July 23, 2025 • 35 mins
This week, Mike Sewell joins us to discuss his 30-year career as a sports broadcaster. From manager interviews at Fakenham Racecourse to covering football matches for BBC Radio 5 Live, he offers his advice for those looking to get into the industry.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to Future You
the podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts, prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade.
And in this episode, I speak to Mikeabout being a sports commentator.
My name is Mike Sewell.
I'm a Sports, predominantly a sports broadcaster,
voiceover artist, and an occasional host,
(00:20):
and I've been doing thatfor just over 30 years, Amazing.
So let's go right back to the beginning.
What does your educational journeylook like?
Quite checkered, certainly.
After school I, when I was at school inNorwich, fairly straightforward education.
I was pretty average.
Everything apart from woodworkand metalwork.
(00:41):
I excelled in that.
And my grandfather was a draftsman.
His father owned a furniture shopin Norwich, and after a couple of years
of learning how to do these things,I thought, I want to be a cabinet maker.
I want to be a furniture makerlike my great grandfather.
And so that was always my focustowards the last year or two at school.
(01:02):
But I couldn't get an apprenticeshipanywhere.
So the next best optionwas to go to City College,
to a city and Guilds in furniture making.
But within four months, by Christmas,I realised it wasn't for me.
It was too machine led. So I
stoppedit, thought, what am I going to do next?
And like a lot of people,
ended up with a job at Norwich Unionas it was a viva as it is now.
(01:24):
Spent three years there.
But all the time during that I realisedI wanted to do something different
and I'd always had a passion for football.
I, I mean, like a lot of boys, I usedto run around the garden commentating,
but I never thought it was a job.
I always thought it was forfor something else.
So you had to be born into itor know someone in high places.
So I didn't really go along that route.
(01:47):
And I had the fortune of been ableto go to America to study,
but again, it only lasted a semester.
And I came back againwhen temped back at Norwich Union.
So for a third time I was thinking,what am I going to do?
And then
it's quite interesting.
Where we're sitting nowis literally across the road
from where I had
probably the most important conversationI've ever had in my career.
(02:10):
Friends of mine to live in one ofthe flats here, and we were chatting.
This is the time that I was backafter America,
and he was saying, what do youwhat do you enjoy doing?
I said, well, I love my football.I'd love to be a football commentator.
I enjoy radio.
And he said, well,I work at Hospital Radio in Norwich.
Why don't you try that?
And basically that conversationsparked me into action.
(02:32):
I did hospital radio.
I went back to college for a thirdtime, did a media course.
There were very
there weren't many of them about,I think it was the first year actually,
that did it.
And I said to myself,I'm going to finish this course.
I'm going to, I'm going to finish it.
And then even during that course,I got the opportunity to do some
stuff at Radio Norfolk and,
well, I don't know.
(02:52):
I said the rest is history.But yeah, it got me.
It got me going.
Yeah.
Amazing,So you got your foot in the door with BBC
Radio Norfolkwas that in a freelance capacity?
What happened was I was at City College,
I think it was the second yearof my two year course,
and we had to have a placementfor three weeks.
And so I thought, well,I'm going to go to the radio.
And there was Radio Broadland at the time
(03:13):
and Radio Norfolk, that Broadland,I don't think, did any sport.
So I went to Norfolk, spoke to the editor,who was a guy called
Roger Ryan, and he chatted to me.
He even made me do a voice test on mic
and said,can you just read this script for me?
And I've never read a script other thanthe old saying it hospital radio.
I'd never read a proper sports bulletin,so I read it the best I could.
(03:35):
And he said, he said, oh, that'sall right. It's quite good.
He said, anyway, come in Saturday,we do a Saturday show.
You can sit in the gallery, you can watchthe show go out and see what we do.
So I thought, oh great.
So this is voluntary, but this, this wouldhave been ahead of doing the attachment.
So he said, yeah,you can do the placement.
So I went in on the Saturdayand I walked in the door
and Radio Norfolk
used to be on Norfolk Tower in those dayslong corridor.
(03:57):
And I didn't even get to the endwhere he was.
And he said, stop there.
He said, you're going to cover a match.
Here's a phone.
And in those days,mobile phones were like concrete blocks
with a hat with a handset on top.
And he said, you're going to cover
Fakenham against Brightlingseain the Jewson League.
And I went,I've never done a game in my life.
I have done no preparation or anything.
(04:19):
You'll be fine,he said. You sound all right.
Here's the keys to the pool car.
There's the thing
and I got sent to Fakenham and I wentand it was a cold February day.
I hadn't planned for it,so I wasn't even dressed right.
And I literally got there,and I'd never had been more scared
in my life of goinglive on the radio, hiding in corners.
So none of the people that could see me
(04:40):
and I finished the day and I thought, what a relief I've done.
And he rang me and said,can you do a couple of interviews for us?
And could you get the man of the matchand the manager?
The man of the match happened to be
an ex-professionalwho was pretty well known at the time.
I called Lisa Blissettand he was my first ever interview
post-match and he was great,the manager was great
(05:01):
and I got through the dayand then I worked from there
and basically I did games every week.
And then I did the placement.
But the interesting thingis, 20 years later,
I was commentating on a gamewith a co-commentator who was Luther
Blissett, the first guy I ever interview,and I told him the story.
So wonderful.
Wow. So that is like a full baptismof fire.
(05:24):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
But it was the best thingthat could have happened. Of course. Yeah.
Do you think that kind of thingstill happens today?
Yeah, I think it probably does.
I don't know if it'd be quite like you'rewalking in a door to do something else
and someone sends you out,but certainly in local radio, you go in,
you start doing local footballand you gradually work your way up.
(05:45):
That was always
most of the people I worked with furtherdown the line in network radio had come
that route, either through commercialor through the landscape's
really different nowbecause there was very
the internet was around,but it was in its infancy.
There was no streaming online.
It was literally radio, TV.
You were the mediums and TV.
(06:07):
They didn't do itlike Radio Norfolk did, for example.
So the jobs were quite limited
and it wasn't.
And I think most people didn't even knowthat was a job necessarily.
You wouldn't think, oh,I'm going to become a
this is why I didn't do anything untilI had the conversation across the road.
And a lot of it comes down to luck.
My timing was good and okay.
I volunteered my time for a long timeto get paid or anything, but that is that.
(06:30):
That was always the way.
And for me,I think now it's slightly different
because you can go in viaa different route,
because you can use social mediato get in, you can use streaming,
you can do it for free.
You could go to a local football clubwith a laptop and a microphone,
and just offer to stream itfor the club for nothing,
but you get yourself out there.
I always think that's a really good waybecause in my day it was always like,
(06:51):
watch the telly,turn the volume down and commentate.
Now you can go to the game,
any local club
and as long as they're happy you sit thereand commentate on their team,
that would be a good place. And they.
But I think now there are more inroadsthan there were then.
But there wasn't as much competition then.
Now the competition is fierce becausepeople realise I can do this as a job.
(07:12):
so tell me a bit about your time inlocal radio and then where you went next.
Well, at Radio Norfolk,
I mean, I have to say it is still even 30,so it's the best place I've ever worked.
I learned so much.
I was obviously passionate about it,
and I wanted to learn,and they were very good at allowing you
to just go in the studios late at nightwhen when they've opted to the regions
or the network.
(07:33):
I'll sit there for an hour.
Records cut tape in those days.
Yeah, yeah, I
used to splice tapeand then you'd be playing in records.
I'll be talking to nobody,but I'd be recording it,
and then I'd go home and I'd listen to itand think, that was good.
That wasn't so good. I'd listen to people.
In those days, if you're local to Norwich,you'll have heard of Roy Waller,
Wally Webb, all those guys who were goodDJs, slash broadcasters.
(07:57):
And I did everything at Radio Norfolk.
I whenever anything came around.
Can you cut some tape? Yep.
Can you drive this presenter to King'sLynn?
To the office? Yep.
No problem.
Can you go and do a simple wreck?
I don't know if they do cimarex anymore.
A bit too complicated to explain,but can you go and interview this?
So I do news, I do sport, I do phones.
