Brian Johnston

Arguably the most distinctive voice in British broadcasting, he was best known to many as the jovial, chocolate-cake-eating Johnners of cricket’s Test Match Special team. In a career of forty-eight years at the microphone, he was commentator for royal weddings and state occasions, live reporter of crazy charades for In Town Tonight, and presenter of 733 editions of Down Your Way.

An octogenarian who in some respects remained a schoolboy all his life, Brian was a holder of the Military Cross, awarded during his service in the Grenadier Guards in the Second World War; sometime member of the family coffee business; a passionate cricket-lover; and a seemingly perpetual optimist with an interest in everyone he met.

When he died in January 1994, 1,500 letters of condolence were received by his widow Pauline from all over the world, from friends, cricket lovers and listeners. A special one was signed on behalf of 25,000 London cab-drivers. He inspired that kind of affection.

Tim Heald’s fully authorised biography, which draws on Brian’s own papers and other previously unpublished sources, reveals him as a man of considerable parts. It shows the sometimes deeper side of Brian not generally apparent in his public persona – the moments of sadness and seriousness in her personal life – and deals with the lighter side in a conversational style which more than does justice to Brian’s triumphant sense of fun.