Book description
Bob Humphrys is one of the most famous names in sports journalism. As
sports correspondent of BBC Wales's flagship news programme Wales
Today, he was at the centre of every major story of the past
twenty turbulent years. He was there right at the heart of
Ruddockgate, there on the players' balcony when Glamorgan celebrated
winning a county championship, there in the Mondeo driving Joe
Calzaghe to his first world title fight. In short, he was where every
sports fan would love to be - as close to the action as you can get
without scoring a try, taking a corner or hitting a four.
Despite a life-long love affair with sport, Bob wasn't always a
sports journalist. Early in his career, his brother John - the
Rottweiler of Radio 4's Today programme - took him aside and
told him, 'The one thing you want to avoid is covering sport - that is
not proper journalism.' But the man who always read his
newspaper from back to front found it hard to resist sport's magnetic
pull. After his successful stints as a feature writer and current
affairs reporter - encountering everyone from Argentinian presidents
to Danish drug dealers and Sir Anthony Hopkins - the BBC's Wales
Today came calling, and Bob quickly discovered the politics in
current affairs paled into insignificance compared to the politics in
sport. In Bob's first week in the job, Welsh rugby imploded with a
rebel tour to South Africa - and for the next twenty years Welsh sport
would lurch from triumph to disaster and back again, with Bob right
there in the middle, loving every moment.
Tragically, Bob Humphrys died in August 2008. But he left a
magnificent epitaph: this book. In Not a Proper Journalist, the
former face of Welsh sport reveals for the first time the story behind
the stories. The friendships, the feuds, the glory and the heartbreak,
straight from the horse's mouth. It's revealing, exhilarating,
provocative and very funny - and if that's not proper journalism,
brother John can eat his hat...
Bob Humphrys was one of the most celebrated sports journalists in
Wales's history. The face of sport on television in Wales for nineteen
years, over his long print and broadcast career he won three Welsh
sports journalist of the year awards and Welsh sports reporter of the
year. In 2003 he was given a lifetime achievement award by the BBC.
Bob Humphrys died in August 2008.