(08:18):
Whether ripping rates off,the travel, everything.
In additionto eventually getting the sports morning,
bulletins, which, the guy,
Roger Ryan, who I mentioned before,who's had it, he stepped away, got called,
Matthew Gudgeon, steppedin, and I took Matthew Gudgeon job.
And then for probably two yearsI did early sports bulletins,
(08:39):
but I knew that I knewas I was going along,
as much as I love being thereand I love my home town, home city,
I did have a pangs to work at
networkbecause I loved what radio five live did.
They were radio two when I was young,but radio five live in that sport
and I thought,I want to work there eventually.
And I knew my path at RadioNorfolk was quite blocked because
(09:00):
Matthew Gudgeon, great, great broadcaster,he was going to stay fair
while Roy Waller was the establishedcommentator and his personality.
So I thought, really, if I do want toprogress, I need to go elsewhere.
Otherwise I'd have to wait and be patient.
And so after three years,I am applied for a job at BBC Northampton.
So another local radio stationand surprisingly got it.
(09:22):
I didn't expect to get it, but I got it
and it was goodbecause I became the editor
and we had a great patchbecause we had a professional
football club, two semi-pro clubs,
a rugby club, professional rugby club,the cricket and Silverstone racetrack.
So we had the British Grand Prix.
So I had a lot of high profile stuffin that region.
And I did three years thereand yeah, I'd worked my way.
(09:46):
So I was learning all the timeand I'd got a really by the time I left
Radio Northampton in 1999,my understanding of everything
from the bottom through to, editor was really good.
And I've always had that feeling thatif you can learn from the bottom,
when you get to the top,
you know what it's like for those peoplecoming through at the bottom.
(10:07):
You have a really good understandingof what they're doing rather than be like,
I don't know, short term for the doorand patient and saying,
no, you need to do that.You think I know that takes a long time.
I know the do you see what I mean?
So it's a bit old fashioned,
I suppose, in this current age.
But, it worked for me. Very important.
And you mentioned, like,you love football,
(10:28):
you've wantedto commentate on the football,
but it also sounds like you had a graspof the other sports as well.
And was that things that you,
you would just go out and learn theterminology and all of the different rules
and things for sports that you weren'tperhaps even as passionate about, but
you knew you needed to get a groundingof almost anything that was going on.
Yeah, I always liked motor sportmotorbikes particularly,
(10:49):
and because we had the British Grand Prix,I had to be up on the formula one.
But at the timeI think I was quite into my formula one.
It was sort of post Senna days,which were the,
I think were the halcyon days.
So it's Michael Schumacherand people like that.
It was very high profile.
that came quite naturally, butthe one sport that didn't come naturally
or two sports were cricket and rugbyand of course they were big in that patch.
(11:12):
LuckilyI had two people that were doing it.
The cricket guy was very well known.
He was ex, I left,I left him to it. Rugby.
My editor said to me,
he said, look, he said,I like the way you commentate on football.
He said,I want to see you commentate on the rugby.
I likewhen I don't know anything about rugby.
I said, I can comment on someonerunning down the pitch
and the ball being scrum,but technically I don't know.
(11:35):
So one day it was a professional game.
This is NorthamptonSaints against Newcastle.
They had the guy that was doing
it sat next to me with prompt cards.
Wow. So I was fine with the action,
but I didn't know when a penaltywas being awarded or an offside.
I mean,I don't even know the terminology now.
And he sat there prompting me, and,it was incredibly stressful for me
(11:57):
because I was I'ma bit of a perfectionist.
I just didn't want to screw it up.
And, he said afterwards,he said, no, you did well.
And I said, I can't do that again.
I said, it'sjust not that I need to do something
where I feel naturaland I've grown up with football.
I know the terminology.
I if I'd grown up with rugby,I'd be the other way round, I said, but
it's not for me.So I didn't do another game.
(12:17):
That's any rugby game I ever did.
But yeah,
I mean, you know whatit's like when you do interviews
and you get sent to do a certain task,you have to
you have to basically learn about itin the space of half an hour
before you leave the officeor on the way there in the car
and you're listening to somethingor you're running around your head,
I know I radio Norfolk,I had nine months on the news desk and,
(12:38):
they gave me the National HealthService figures for Norfolk.
I can't believe they gave me that job,and I just I was bamboozled.
I couldn't do it,and I thought I'd done it.
And then the editor, Jill Bennett,said, speak to,
the health correspondent there, look east,just to make sure everything's happened.
And I spoke to him,and I was completely off the mark.
(13:01):
what you have to learn on the job.And lean into your strengths.
But also be willing to pick up on anythingthat's going.
Yeah, but
like I say, in those early days at RadioNorfolk, you have to be prepared to learn.
Because actually, when it comes downto it, those horses for courses, things
you do, there's means to an end reallybenefit you that nine months on news,
(13:21):
I say I didn't enjoy pretty muchany of it, apart from maybe one job.
Yeah, what I did mate, I edited quicker,
I turned things around quick,I packaged up quicker and you learn.
And it was all usefulfor the future sports stuff.
So what happened once we left local?
When I left local, in those days,the end of the 90s,
(13:41):
Five live were offering and the BBCwere offering a lot of attachments
at network level, particularly atwhat was this actually BBC sport
or this is a sub department, BBCRadio Sport, part of BBC sport,
which provides support for five lives.
All the networks actually the radio side.
And then there's TV like match of the dayand all the programs look and,
(14:03):
focusand final score and all those things.
But I was predominantly radio sports,so they had jobs, attachments going.
I applied and I got well, I didn'tI actually went for production one first
and I did the interview.
I did the board,as they call them in the BBC.
You know about boots.You're in front of a committee
almost normally to threepeople would be the norm.
(14:24):
So it's quite intimidating,especially at network level.
So you're coming from local.
You need to be you need to be on it.
And I did the interviewnot thought it went well.
And then I got a call backsaying you did the interview.
Well we we were really happy with it.
But you want to be a broadcaster.
And in those daysit was a very much a split.
Nowadays it's a bit more fluid,but in those days,
especially at five, livelocal radio was different.
(14:45):
You do everything five live, you'reeither broadcaster or you're a producer
or editor.
If you went up high,
there were a few peoplethat merged between the two, but not many.
And he said,you want to be a broadcaster? Yes.
Yeah, I want to be a commentator onto read bulletins.
I want to interview peopleand do features.
He said, well,
this is a production job andif you do this job, you'll be a producer
(15:05):
and you may get the odd chance,but it won't be regular.
He said.
I we've got some British
broadcaster jobs coming up, attachmentsin a few months time.
They said
we're not going to offer you this,
but we'd like you to come forwardand go for that.
So I was thinking,oh, I'm being palmed off here.
But true to his word, I did
the interview and I obviously dida good enough, and I got an attachment.
(15:26):
So I was nine months there.
It went really well.
Again, I sort of having sort ofstepped up a level.
You're going back a bit.
So you're doing all the, the bulletin,late night bulletins, early bulletins.
But I worked on five liveradio one, radio two, the today
program on radio four, PM on radio four,well Service
and I mean, I was on The ChrisMoyles Show and things and Steve Wright,
(15:49):
I'd go in the studio with Steve Wright,Simon Mayo, these,
these are things I was in London.
I was just thinkingthis is incredible and a great time.
But then there was a little bit of a blipbecause
after the nine monthsthey had permanent jobs going
and there were three permanent jobs,and I was with three people on attachment
and someone else had come inin the meantime on attachment.
(16:09):
And that persongot one of the permanent jobs ahead of me,
which is a bit of a disappointmenton my part.
And, they said to me, you'regoing to have to go back to local radio.
So I fought my
corner and I was very resistant to it.
I said, I'm not going back onebecause I wasn't going to learn anything.
(16:30):
I wasn't.
And I thought, if I go back,I'm out of sight, out of mind.
So to the editors credit,he said, okay, I'll have a look around,
see what we can do.
And they basically got mean attachment on the World Service,
which is in the same room,so still seeing the same people.
But I worked on the World Service,which was again, really good because I did
broadcasting through the night,doing lots of different things.
You've got tens of millions of peoplelistening to you in Africa.
