James Alexander Gordon

There’s some fun to be had when James Alexander Gordon reads the classifieds on Saturday afternoon. Depending on the intonation for the first team will the second part of the result be an away win, a loss or a draw.

James has been reading the results (on Radio 2, Radio 5 and 5 Live) for nearly 40 years. For a while he was just another of the rota of announcers that took on the task, but became the sole reader from the early 1980s.

Here he recalls how Presentation Editor Jimmy Kingsbury first asked him to “nip over to sport” and how he first came up with his reading style. Of course being a continuity announcer he also read the news and presented music shows such as those featuring the BBC’s Scottish Radio Orchestra (On the Third Beat), Brass and Strings and, as in this montage, You and the Night and the Music.

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