COLEMANBALLS

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Coleman's knowledgeable presentation was infused with a genuine enthusiasm as he worked long hours through the week to learn all the facts and figures needed for the forthcoming weekend. When you've got a mountain to climb you may as well throw everything into the kitchen sink straight away. Very few of us have any idea of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of course, for those of us who are goldfish.”

By 1953, Coleman was putting in regular scriptwriting shifts in the BBC northern region's Manchester newsroom, and the following year joined its staff in Birmingham, concentrating on sport in the Midlands. At once came the opportunity of which ambitious juniors dream. Fantoni, Barry; Larry (1998). Private Eye's Colemanballs: No. 9. Private Eye Productions. ISBN 978-1-901784-11-4. After he had fronted Grandstand for a decade, he moved to a midweek slot with Sportsnight (1968-73), though later returned to the Saturday programme. From the early 1970s he was the BBC's senior football commentator, and from the early 80s concentrated on athletics. He brought a businesslike geniality to chairing A Question of Sport (1979-97); the programme's only other two presenters have been David Vine from its start in 1970, and Sue Barker till the present. He was also a co-host of the BBC Sports Review of the Year (1961-83). I've never been so certain about anything in my life. I want to be a coach. Or a manager. I'm not sure which.Ingrid Kristiansen then has smashed the world record, running the 5000 metres in 14:58.89. Truly amazing. Incidentally, this is a personal best for Ingrid Kristiansen. David Coleman Bayern will have the added advantage of playing in their own stadium – that’s like a home game for them. Fantoni, Barry; Larry (1984). Private Eye's Colemanballs: No. 2. André Deutsch. ISBN 978-0-233-97700-3. The phrases all made it into Private Eye magazine’s “Colemanballs” column – named in honour of gaffe-prone former commentator David Coleman. For those of you watching who do not have television sets, live commentary is on Radio 2. Ted Lowe (Snooker)

Until his retirement, motor racing commentator Murray Walker frequently featured in the column. His excitable delivery led to so many mistakes that they began to be labelled "Murrayisms". [1] Examples include "We've had cars going off left, right and centre", "do my eyes deceive me, or is Senna's Lotus sounding rough?", "with half of the race gone, there is half of the race still to go", "There is nothing wrong with the car, apart from that it is on fire", "That car is totally unique, apart from the car behind it, which is identical", and "The gap between them is now nine-tenths of a second; that's less than a second!".And the line-up for the final of the women's 400 metres hurdles includes three Russians, two East Germans, a Pole, a Swede and a Frenchman." Nowhere was his dedication and knowledge better illustrated than at the teleprinter as the football results came in. A contract wrangle kept him off the screen for almost 12 months in the mid-1970s. It was less about money and more about editorial control and the number of events he would cover. From Fern Britton asking if a guest’s great grandfather had any children, to Anthea Turner urging people to use cars as fridges, to Geoffrey Boycott saying Indian police have “atomic weapons”, 2010 has been a vintage year. On demobilisation, he joined Kemsley newspapers in Manchester before becoming a youthful editor of the weekly Cheshire County Press. He was a gifted amateur runner and in 1949 won the annual Manchester Mile, at the time, he would insist, the only non-international ever to have done so. After injuries prevented him from entering trials for the 1952 British Olympic team, he wrote to the BBC.

The death of David Coleman at the age of 87 signs off an already distant era when television broadcasts of Britain's national sporting events – the so-called "crown jewels" – were almost the sole and exclusive preserve of the BBC. Coleman was the very embodiment of that pre-eminence. As the corporation's champion sports presenter through much of the second half of the 20th century, he had an enthusiastic, knowing, taut professional style and a crisp, classless delivery that seemed all-pervading. In addition, he was the pathfinding master of ceremonies for such long-running regulars as Grandstand, Sportsnight and A Question of Sport.In 1984, he won the Television and Radio Industries Club award as Sports Presenter of the Year and, in 1992, he was awarded an OBE. He finally retired from broadcasting in 2000. Tributes The late Brian Moore, who was a football commentator for ITV, was disparaging about Coleman in his autobiography. In these days of dedicated sports channels, it is difficult to appreciate the importance of Grandstand, which led the way in showcasing a wide variety of sporting action each week. On the set of Grandstand in 1978 He is accelerating all the time. That last lap was run in 64 seconds and the one before in 62. David Coleman

His race-reading of successive Olympic 100 metres finals, from Rome in 1960 to Sydney in 2000, was even more an epic and genius party-piece of splendour – spot-on identification of eight men tearing headlong at him in a less than 10-second blur. But his most resplendent journalistic hour – or rather hours – came with his prolonged and distressingly sombre vigil, working from just one, distant, fixed camera, throughout the dreadful day of the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic village in 1972. Brendan Foster, Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist: "David Coleman was the greatest sports broadcaster that ever lived. He was a giant of sports broadcasting. It was a privilege to know him and it was a privilege to have him commentating on races during my career." Fantoni, Barry; Larry (1996). Private Eye's Colemanballs: No. 8. Private Eye Productions. ISBN 978-0-552-14521-3.

When the fledgling BBC television service resumed after the second world war, it was still very much the corporation's junior service, available only in parts of the south-east, with its performers recruited occasionally from radio, though more usually, it seemed, from the officers' mess or the old boy network. Certainly, up in Cheshire, young Coleman had never seen television as a boy. His route was to be journalism's traditional one. Fantoni, Barry; Larry (2004). Private Eye's Colemanballs: No. 12. Private Eye Productions. ISBN 978-1-901784-36-7. That dispute revealed a hard-headed side to the man whose affability is one of the ingredients which make the Coleman-chaired A Question of Sport, with its Pringle pullovers and pub repartee, a cosy long-running success.