(16:53):
So I did nine months of that,and then at the end of that,
I got the permanent job I wanted.
And, I spent well, intotal, I spent 12.5 years in
BBC Radio
Sport, which was primarilyradio five live.
it's important,I think, to see how much you sort of
have to you go up a rung of the ladderand then you have to stay on that floor
(17:14):
for a bit, and then you go up another rung
and you stay on that floor for a bit,and there might be times
where you have to go back down again,but you can.
Yeah. Yeah, it's very important.
And also because you don'tI didn't want to get to a level where I,
there's a gap in the middlewhere I feel lost.
You always have moments where you,
you think, oh, gosh, I've really flyingby the seat of my pants.
But in general terms, I wanted to havethat background all the way through and
(17:36):
all those things that happenedwere all beneficial in the long run.
And I would always say,
like with anything, just take the chances.
I I'll be honest,I was and I do have regrets
where I was resistant to some things,like they wanted me to do more television,
like on screen stuffwith, bulletins and that.
(17:58):
And I resisted thatbecause I was very much a radio person,
and I regret it now,because with everything that there is, I,
I have done presentation, but not as much.
And I probably missed opportunitiesthat I should have taken.
But then again, I was lucky.
I had a lot of opportunitiesI never thought I'd get.
So staying here for a bit,
what advice would you give to peoplelooking to enter into sports?
(18:20):
Come and train.
Well, commentary in particular.
Yeah.
I think, like I said there, it's very hardjust to walk straight into anything.
And I knowand this is not I'm not being critical of,
media courses or anything like thatbecause now have the broadcast journalism
course here at the UEA is excellent
and they're brilliant grounding forI didn't really have that,
(18:42):
that great grounding.
But that doesn't necessarily meanthat if you spend three years there
and you don't do anything
as a on the side and experienceon the side, you're going to walk straight
into a commentary job at Radio Norfolkor any local BBC station.
A lot of those jobsnow are tied up for years.
It's very hard to break in the best.
I would always say the best advice is to
(19:04):
go to a
local football club with your laptop,with a phone, have a streaming service
if you can afford it, and just say tothe club, doesn't matter who they are,
even if one might on a dog,watch them, just say,
can I come and do your gamesand put it on the stream?
Because they'll say, well,actually my my grandad can't come there.
He'll listen to it on thehe might only get ten people, but
the main benefit is that you can do itand then you listen back.
(19:27):
And I would always say that
I listen back religiously to what I didfor years and years and years.
I don't do it so much now,but I listen back
and I was picking out what was, you know,you all, you'll have habits.
You might say the same thingof the same phrases.
You make notes,you can't do them all at once.
But you work through those notes graduallyand then
every comment you do, I'm going to work onnot aiming too much.
(19:50):
I'm going to work on not leaving dead air.
I'm going to work onnot saying the same phrase over
and over again,and then gradually you work up to a point
where you can put a showreel togetherand go to a local station, go to a
I mean, there's all these other fanbase things now and say, look,
I can commentate on there,can I have an opportunity?
(20:10):
EFL are doing lots of commentaries nowand there are young guys coming in
getting opportunities there. So it's
it's a good
groundingand you can make mistakes that you want to
you want to make your mistakes therewhere few fewer people are listening.
That's the best option.
And you're going to make mistakes.
And I make mistakes in network levelI may I made some booboos where you
you get pulled into an office and say,why did you do that?
(20:32):
What do you do this?
So you're always going to make thosemistakes, but make those basic mistakes
at the beginningwhen very few people are listening, but
especially with the competitionthat's out there now,
you've got to try and get yourself ahead.
So do as much.
Even if you're on a three yearbroadcast journalism course at the UAE
or Lincoln or Derby or somewhere,still spend your spare time.
(20:54):
And I know it's difficult,
but if you're singleor you haven't got children or anything,
use that time to get yourself aheadand put yourself in the shop window
and you think there's still roomfor everyone in this industry.
You don't have to play footballin the early 2000s to be a pundit.
No, no, not what I always think thatI think it's that there's a defined line
(21:16):
between a commentator and a pundit,or an analyst
or a coach comms or a a summariser,as they call them at BBC,
because commentary is ais a bit of an art form.
I don't want to get too high
and highfalutin about it,but it is a bit of an art form
and it's not somethingyou can just learn on the spot.
There are people therewho've got a natural talent for it,
(21:37):
but they still have to take
that still takes yearsto get yourself to a certain level.
And I'm trying to think I there was athere was a guy in local radio
who used to be a professional footballer,but if you look at all the professionals,
X professionals who are in the highprofile jobs and TV match,
that and all that, how many of themare actually commentating,
(21:57):
holding the commentary together?
Because it's one thing to be the analystand the co cons is another thing
to actually hold it togetherand know how it all works.
And I can't off the top of my head.
I can't think of anyone in a high profileposition
who's been a high profile footballer.
Other than the ones who are
analysts are summarises because really,they're used for their expert analysis.
(22:20):
I've not played professionally.
I know football, and I played itand I know the ins and outs,
but I've never beenin a professional dressing room.
I've never been coached by a professional.
So their knowledge is really.
the add on to what you do, I was add on.
I don't mean, you know, I mean compliments
what you do, you're providingthat you're the action man
and then the experience manand the two come together.
(22:41):
And when you get really goodcommentary teams, it can be great.
Really good. Listen. Yeah. Brilliant.
So you've talked about being,
staff members for various companies,but you're now primarily freelance.
Yeah. And was that a conscious choice?
Yes, I know, the BBC
sport moved to Manchester,Salford back in 2011,
(23:01):
and while I was still stuffwhen they announced this
probably a couple of years earlier,
and everybody was thinking,oh, now I've got to move to Manchester.
But luckily for me,I was working on the road doing matches
and press conferences around London
and the Midlands,and so I wasn't included in the move.
So I was fortunate.
So I stayed.
But as soon as the move happened,
(23:23):
the BBCthen said we need to make some more
redundancies and we're going to trim downthe commentary team,
which is only about 13 or 14.
Commentators slash reportersand I looked at it and so, oh,
that doesn't bode well for me,because in that group were people
like John Murray, who's nowthe BBC's chief football correspondent.
There were Connor MacNamara,Alistair Bruce, Paul, Darren Fletcher.
(23:47):
These guys were all
more established commentatorsand doing more commentary than me.
I was I was doing commentary,but not to the same amount
or level as they were gettingthe high profile games.
And I looked at the list and,and I, I was a bit surreptitious,
but I managed to get through to airbecause I wanted to know what
how many they never said,
how many spots were going to be taken up,how many roles were going to be lost.
(24:11):
So I managed to find out through H.R, in a roundabout way
that it was going to be four, probablyfour, possibly five, have a group of 14.
So was that that's
that's
not very good odds when you're up againstpeople like John Murray.
And I looked at it and I almost did itlike a Premier League table.
I list it out subjectively.
I listed out who I think was stayand I was in the bottom four.
(24:34):
So I almost knew what was coming.
So I thought, do I wait?
Do I let them, doI let them decide with the risk,
with the possibility of not goingor do as I
as I think, having read the situation,make my own decision.
So I, I, denied for weeks and weeksand I thought
(24:55):
and I wasn't happy at the time
because things had changed a bitand I wasn't getting used
as much and doing quite the samebecause had done some really good stuff.
And Iwasn't quite getting as much as that.
So that also gave me an inclinationthat maybe my time is coming to an end.
So I made the call myself,
and I thought, I'm going to take voluntaryand being control of the situation.
(25:17):
So I wentin, made it easy for them to redundancy.
But I was incredibly fortunate
that as soon as I left,I left at the end of the.
I left at the end of the 20 1112 season.
Did a game on the last at Norwich left.
You can't work for the BBCfor three months
(25:38):
after the grace periodbecause you've got taken redundancy.
You can't work as a freelancer,
but I managed to get a get a job with UEFAat the euros.
I did the London Olympicsand I did the Paralympics
as a freelance.
I had a brilliant summerand then I picked up some new stuff.
Five life took me back and until I say
the last couple of years,I didn't really look back.
(26:00):
And, I was very fortunate.
