Henry Blofeld
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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.
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[edit] 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. Blofeld's uncle was the Honourable Freddie Calthorpe, (see Gough-Calthorpe family) who captained England on their first-ever tour of the West Indies in 1929/1930.
Henry was educated at Sunningdale School and Eton College, and played cricket at both. He was wicket-keeper for Eton from 1955-1957. 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) 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. 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 attended King's College, Cambridge, but left after his first two years, and did not formally receive his degree.
[edit] Sports journalism
Blofeld took a job at a merchant bank, but it was not to his taste and he drifted into sports journalism. He reported on the England tour to India in 1963/4, and was close to being picked as an emergency batsman to replace the ill Micky Stewart for the 2nd Test in Bombay. In the event, Stewart was picked despite his illness, but was unable to play any part in the match after fielding in the first two sessions.[1] He 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. 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 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".
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 26th 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".
[edit] Outside sport
Blofeld was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2003, and the next year appeared alongside Fred Trueman in the "Tertiary Phase" of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series.
Blofeld has written a book, partly autobiographical, entitled My Dear Old Thing: Talking Cricket. He undertook an "Evening With Blowers" tour in the spring/summer of 2006.
[edit] References
- Blofeld, Henry, My Dear Old Thing: Talking Cricket (ISBN 0-09-173704-4)
- Blofeld, Henry, A Thirst for Life (ISBN 0-340-77050-3)
- Player profile from Cricinfo
- Profile from CricketArchive
- Mervyn King on Henry Blofeld
- Henry Blofeld:The First 'Young Cricketer of the Year', from the Cricket Society, by Douglas Miller
