A Delicious Slice of Johnners

Following Brian Johnston’s death in 1994, Prime Minister John Major appeared to speak for the nation when he remarked that “Summers will never be the same again.” To an Englishman’s ears, the sound of leather against willow will always be closely associated with the cheerful tones of Johnners.

But there was so much more in his life. After Eton and Oxford he became a city gent in the family coffee business. During the war, as a Technical Adjutant in the Grenadier Guards, he was awarded the MC. then in 1946 he began a broadcasting career that made him a nation institution. Whether it was performing hilarious stunts on In Town Tonight or interviewing a gaggle of British eccentrics on Down Your Way, or in the cramped, cosy and chaotic cricket commentators’ box on Test Match Special, gaffes, terrible jokes and gales of laughter were never far away. Along the way there was marriage to ‘a very attractive blonde’ and five children.

Brian Johnston was a man who admitted; ‘I have this absurd hankering to make people laugh,’ He also summed up his books as ‘the meanderings of a remarkable happy and lucky person, to whom life, like cricket, is a funny game and still a lot of fun’.

Edited and introduced by his eldest son, Barry. A Delicious Slice of Johnners is a wonderfully enjoyable compendium of three of Johnners’ best-loved books, the autobiographies It’s Been a Lot of Fun and It’s a Funny Game, and Rain Stops Play.