Timing is timing is keywith a lot of things as good as
you might be, as reliable as you might be,as hard working as you might be,
timing makes a massive difference.
I think of the number of timesI've picked up things.
Can I tell youit's just one particular story?
When Iwhen I made the decision to go freelance
(26:21):
and there's a friend of mine,a family friend of mine,
I'm not close friend,but someone I know who's a
who has been.
I don't think she is not.
She might be now, but she's a productionmanager, quite well-respected, worked
at IMG and a few other companies,and she was at UEFA.
And over theyears when we bumped into each other at
church gatherings or wherever,
(26:43):
family things, she'd always say,oh, how's it going to be?
But I said, oh, it's okay.
And then I got to the last 2 or 3 yearsat the BBC where I said I wasn't overly
happy, and I remember calling herand saying, look, I'm thinking I might.
This is before the redundancies.
I might go freelance.
I said, that's a big call,because obviously I've got a regular job
and I'm still doingreasonable amount of stuff.
She said, well, obviously she was at UEFA,the European football's governing body.
(27:05):
She said, well, when you do get in touch,she said, let me know,
because obviouslyI know people in all this.
So I said, I will,I will. And I made the decision.
And she was the first person I calledwhen I'd made the decision.
I called her and talk about timing.
I rang her and she said, she said,your call could not have been better time.
She said, I've just had a meeting.
Just finished a meeting with my boss.
(27:26):
We are going to.
This is for the €2,012 in Poland.
We're going to do a, an audio,
provide audiofor broadcasters around Europe.
And we need someone to look afterthat hub.
Just a team of three people.You you be in that team at one.
It's not a broadcastjob. It's a production job.
You think you could do it?
(27:46):
I went, yeah,she said, you'll get training on it.
Let me talk to my bossand I'll get back to you within the hour.
She came back.She said, you've got the job.
Six weeks in Poland, all expenses
paid, podiums, meal vouchers, a good fee.
He'd heard of mebecause he listened to five live. So.
(28:08):
And obviously she vouched for me, sayingthat she's known me for years and he.
I didn't even speak to him.
He gave me the job. And
I mean, that's just incredible fate.
But it does prove that timing can makeall the difference.
There'll be things I've missed alongthe years that I don't know of.
And I've tried to get things.
I've tried to get each other there.
(28:28):
There's one particular avenueI want to go down, and it never worked.
And other peopleI know similar position managed.
I'd say there were four of themand it all paid off for all of them.
It they all managed,but it's just timing a lot of it's timing.
And you try not to be too hard on yourselfif things don't come off.
It's difficultbecause you always think it's must be me.
They don't like me, but a lot of it islike it just doesn't fit at that moment.
(28:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
Any mythsthat you'd like to debunk any myths.
Oh What I would say is,
and I'm I'm not I'm not saying I have had
some very fortunate encounterswith well known people,
and I've been in positionsI can think of loads of positions where
(29:12):
I've been in a moment, like Formula OneI did for season.
I was the pitlane reporter,
and it was the first seasonthat Fernando Alonso won the world title,
and I just so happened to beright in front of his car as he pulled in.
Having won the championship, allhis crew came out and I was in the crew
with Alonso 15ft from mestanding up celebrating the title.
(29:33):
You just find yourself in these momentspitchside at FA Cup finals,
on the
pitch, at FA Cup finals with Jose Mourinhoor someone like that.
Those are the glamorous things,but you don't get those without doing the
the hard yards initially,the voluntary stuff at the beginning,
learning everything, the cold daysat Fakenham, the falls, the pitfalls,
(29:55):
then the late nights at Radio Norfolk,splicing tape just to learn how to do it.
You don't walk into that.
You don't walk on the Wembley pitch,you don't walk onto the track
at Silverstone and do that.
So there are it can be greatand I've been incredibly lucky to do that,
but I know that I wouldn't have beenhad that opportunity
if I hadn't done the other stuff beforeand hadn't had the luck and the timing.
(30:18):
So many things come into it.
All I'd say is,if you're starting out in this industry,
some of the most important things.
Clearly you work hard.
If you don't work hard in this industry,you won't get very far anyway
because people won't use you.You work hard.
You also have to be an affable person.
You need to be able to get on with people.
Because if again,if you don't get on with people,
if you are an annoying person,I mean, there are people in industry, but
(30:40):
you have to be pretty good at your job,if you're not easy to work with.
So being easy to work with,Reliability is massive at the beginning.
Availability. When you get down the line,you can turn stuff down.
You canbecause you want to be taking everything
Because a lot of people that book you, production people
and they have a lot of work to do,they've got to fill crews,
(31:00):
they've got to fill rotas. And I'mnot saying they just put anyone in.
But if you're someonethat says, yeah, I'll do that
and you do it well,they'll come back to you the next time.
entitlement
and arrogance not confidence, arrogance.
Part of the worst things you could come inwith because you won't get very far.
And. Oh,and the only other thing to say is that,
(31:21):
like I mentioned, when I started out,the jobs were fewer.
It wasn't considered a normal job,
and most people weren'treally aware of it as normal job.
But the competition wasn't really there.
The opportunities weren't there either.
But so it was a bit of luck.
Now the opportunities are vastand you can even start on your own.
There'sthis sort of podcasting and streaming.
(31:44):
You can do that yourself,because of technology, which we didn't
have back then, but the competitionto get to that higher level
of like commentary to be on the networksis so, so fierce.
Even now, with my experience,I struggle to get on certain things
I don't I certainly don't walk into doingcommentary jobs for people.
(32:05):
I don't get responses from people.
That'show I just want to be honest about it.
I write to people, I contact peopleI don't even get an acknowledgment.
And I've got 30 years of experienceand I've been a network.
And I'm not sayingI should be given a job.
All I'm sayingis that's how hard it can be.
So I can't imagine how hard it isat the bottom end.
You're coming in at uni having donemaybe done some of your own stuff.
(32:30):
You've got to be you've got to be.
I think the if you've got the passion,you'll keep doing it.
You'll run out of steam.
If you're not passionate about it,
if you want to do it for the money,you're probably not.
I wouldn't bother, becauseit takes a while to get to that level,
and you have to be in a certain band
to be able to earna good living out of it,
because the majority of peopleprobably earning
a reasonable livingor a part time or voluntary,
(32:54):
it's a hard graft and it's it'slayers of working your way up.
It's not it's not an overnight sensethat there are people, I guess, on YouTube
and that who become overnight sensations.
But those are few and far between,especially with commentary.
It's not somethingyou can just go and pick up on.
I was it always makes me laugh.
I've had people in the past saying,you're football commentate.
(33:14):
You just get your microphone, show up,come on top of the game.
And I went, if only you knew.
You spent years getting to that level.
And even now, most commentatorswill spend anything from half a day
a minimum to a day and a half, two dayspreparing for a commentary.
If they're doing something high profile,there's a lot of preparation involved.
(33:35):
But in terms of getting into the industry,you've got to you got to take the hits
you've got toand try not to take it personally.
And the last thingI'll say, subjective nature of it.
If you're going to be a broadcaster,
I think if you're a production side,it's less, it's less of a problem.
But subjectively, if you're an on airvoice or on screen person,
you have to remember thatwe've all got different tastes.
(33:56):
Your favorite broadcastermight be someone I don't write.
My favorite broadcasterwill be someone you don't write.
Same with commentators. and I think
all the commentators
at those higher levels,they're all good commentators.
But it's a tasting.
And if you've got an editorwho makes a decision, they have the key.
And that's what's can one be frustrating
(34:19):
and it can get to you, but ultimatelythere's nothing you can do about it.
So that's something to bear in mind,especially when you're starting out.
Don't be deflated or demoralised by that.
Because ultimately someone out there,if you if you're good
and then you have to be good at it,
someone out there will like what you doand you'll get there.
But it's a it's it can be a long haul.
(34:40):
It can be a long haul.
Good luck.
Brilliant.
Well,thank you so much for your time today. No.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Thanks again to Mike for their time.
For more information on becoming a sportscommentator, head to prospect Sky
UK for a full length videoversion of this episode,
check out our YouTubechannel @Futureyoupod.
