I Should Have Been at Work
First published in 2005 and now available as an ebook. Des Lynam’s autobiography gives a frank and opinionated insight into the man behind the myth.Des Lynam is one of Britain's best-loved and most successful personalities.Famously guarded about his private life, Des will attempt to set the record straight and talk about the ladies in his life, his childhood days in Ireland, as well as his early marriage and life in 70s London.Des takes us through his 30 years at the BBC from a reporter on local radio to the drama of his top-secret move to ITV which was front page news on every national newspaper. The World Cups, the Olympic Games including his reporting of the Israeli shootings in Munich. Following Muhammad Ali to his fights in Zaire, Malaysia and the USA. The Grand National that never was, the IRA threatened race. The programmes he turned down, the ones he wished he had!Des offers a candid account of life behind the scenes at the national broadcaster, the people he has met, the triumphs, the disasters. In the unique role of top presenter on both main channels, he tells of his 5 years at ITV, his reasons for going there and why his decision was justified but in other ways disastrous.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsEntertainment 2005
Copyright © Desmond Lynam 2005
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Extract from ‘Another date with Nigella’ by Victor Lewis-Smith.
© Evening Standard Newspaper, 2005
Extract from ‘More gush than guts’ by Victor Lewis-Smith.
© Evening Standard Newspaper, 2005
All photographs courtesy of the author with the exception of the following:
Army Public Relations Photo Section/Klaus Marche 13(t); Bente Fasmer 9(t); BBC Photo Library 9(b), 14, 16, 23(b), 24(t), 25(b), 28(b); Empics 11(b), 23(t), 26(b), 29(b); Snowdon/Radio Times 27(t); Rex 32; Reuters 19(t), 27(b).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007205455
Ebook Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9780007560370 Version: 2017-01-18
For Rose and Patrick
CONTENTS
14. Nothing Succeeds Like Excess
22. Have I Got a Singer for You!
28. ‘Use Your Sense of Humour’
31. ‘F*** It, We’ll Go at Seven’
It was the second of August 1999. It would be the most momentous day in my broadcasting life. That evening I would be all over the television news, the following day’s front pages and be the subject of columnists’ opinions for weeks. What was I doing to attract so much attention?
I was changing jobs. I was shocking myself in the process and obviously, to my amazement, a lot of other people too.
I had made my decision, although my partner, Rose, had been very circumspect about the move. She knew how much I had loved the BBC; how I had worked hard to get to the position I occupied, aided by a good share of luck; how I had fought battles to defend the organisation when it was under attack from outside, and often waged war when the sports department was being battered from inside the Corporation itself. But now I would fight those battles no longer. As I went up to the office of my agent, Jane Morgan, in Regent Street, I kept wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my working life. I had one of the best jobs in broadcasting. The BBC had always looked after me. I was never going to get rich working for them, but they were family. I worked with a great number of wonderful and talented people, and I knew for the most part that I was popular with them. There were laughs every day. I had been given awards for doing my job, which I loved. Now I was about to throw it all in.
Had I lost my sanity? The day before, in the back garden of my house in West London, I had shaken hands with ITV’s Controller of Programmes, David Liddiment, their Head of Sport, Brian Barwick, and their lawyer, Simon Johnson. I had confirmed I would be joining them. The deal was that I would not accept any counter-offer from the BBC to stay. ITV now needed confirmation that I had resigned.
‘There’s the phone,’ said Jane. ‘Take a deep breath and the best of luck.’
I was born on 17 September 1942, in the new hospital in the town of Ennis in County Clare, Ireland. For the privilege of being born in the country of my heritage, I am indebted to Adolf Hitler.
My mother and father had both left their homeland before the Second World War to forge careers in nursing in England, where they had met. Unemployment was rife in Ireland at the time, and would continue to be so for many years until the economic boom brought about by Ireland’s membership of the European Community in the Eighties. Like many before and after them, my parents had become economic migrants when still in their teenage years. Both, and entirely independent of each other, had been close to making their new lives in America but had been prevailed upon by their families to stay within reasonable reach of home.
