Test Match Special: the (rather cosy) inside story

Inside the box: My life with Test Match Special 

Peter Baxter
Quiller, £18.99

It says something for the enduring cult of Test Match Special that publishers and doubtless readers should consider giving house room to the memoirs not of one of its stars but of its longtime producer, Peter Baxter. Aficionados will recall Baxter doing bits of urbane, fill-in commentary during his 40 years behind the scenes. But you need look no further than the cover images – Brian Johnston, a young Jonathan Agnew, a piece of cake, but no sign of Baxter himself – to see the the unsung nature of the producer’s role.

There are few dramas within. The Queen gives the team a cake. Christopher Martin-Jenkins tries to make a phone call with a TV remote control. Aggers and Johnners are convulsed with laughter. Baxter warns Blofeld to go easy on the pigeons and buses and endures a tour of India with only the apparently insufferable Don Mosey – the Alderman – for company. Groups of middle-aged men have dinner together in far-flung outposts of the old Empire. The BBC’s suggestion that TMS should use a theme tune causes as much consternation in the box as the discovery of an unexploded grenade. Baxter tries to work out the best way to cover the Boat Race on the radio.

In between all this excitement, Baxter recalls his various struggles to draw up rotas and how he ‘discovered’ Foxy Fowler and Victor Marks. Outsiders will be mystified that these cosy backstage nuances  should be deemed worthy of preservation in print; long-time listeners will lap them up, even those (many) tales that are familiar.

Mild allusion is made to the FiveLive-isation of TMS that helped Baxter make his decision to bow out from the dream job he had held for so long. But there’s little bile or rancour here and no settling of scores, which many old-school fans may find disappointing. Instead, there’s something rather wistful and nostalgic about the whole affair.

You’ll have your own views on whether Messrs Selvey, Fraser, Mann and White are/were fit to sit in the seats vacated by Arlott and Johnston; and on whether Henry Blofeld is charm itself or plain unlistenable. But we’ve all grown up with Test Match Special: whatever its faults, it’s virtually family. And Baxter’s memoir of 40 years’ involvement in helping to create the soundtrack to the English summer will, read in a deckchair, form a nice, if not overly revelatory, companion to his successors’ efforts this summer.