(35:02):
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
Thank you as always, for listeningand good luck on your journey to future you.
Hello and welcome back to Future You
the podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts, prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade.
And in this episode, I speak to Mikeabout being a sports commentator.
My name is Mike Sewell.
I'm a Sports, predominantly a sports broadcaster,
voiceover artist, and an occasional host,
(00:20):
and I've been doing thatfor just over 30 years, Amazing.
So let's go right back to the beginning.
What does your educational journeylook like?
Quite checkered, certainly.
After school I, when I was at school inNorwich, fairly straightforward education.
I was pretty average.
Everything apart from woodworkand metalwork.
(00:41):
I excelled in that.
And my grandfather was a draftsman.
His father owned a furniture shopin Norwich, and after a couple of years
of learning how to do these things,I thought, I want to be a cabinet maker.
I want to be a furniture makerlike my great grandfather.
And so that was always my focustowards the last year or two at school.
(01:02):
But I couldn't get an apprenticeshipanywhere.
So the next best optionwas to go to City College,
to a city and Guilds in furniture making.
But within four months, by Christmas,I realised it wasn't for me.
It was too machine led. So I
stoppedit, thought, what am I going to do next?
And like a lot of people,
ended up with a job at Norwich Unionas it was a viva as it is now.
(01:24):
Spent three years there.
But all the time during that I realisedI wanted to do something different
and I'd always had a passion for football.
I, I mean, like a lot of boys, I usedto run around the garden commentating,
but I never thought it was a job.
I always thought it was forfor something else.
So you had to be born into itor know someone in high places.
So I didn't really go along that route.
(01:47):
And I had the fortune of been ableto go to America to study,
but again, it only lasted a semester.
And I came back againwhen temped back at Norwich Union.
So for a third time I was thinking,what am I going to do?
And then
it's quite interesting.
Where we're sitting nowis literally across the road
from where I had
probably the most important conversationI've ever had in my career.
(02:10):
Friends of mine to live in one ofthe flats here, and we were chatting.
This is the time that I was backafter America,
and he was saying, what do youwhat do you enjoy doing?
I said, well, I love my football.I'd love to be a football commentator.
I enjoy radio.
And he said, well,I work at Hospital Radio in Norwich.
Why don't you try that?
And basically that conversationsparked me into action.
(02:32):
I did hospital radio.
I went back to college for a thirdtime, did a media course.
There were very
there weren't many of them about,I think it was the first year actually,
that did it.
And I said to myself,I'm going to finish this course.
I'm going to, I'm going to finish it.
And then even during that course,I got the opportunity to do some
stuff at Radio Norfolk and,
well, I don't know.
(02:52):
I said the rest is history.But yeah, it got me.
It got me going.
Yeah.
Amazing,So you got your foot in the door with BBC
Radio Norfolkwas that in a freelance capacity?
What happened was I was at City College,
I think it was the second yearof my two year course,
and we had to have a placementfor three weeks.
And so I thought, well,I'm going to go to the radio.
And there was Radio Broadland at the time
(03:13):
and Radio Norfolk, that Broadland,I don't think, did any sport.
So I went to Norfolk, spoke to the editor,who was a guy called
Roger Ryan, and he chatted to me.
He even made me do a voice test on mic
and said,can you just read this script for me?
And I've never read a script other thanthe old saying it hospital radio.
I'd never read a proper sports bulletin,so I read it the best I could.
(03:35):
And he said, he said, oh, that'sall right. It's quite good.
He said, anyway, come in Saturday,we do a Saturday show.
You can sit in the gallery, you can watchthe show go out and see what we do.
So I thought, oh great.
So this is voluntary, but this, this wouldhave been ahead of doing the attachment.
So he said, yeah,you can do the placement.
So I went in on the Saturdayand I walked in the door
and Radio Norfolk
used to be on Norfolk Tower in those dayslong corridor.
(03:57):
And I didn't even get to the endwhere he was.
And he said, stop there.
He said, you're going to cover a match.
Here's a phone.
And in those days,mobile phones were like concrete blocks
with a hat with a handset on top.
And he said, you're going to cover
Fakenham against Brightlingseain the Jewson League.
And I went,I've never done a game in my life.
I have done no preparation or anything.
(04:19):
You'll be fine,he said. You sound all right.
Here's the keys to the pool car.
There's the thing
and I got sent to Fakenham and I wentand it was a cold February day.
I hadn't planned for it,so I wasn't even dressed right.
And I literally got there,and I'd never had been more scared
in my life of goinglive on the radio, hiding in corners.
So none of the people that could see me
(04:40):
and I finished the day and I thought, what a relief I've done.
And he rang me and said,can you do a couple of interviews for us?
And could you get the man of the matchand the manager?
The man of the match happened to be
an ex-professionalwho was pretty well known at the time.
I called Lisa Blissettand he was my first ever interview
post-match and he was great,the manager was great
(05:01):
and I got through the dayand then I worked from there
and basically I did games every week.
And then I did the placement.
But the interesting thingis, 20 years later,
I was commentating on a gamewith a co-commentator who was Luther
Blissett, the first guy I ever interview,and I told him the story.
So wonderful.
Wow. So that is like a full baptismof fire.
(05:24):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
But it was the best thingthat could have happened. Of course. Yeah.
Do you think that kind of thingstill happens today?
Yeah, I think it probably does.
I don't know if it'd be quite like you'rewalking in a door to do something else
and someone sends you out,but certainly in local radio, you go in,
you start doing local footballand you gradually work your way up.
(05:45):
That was always
most of the people I worked with furtherdown the line in network radio had come
that route, either through commercialor through the landscape's
really different nowbecause there was very
the internet was around,but it was in its infancy.
There was no streaming online.
It was literally radio, TV.
You were the mediums and TV.
(06:07):
They didn't do itlike Radio Norfolk did, for example.
So the jobs were quite limited
and it wasn't.
And I think most people didn't even knowthat was a job necessarily.
You wouldn't think, oh,I'm going to become a
this is why I didn't do anything untilI had the conversation across the road.
And a lot of it comes down to luck.
My timing was good and okay.
I volunteered my time for a long timeto get paid or anything, but that is that.
(06:30):
That was always the way.
And for me,I think now it's slightly different
because you can go in viaa different route,
because you can use social mediato get in, you can use streaming,
you can do it for free.
You could go to a local football clubwith a laptop and a microphone,
and just offer to stream itfor the club for nothing,
but you get yourself out there.
I always think that's a really good waybecause in my day it was always like,
(06:51):
watch the telly,turn the volume down and commentate.
Now you can go to the game,
any local club
and as long as they're happy you sit thereand commentate on their team,
that would be a good place. And they.
But I think now there are more inroadsthan there were then.
But there wasn't as much competition then.
Now the competition is fierce becausepeople realise I can do this as a job.
(07:12):
so tell me a bit about your time inlocal radio and then where you went next.
Well, at Radio Norfolk,
I mean, I have to say it is still even 30,so it's the best place I've ever worked.
I learned so much.
I was obviously passionate about it,
and I wanted to learn,and they were very good at allowing you
to just go in the studios late at nightwhen when they've opted to the regions
or the network.
(07:33):
I'll sit there for an hour.
Records cut tape in those days.
Yeah, yeah, I
used to splice tapeand then you'd be playing in records.
I'll be talking to nobody,but I'd be recording it,
and then I'd go home and I'd listen to itand think, that was good.
That wasn't so good. I'd listen to people.
In those days, if you're local to Norwich,you'll have heard of Roy Waller,
Wally Webb, all those guys who were goodDJs, slash broadcasters.
(07:57):
And I did everything at Radio Norfolk.
I whenever anything came around.
Can you cut some tape? Yep.
Can you drive this presenter to King'sLynn?
To the office? Yep.
No problem.
Can you go and do a simple wreck?
I don't know if they do cimarex anymore.
A bit too complicated to explain,but can you go and interview this?
So I do news, I do sport, I do phones.
(08:18):
Whether ripping rates off,the travel, everything.
