitely lost its lustre but the annual look back at the year’s sporting achievements, near-misses and amusing sideshows still holds sway in my affections.

It’s been broadcast – live! - since 1954, well before I arrived on the planet, surviving generations of sporting trends, technical innovation and presenters’ facial hairstyles from Peter Dimmock’s military ‘tache to Gary Lineker’s hipster beard. The climax of the show has always been the presentation of the Sports Personality of the Year, now often abbreviate to SPOTY, trophy to the man or woman receiving the most public votes.  I’m not sure when I first watched the show but I definitely remember when Princess Anne won the award in 1971. Even at the tender age of ten I did query the legitimacy of her claim to the award but, to be honest, she was a European champion, and that year was not a vintage one for British sport.

I used to wonder why the main award was so called. If it really was intended to reward personalities in sport, then how on earth were Andy Murray, Nick Faldo or Nigel Mansell permitted to hold the coveted silver-plated miniature OB camera? Or indeed how did the likes of George Best, Alex Higgins or Frank Bruno not succeed?  In retrospect I presume the word ‘personality’ was used to maintain gender neutrality. Not even the BBC in the fifties, when arch-misogynist Churchill was Prime Minister, was unwilling to recognise the ‘fairer sex’ as sports stars. Indeed, during the first half of the Sixties, women actually dominated, although the primacy didn’t last.

Whether decided by names on postcards, printed forms, phone or on-the-night online votes, the winners have often been worthy of the award, from Coe to Calzaghe, Redgrave to Radcliffe. I don’t know whether any results have been ‘fixed’ – although the Beeb did intervene in 1991 to scupper the Angling Times’ bid to get that sporting megastar Bob Nudd (nah, me neither) on the podium – but the great British public have delivered a few surprises. Perhaps the greatest of them all came in 1975 when, after being called up by England to face the intimidating Aussie attack of Lillee and Thomson, cricketer David Steele saw off allcomers. While scoring no centuries and the Ashes lost, the batsman’s prematurely grey hair, schoolmasterly specs and shy-but-solid character endeared himself to the viewing public in an extraordinary way. Two years later he was largely forgotten but the name David Steele will forever be engraved on one of the trophy’s plinth shields.

In more modern times, Ryan Giggs, Tony McCoy and Mark Cavendish each left me snorting with derision between 2009 and 2011. The first two clearly benefited from a surge of sympathy and gratitude for their career accomplishments rather than any performances during the year in question. Unfair! Leave that to the new ‘Lifetime Achievement’ category!

Being a BBC institution, SPOTY is indelibly associated with sports broadcast on its own channels. That was fine in an era when almost any major sports event was shown on the Beeb but it become an issue once Sky splashed the cash and whittled the public Corporation’s contracts to an ever-decreasing rump. I’m sure Formula One and cricket would see more SPOTY success has they not been exiled to the digital commercial media. To make matters worse, even when boxer Lennox Lewis was demonstrating his world heavyweight credentials, the BBC was prevented from using actual footage of his fights. At least the ailing Mohammed Ali’s receipt of 1999’s Sports Personality of the Century prize generated the longest round of applause in the studio, and surely the most tears I’ve ever shed in a sporting cause.

Olympic years were always ones to watch although Team GB weren’t always awash with gold medallists. In 1976, 1980 and 1984, the winners were actually skaters! 2012 was probably the most competitive SPOTY competition but it was the added cache of a Tour De France triumph which took Bradley Wiggins to the top of a mightily impressive list of nominees, and well deserved, too. On the other hand, I have felt sorry for athletes such as Sally Gunnell and Jessica Ennis, both serial top-three finishers without ever winning.

Representatives of lesser-known sports also benefit from their moment in the SPOTY spotlight. Performers from the worlds of sailing, darts, triathlon, speedway and rallying have all been in the top three but so far have never had to make that awkward victor’s speech.

The Overseas awards have been determined by juries, who I also reckon to have been broadly in tune with my own opinions. The only disappointment to me has been the overlooking of cricketers in recent times. Federer and Bolt are amazing sportsmen but could 2018 be Virat Kohli’s year?

As the show has gained in gravitas, adding live music and X-Factor-style production values, the number of awards has also increased. Accolades for Unsung Hero, Lifetime Achievement and achievement in face of adversity all merit a place but for me it’s always been about reliving the best bits of sport from the preceding eleven months. The roll-call of dead sporting stars gets me in the gut every time but it’s the goosebump material – be it football, golf, athletics, rowing, cycling, swimming or whatever - which is my prime reason for tuning in.

The studio audience used to play a substantial role, too. With the room containing more blazers and ties I’d ever seen outside my school assembly, eyes nervously scanning monitors to see if they were on camera, it became a game to guess which would be interviewed by Frank Bough, Steve Rider, Sue Barker or Des Lynam. One certainty was that Frank Bruno would be granted a few minutes in the limelight, probably with Harry Carpenter holding the mic. For more than a decade, Big Frank became the go-to comedy ‘turn. The comedy moments have often seemed rather forced and over-rehearsed, but James Corden’s 2009 routine in the guise of ‘Smithy’ was a true gem. If that ego-deflating exercise was hilarious then each of Andy Murray’s acceptance speeches must be the most teeth-grindingly boring.

I also loved the annual set-piece in the studio, be it our Olympic oarsman on rowing machines, drivers revving the engines of their F1 cars or, even more memorably, Red Rum twitching his ears in 1977. But I can’t imagine all those blokes in blazers from the Seventies joining in so enthusiastically with ‘the Poznan’ as the X-Cel crowd did for Manchester City in 2012!

Will I be watching at the weekend? I certainly hope so. SPOTY is far more than just the hors d’oeuvres for The Apprentice Final. It’s a classic programme in its own right. While the Beeb still has the rights to feature the best clips and attract the biggest names to each venue, I will always devote a few hours on a December Sunday evening to a wilful wallow in the warm waters of sporting nostalgia. Know wha’ I mean, ‘Arry!