In additionto eventually getting the sports morning,
bulletins, which, the guy,
Roger Ryan, who I mentioned before,who's had it, he stepped away, got called,
Matthew Gudgeon, steppedin, and I took Matthew Gudgeon job.
And then for probably two yearsI did early sports bulletins,
(08:39):
but I knew that I knewas I was going along,
as much as I love being thereand I love my home town, home city,
I did have a pangs to work at
networkbecause I loved what radio five live did.
They were radio two when I was young,but radio five live in that sport
and I thought,I want to work there eventually.
And I knew my path at RadioNorfolk was quite blocked because
(09:00):
Matthew Gudgeon, great, great broadcaster,he was going to stay fair
while Roy Waller was the establishedcommentator and his personality.
So I thought, really, if I do want toprogress, I need to go elsewhere.
Otherwise I'd have to wait and be patient.
And so after three years,I am applied for a job at BBC Northampton.
So another local radio stationand surprisingly got it.
(09:22):
I didn't expect to get it, but I got it
and it was goodbecause I became the editor
and we had a great patchbecause we had a professional
football club, two semi-pro clubs,
a rugby club, professional rugby club,the cricket and Silverstone racetrack.
So we had the British Grand Prix.
So I had a lot of high profile stuffin that region.
And I did three years thereand yeah, I'd worked my way.
(09:46):
So I was learning all the timeand I'd got a really by the time I left
Radio Northampton in 1999,my understanding of everything
from the bottom through to, editor was really good.
And I've always had that feeling thatif you can learn from the bottom,
when you get to the top,
you know what it's like for those peoplecoming through at the bottom.
(10:07):
You have a really good understandingof what they're doing rather than be like,
I don't know, short term for the doorand patient and saying,
no, you need to do that.You think I know that takes a long time.
I know the do you see what I mean?
So it's a bit old fashioned,
I suppose, in this current age.
But, it worked for me. Very important.
And you mentioned, like,you love football,
(10:28):
you've wantedto commentate on the football,
but it also sounds like you had a graspof the other sports as well.
And was that things that you,
you would just go out and learn theterminology and all of the different rules
and things for sports that you weren'tperhaps even as passionate about, but
you knew you needed to get a groundingof almost anything that was going on.
Yeah, I always liked motor sportmotorbikes particularly,
(10:49):
and because we had the British Grand Prix,I had to be up on the formula one.
But at the timeI think I was quite into my formula one.
It was sort of post Senna days,which were the,
I think were the halcyon days.
So it's Michael Schumacherand people like that.
It was very high profile.
that came quite naturally, butthe one sport that didn't come naturally
or two sports were cricket and rugbyand of course they were big in that patch.
(11:12):
LuckilyI had two people that were doing it.
The cricket guy was very well known.
He was ex, I left,I left him to it. Rugby.
My editor said to me,
he said, look, he said,I like the way you commentate on football.
He said,I want to see you commentate on the rugby.
I likewhen I don't know anything about rugby.
I said, I can comment on someonerunning down the pitch
and the ball being scrum,but technically I don't know.
(11:35):
So one day it was a professional game.
This is NorthamptonSaints against Newcastle.
They had the guy that was doing
it sat next to me with prompt cards.
Wow. So I was fine with the action,
but I didn't know when a penaltywas being awarded or an offside.
I mean,I don't even know the terminology now.
And he sat there prompting me, and,it was incredibly stressful for me
(11:57):
because I was I'ma bit of a perfectionist.
I just didn't want to screw it up.
And, he said afterwards,he said, no, you did well.
And I said, I can't do that again.
I said, it'sjust not that I need to do something
where I feel naturaland I've grown up with football.
I know the terminology.
I if I'd grown up with rugby,I'd be the other way round, I said, but
it's not for me.So I didn't do another game.
(12:17):
That's any rugby game I ever did.
But yeah,
I mean, you know whatit's like when you do interviews
and you get sent to do a certain task,you have to
you have to basically learn about itin the space of half an hour
before you leave the officeor on the way there in the car
and you're listening to somethingor you're running around your head,
I know I radio Norfolk,I had nine months on the news desk and,
(12:38):
they gave me the National HealthService figures for Norfolk.
I can't believe they gave me that job,and I just I was bamboozled.
I couldn't do it,and I thought I'd done it.
And then the editor, Jill Bennett,said, speak to,
the health correspondent there, look east,just to make sure everything's happened.
And I spoke to him,and I was completely off the mark.
(13:01):
what you have to learn on the job.And lean into your strengths.
But also be willing to pick up on anythingthat's going.
Yeah, but
like I say, in those early days at RadioNorfolk, you have to be prepared to learn.
Because actually, when it comes downto it, those horses for courses, things
you do, there's means to an end reallybenefit you that nine months on news,
(13:21):
I say I didn't enjoy pretty muchany of it, apart from maybe one job.
Yeah, what I did mate, I edited quicker,
I turned things around quick,I packaged up quicker and you learn.
And it was all usefulfor the future sports stuff.
So what happened once we left local?
When I left local, in those days,the end of the 90s,
(13:41):
Five live were offering and the BBCwere offering a lot of attachments
at network level, particularly atwhat was this actually BBC sport
or this is a sub department, BBCRadio Sport, part of BBC sport,
which provides support for five lives.
All the networks actually the radio side.
And then there's TV like match of the dayand all the programs look and,
(14:03):
focusand final score and all those things.
But I was predominantly radio sports,so they had jobs, attachments going.
I applied and I got well, I didn'tI actually went for production one first
and I did the interview.
I did the board,as they call them in the BBC.
You know about boots.You're in front of a committee
almost normally to threepeople would be the norm.
(14:24):
So it's quite intimidating,especially at network level.
So you're coming from local.
You need to be you need to be on it.
And I did the interviewnot thought it went well.
And then I got a call backsaying you did the interview.
Well we we were really happy with it.
But you want to be a broadcaster.
And in those daysit was a very much a split.
Nowadays it's a bit more fluid,but in those days,
especially at five, livelocal radio was different.
(14:45):
You do everything five live, you'reeither broadcaster or you're a producer
or editor.
If you went up high,
there were a few peoplethat merged between the two, but not many.
And he said,you want to be a broadcaster? Yes.
Yeah, I want to be a commentator onto read bulletins.
I want to interview peopleand do features.
He said, well,
this is a production job andif you do this job, you'll be a producer
(15:05):
and you may get the odd chance,but it won't be regular.
He said.
I we've got some British
broadcaster jobs coming up, attachmentsin a few months time.
They said
we're not going to offer you this,
but we'd like you to come forwardand go for that.
So I was thinking,oh, I'm being palmed off here.
But true to his word, I did
the interview and I obviously dida good enough, and I got an attachment.
(15:26):
So I was nine months there.
It went really well.
Again, I sort of having sort ofstepped up a level.
You're going back a bit.
So you're doing all the, the bulletin,late night bulletins, early bulletins.
But I worked on five liveradio one, radio two, the today
program on radio four, PM on radio four,well Service
and I mean, I was on The ChrisMoyles Show and things and Steve Wright,
(15:49):
I'd go in the studio with Steve Wright,Simon Mayo, these,
these are things I was in London.
I was just thinkingthis is incredible and a great time.
But then there was a little bit of a blipbecause
after the nine monthsthey had permanent jobs going
and there were three permanent jobs,and I was with three people on attachment
and someone else had come inin the meantime on attachment.
(16:09):
And that persongot one of the permanent jobs ahead of me,
which is a bit of a disappointmenton my part.
And, they said to me, you'regoing to have to go back to local radio.
So I fought my
corner and I was very resistant to it.
I said, I'm not going back onebecause I wasn't going to learn anything.
(16:30):
I wasn't.
And I thought, if I go back,I'm out of sight, out of mind.
So to the editors credit,he said, okay, I'll have a look around,
see what we can do.
And they basically got mean attachment on the World Service,
which is in the same room,so still seeing the same people.
But I worked on the World Service,which was again, really good because I did
broadcasting through the night,doing lots of different things.
You've got tens of millions of peoplelistening to you in Africa.
(16:53):
So I did nine months of that,and then at the end of that,
I got the permanent job I wanted.
And, I spent well, intotal, I spent 12.5 years in
BBC Radio
Sport, which was primarilyradio five live.
it's important,I think, to see how much you sort of
have to you go up a rung of the ladderand then you have to stay on that floor
(17:14):
for a bit, and then you go up another rung
and you stay on that floor for a bit,and there might be times
where you have to go back down again,but you can.
Yeah. Yeah, it's very important.
And also because you don'tI didn't want to get to a level where I,
there's a gap in the middlewhere I feel lost.
You always have moments where you,
you think, oh, gosh, I've really flyingby the seat of my pants.
But in general terms, I wanted to havethat background all the way through and
(17:36):
all those things that happenedwere all beneficial in the long run.
And I would always say,
like with anything, just take the chances.
I I'll be honest,I was and I do have regrets
where I was resistant to some things,like they wanted me to do more television,
like on screen stuffwith, bulletins and that.
(17:58):
And I resisted thatbecause I was very much a radio person,
and I regret it now,because with everything that there is, I,
I have done presentation, but not as much.
And I probably missed opportunitiesthat I should have taken.
But then again, I was lucky.
I had a lot of opportunitiesI never thought I'd get.
So staying here for a bit,
what advice would you give to peoplelooking to enter into sports?
(18:20):
Come and train.
Well, commentary in particular.
Yeah.
I think, like I said there, it's very hardjust to walk straight into anything.
And I knowand this is not I'm not being critical of,
media courses or anything like thatbecause now have the broadcast journalism
course here at the UEA is excellent
and they're brilliant grounding forI didn't really have that,
(18:42):
that great grounding.
But that doesn't necessarily meanthat if you spend three years there
and you don't do anything
as a on the side and experienceon the side, you're going to walk straight
into a commentary job at Radio Norfolkor any local BBC station.
A lot of those jobsnow are tied up for years.
It's very hard to break in the best.
I would always say the best advice is to
(19:04):
go to a
local football club with your laptop,with a phone, have a streaming service
if you can afford it, and just say tothe club, doesn't matter who they are,
even if one might on a dog,watch them, just say,
can I come and do your gamesand put it on the stream?
Because they'll say, well,actually my my grandad can't come there.
He'll listen to it on thehe might only get ten people, but
the main benefit is that you can do itand then you listen back.
(19:27):
And I would always say that
I listen back religiously to what I didfor years and years and years.
I don't do it so much now,but I listen back
and I was picking out what was, you know,you all, you'll have habits.
You might say the same thingof the same phrases.
You make notes,you can't do them all at once.
But you work through those notes graduallyand then
every comment you do, I'm going to work onnot aiming too much.
(19:50):
I'm going to work on not leaving dead air.
I'm going to work onnot saying the same phrase over
and over again,and then gradually you work up to a point
where you can put a showreel togetherand go to a local station, go to a
I mean, there's all these other fanbase things now and say, look,
I can commentate on there,can I have an opportunity?
(20:10):
EFL are doing lots of commentaries nowand there are young guys coming in
getting opportunities there. So it's
it's a good
groundingand you can make mistakes that you want to
you want to make your mistakes therewhere few fewer people are listening.
That's the best option.
And you're going to make mistakes.
And I make mistakes in network levelI may I made some booboos where you
you get pulled into an office and say,why did you do that?
(20:32):
What do you do this?
So you're always going to make thosemistakes, but make those basic mistakes
at the beginningwhen very few people are listening, but
especially with the competitionthat's out there now,
you've got to try and get yourself ahead.
So do as much.
Even if you're on a three yearbroadcast journalism course at the UAE
or Lincoln or Derby or somewhere,still spend your spare time.
(20:54):
And I know it's difficult,
but if you're singleor you haven't got children or anything,
use that time to get yourself aheadand put yourself in the shop window
and you think there's still roomfor everyone in this industry.
You don't have to play footballin the early 2000s to be a pundit.
No, no, not what I always think thatI think it's that there's a defined line
(21:16):
between a commentator and a pundit,or an analyst
or a coach comms or a a summariser,as they call them at BBC,
because commentary is ais a bit of an art form.
I don't want to get too high
and highfalutin about it,but it is a bit of an art form
and it's not somethingyou can just learn on the spot.
There are people therewho've got a natural talent for it,
(21:37):
but they still have to take
that still takes yearsto get yourself to a certain level.
And I'm trying to think I there was athere was a guy in local radio
who used to be a professional footballer,but if you look at all the professionals,
X professionals who are in the highprofile jobs and TV match,
that and all that, how many of themare actually commentating,
(21:57):
holding the commentary together?
Because it's one thing to be the analystand the co cons is another thing
to actually hold it togetherand know how it all works.
And I can't off the top of my head.
I can't think of anyone in a high profileposition
who's been a high profile footballer.
Other than the ones who are
analysts are summarises because really,they're used for their expert analysis.
(22:20):
I've not played professionally.
I know football, and I played itand I know the ins and outs,
but I've never beenin a professional dressing room.
I've never been coached by a professional.
So their knowledge is really.
the add on to what you do, I was add on.
I don't mean, you know, I mean compliments
what you do, you're providingthat you're the action man
and then the experience manand the two come together.
(22:41):
And when you get really goodcommentary teams, it can be great.
Really good. Listen. Yeah. Brilliant.
So you've talked about being,
staff members for various companies,but you're now primarily freelance.
Yeah. And was that a conscious choice?
Yes, I know, the BBC
sport moved to Manchester,Salford back in 2011,
(23:01):
and while I was still stuffwhen they announced this
probably a couple of years earlier,
and everybody was thinking,oh, now I've got to move to Manchester.
But luckily for me,I was working on the road doing matches
and press conferences around London
and the Midlands,and so I wasn't included in the move.
So I was fortunate.
So I stayed.
But as soon as the move happened,
(23:23):
the BBCthen said we need to make some more
redundancies and we're going to trim downthe commentary team,
which is only about 13 or 14.
Commentators slash reportersand I looked at it and so, oh,
that doesn't bode well for me,because in that group were people
like John Murray, who's nowthe BBC's chief football correspondent.
There were Connor MacNamara,Alistair Bruce, Paul, Darren Fletcher.
(23:47):
These guys were all
more established commentatorsand doing more commentary than me.
I was I was doing commentary,but not to the same amount
or level as they were gettingthe high profile games.
And I looked at the list and,and I, I was a bit surreptitious,
but I managed to get through to airbecause I wanted to know what
how many they never said,
how many spots were going to be taken up,how many roles were going to be lost.
(24:11):
So I managed to find out through H.R, in a roundabout way
that it was going to be four, probablyfour, possibly five, have a group of 14.
So was that that's
that's
not very good odds when you're up againstpeople like John Murray.
And I looked at it and I almost did itlike a Premier League table.
I list it out subjectively.
I listed out who I think was stayand I was in the bottom four.
(24:34):
So I almost knew what was coming.
So I thought, do I wait?
Do I let them, doI let them decide with the risk,
with the possibility of not goingor do as I
as I think, having read the situation,make my own decision.
So I, I, denied for weeks and weeksand I thought
(24:55):
and I wasn't happy at the time
because things had changed a bitand I wasn't getting used
as much and doing quite the samebecause had done some really good stuff.
And Iwasn't quite getting as much as that.
So that also gave me an inclinationthat maybe my time is coming to an end.
So I made the call myself,
and I thought, I'm going to take voluntaryand being control of the situation.
(25:17):
So I wentin, made it easy for them to redundancy.
But I was incredibly fortunate
that as soon as I left,I left at the end of the.
I left at the end of the 20 1112 season.
Did a game on the last at Norwich left.
You can't work for the BBCfor three months
(25:38):
after the grace periodbecause you've got taken redundancy.
You can't work as a freelancer,
but I managed to get a get a job with UEFAat the euros.
I did the London Olympicsand I did the Paralympics
as a freelance.
I had a brilliant summerand then I picked up some new stuff.
Five life took me back and until I say
the last couple of years,I didn't really look back.
(26:00):
And, I was very fortunate.
Timing is timing is keywith a lot of things as good as
you might be, as reliable as you might be,as hard working as you might be,
timing makes a massive difference.
I think of the number of timesI've picked up things.
Can I tell youit's just one particular story?
When Iwhen I made the decision to go freelance
(26:21):
and there's a friend of mine,a family friend of mine,
I'm not close friend,but someone I know who's a
who has been.
I don't think she is not.
She might be now, but she's a productionmanager, quite well-respected, worked
at IMG and a few other companies,and she was at UEFA.
And over theyears when we bumped into each other at
church gatherings or wherever,
(26:43):
family things, she'd always say,oh, how's it going to be?
But I said, oh, it's okay.
And then I got to the last 2 or 3 yearsat the BBC where I said I wasn't overly
happy, and I remember calling herand saying, look, I'm thinking I might.
This is before the redundancies.
I might go freelance.
I said, that's a big call,because obviously I've got a regular job
and I'm still doingreasonable amount of stuff.
She said, well, obviously she was at UEFA,the European football's governing body.
(27:05):
She said, well, when you do get in touch,she said, let me know,
because obviouslyI know people in all this.
So I said, I will,I will. And I made the decision.
And she was the first person I calledwhen I'd made the decision.
I called her and talk about timing.
I rang her and she said, she said,your call could not have been better time.
She said, I've just had a meeting.
Just finished a meeting with my boss.
(27:26):
We are going to.
This is for the €2,012 in Poland.
We're going to do a, an audio,
provide audiofor broadcasters around Europe.
And we need someone to look afterthat hub.
Just a team of three people.You you be in that team at one.
It's not a broadcastjob. It's a production job.
You think you could do it?
(27:46):
I went, yeah,she said, you'll get training on it.
Let me talk to my bossand I'll get back to you within the hour.
She came back.She said, you've got the job.
Six weeks in Poland, all expenses
paid, podiums, meal vouchers, a good fee.
He'd heard of mebecause he listened to five live. So.
(28:08):
And obviously she vouched for me, sayingthat she's known me for years and he.
I didn't even speak to him.
He gave me the job. And
I mean, that's just incredible fate.
But it does prove that timing can makeall the difference.
There'll be things I've missed alongthe years that I don't know of.
And I've tried to get things.
I've tried to get each other there.
(28:28):
There's one particular avenueI want to go down, and it never worked.
And other peopleI know similar position managed.
I'd say there were four of themand it all paid off for all of them.
It they all managed,but it's just timing a lot of it's timing.
And you try not to be too hard on yourselfif things don't come off.
It's difficultbecause you always think it's must be me.
They don't like me, but a lot of it islike it just doesn't fit at that moment.
(28:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
Any mythsthat you'd like to debunk any myths.
Oh What I would say is,
and I'm I'm not I'm not saying I have had
some very fortunate encounterswith well known people,
and I've been in positionsI can think of loads of positions where
(29:12):
I've been in a moment, like Formula OneI did for season.
I was the pitlane reporter,
and it was the first seasonthat Fernando Alonso won the world title,
and I just so happened to beright in front of his car as he pulled in.
Having won the championship, allhis crew came out and I was in the crew
with Alonso 15ft from mestanding up celebrating the title.
(29:33):
You just find yourself in these momentspitchside at FA Cup finals,
on the
pitch, at FA Cup finals with Jose Mourinhoor someone like that.
Those are the glamorous things,but you don't get those without doing the
the hard yards initially,the voluntary stuff at the beginning,
learning everything, the cold daysat Fakenham, the falls, the pitfalls,
(29:55):
then the late nights at Radio Norfolk,splicing tape just to learn how to do it.
You don't walk into that.
You don't walk on the Wembley pitch,you don't walk onto the track
at Silverstone and do that.
So there are it can be greatand I've been incredibly lucky to do that,
but I know that I wouldn't have beenhad that opportunity
if I hadn't done the other stuff beforeand hadn't had the luck and the timing.
(30:18):
So many things come into it.
All I'd say is,if you're starting out in this industry,
some of the most important things.
Clearly you work hard.
If you don't work hard in this industry,you won't get very far anyway
because people won't use you.You work hard.
You also have to be an affable person.
You need to be able to get on with people.
Because if again,if you don't get on with people,
if you are an annoying person,I mean, there are people in industry, but
(30:40):
you have to be pretty good at your job,if you're not easy to work with.
So being easy to work with,Reliability is massive at the beginning.
Availability. When you get down the line,you can turn stuff down.
You canbecause you want to be taking everything
Because a lot of people that book you, production people
and they have a lot of work to do,they've got to fill crews,
(31:00):
they've got to fill rotas. And I'mnot saying they just put anyone in.
But if you're someonethat says, yeah, I'll do that
and you do it well,they'll come back to you the next time.
entitlement
and arrogance not confidence, arrogance.
Part of the worst things you could come inwith because you won't get very far.
And. Oh,and the only other thing to say is that,
(31:21):
like I mentioned, when I started out,the jobs were fewer.
It wasn't considered a normal job,
and most people weren'treally aware of it as normal job.
But the competition wasn't really there.
The opportunities weren't there either.
But so it was a bit of luck.
Now the opportunities are vastand you can even start on your own.
There'sthis sort of podcasting and streaming.
(31:44):
You can do that yourself,because of technology, which we didn't
have back then, but the competitionto get to that higher level
of like commentary to be on the networksis so, so fierce.
Even now, with my experience,I struggle to get on certain things
I don't I certainly don't walk into doingcommentary jobs for people.
(32:05):
I don't get responses from people.
That'show I just want to be honest about it.
I write to people, I contact peopleI don't even get an acknowledgment.
And I've got 30 years of experienceand I've been a network.
And I'm not sayingI should be given a job.
All I'm sayingis that's how hard it can be.
So I can't imagine how hard it isat the bottom end.
You're coming in at uni having donemaybe done some of your own stuff.
(32:30):
You've got to be you've got to be.
I think the if you've got the passion,you'll keep doing it.
You'll run out of steam.
If you're not passionate about it,
if you want to do it for the money,you're probably not.
I wouldn't bother, becauseit takes a while to get to that level,
and you have to be in a certain band
to be able to earna good living out of it,
because the majority of peopleprobably earning
a reasonable livingor a part time or voluntary,
(32:54):
it's a hard graft and it's it'slayers of working your way up.
It's not it's not an overnight sensethat there are people, I guess, on YouTube
and that who become overnight sensations.
But those are few and far between,especially with commentary.
It's not somethingyou can just go and pick up on.
I was it always makes me laugh.
I've had people in the past saying,you're football commentate.
(33:14):
You just get your microphone, show up,come on top of the game.
And I went, if only you knew.
You spent years getting to that level.
And even now, most commentatorswill spend anything from half a day
a minimum to a day and a half, two dayspreparing for a commentary.
If they're doing something high profile,there's a lot of preparation involved.
(33:35):
But in terms of getting into the industry,you've got to you got to take the hits
you've got toand try not to take it personally.
And the last thingI'll say, subjective nature of it.
If you're going to be a broadcaster,
I think if you're a production side,it's less, it's less of a problem.
But subjectively, if you're an on airvoice or on screen person,
you have to remember thatwe've all got different tastes.
(33:56):
Your favorite broadcastermight be someone I don't write.
My favorite broadcasterwill be someone you don't write.
Same with commentators. and I think
all the commentators
at those higher levels,they're all good commentators.
But it's a tasting.
And if you've got an editorwho makes a decision, they have the key.
And that's what's can one be frustrating
(34:19):
and it can get to you, but ultimatelythere's nothing you can do about it.
So that's something to bear in mind,especially when you're starting out.
Don't be deflated or demoralised by that.
Because ultimately someone out there,if you if you're good
and then you have to be good at it,
someone out there will like what you doand you'll get there.
But it's a it's it can be a long haul.
(34:40):
It can be a long haul.
Good luck.
Brilliant.
Well,thank you so much for your time today. No.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Thanks again to Mike for their time.
For more information on becoming a sportscommentator, head to prospect Sky
UK for a full length videoversion of this episode,
check out our YouTubechannel @Futureyoupod.
(35:02):
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
Thank you as always, for listeningand good luck on your journey to future you.
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