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https://news.sky.com/story/former-world-of-sport-presenter-dickie-davies-dies-aged-94-12815555
The World of Sport frontman that was a staple of not just my racing weekends via the ITV seven (the show being an alternative programme to Grandstand) but also opened my world up to other minority sports that the BBC didn’t pick up of the time like Darts, Water Skiing, Ice Speedway, Rallying and of course Wrestling (with Big Daddy & Giant Haystacks) and ending with the results service which included John Tyyrel reading the horse racing results…….which concluded the best part of 5hrs of sport on a Saturday afternoon.
An end of an era.
Sad news but he had a good innings reaching 94.
As well as showing minority sports, the ITV7 meant “World Of Sport” sometimes showed racing from smaller tracks. After the programme was discontinued, these tracks disappeared from national television until Channel 4 started to show a few in the late 1990s after the launch of the Scoop 6.
The wrestling was great. Clive “Ironfist” Myers was my favourite.
The wrestling on world of sport was excellent
Jackie pallo, johnny kwango, Honey Boy Simba, Jim Breaks, Kendo nakasaki, Big Daddy, catweasel and racing. Benny Hill did a very good Dickie Davies. Can you imagine the horse racing results ever being broadcast again?RIP . Did anyone wear a tache better ? , plus look at the hair , I bet he was a ladykiller
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
He was always known as ‘the smarmy git’ in our household, though in an affectionate way
A thoroughly professional broadcaster
I found this clip of the great man which also contains the finish to the 1980 Lincoln, which must have been the highlight of that afternoon’s broadcast. Looks like it was best to be drawn on the far side.
I was there at Doncaster that day and CAS is not only correct but spot on about the draw.
Throughout the 1970s, they had a big problem with the Lincoln – anything drawn low was absolutely wasting its time.
So in 1978 they tried running it on the round course, Captain’s Wings beat Yamadori and high draws never got anywhere near.
Back to the straight course and high numbers favoured, in 1980 they did some work to try to remedy this and you cdna see the net result!
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"King’s Ride, who won that 1980 Lincoln, went on to be a top sire of National Hunt horses, counting Trabolgan, King’s Curate and Mister Morose (a title that could never be bestowed upon Dickie Davies) amongst his better progeny.
Stuck a fiver on Our Dickie in the 7:30 at Newcastle tonight out of respect for the top man.
God bless his soul
Leaving the world of sport for just a fraction of a football result ….
The Blob..0 The Blurb..0
Not often I wake up and can’t remember what I posted the ‘night’ before. I have removed the offensive post and give apologies to Dickie Gandhi and good ol’ Paw not forgetting BIG BEN.
Dickie would have been the perfect presenter for the coronation coverage , check flared suit , perfectly trimmed tache and slicked hair , they could have put on bowls from Brechin after …. a lost opportunity
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
I suppose that is somewhat tongue in cheek Ground but yes a then 25 year old fresh faced Dickie minus the forest on his overlip and with that streak of coloured grey attached and suited in a saville row grey might have made a stab at it. However whether ‘ he has Dickie Davies eyes ‘ would have matched the deep rich felicitous tones of the 40 year old ex war correspondent Richard – the only Dimbleby – and gold standard of processional broadcasting – well it would have been a tough ask.
I got up at 645 for a toilet break and in my semi comatose state had concerns I had misrepresented the true feelings around in 53 so I came into the lounge and scrubbed the posting and then took a sneak at the kitchen clock. I cleared a few empty bottles then slept a further glorious six hours and got up @ 1230. I think I wrote ” I could scream at the boredom back then and would encourage anyone to have a nervous breakdown as a reaction and counterpoint to the two up two down mow your lawn on a Sunday or wash your car groupthink of the times.
I wasn’t like that in 53 there was still a bit of rationing about and people were just getting on with there lives with the relic of the war present in bomb sites but gradually waning in importance in the active memory of the time but there was actually a lot of fun and merriment about. The countryside was glorious and still unspoiled by roads and housing developments and you could lose yourself in the lush thick greenery that abounded back then and get away from any matchstick men that might have irritated you with a chamois leather.
Richard died of testicular cancer at a young fifty loved his tobacco and similarly his son David got hooked on roll ups at 70 but blames his nephews for that. A lot of people took up smoking because of the bombing in the war.
I am a great fan of Huwey Edwards. I can detect the ” I have lived hard ” depression in his voice and I think David would have needed a bit of oiling to match it on an inclement day when the voice takes on more importance.
A helicopter buzzed and disturbed me outside my window for 10 minutes as I watched on the menace and then after the depleted flypast I watched the red and blue vapour trails gradually die away in the sky to the left from me.‘Bernard died, at the age of 76, on 2 February 1993. Barbara was bereft. She said, ‘I missed him terribly. I’m glad, for his sake, that he has gone, because he was suffering so much. Besides the strokes, he had emphysema and ME. He couldn’t read the newspaper or watch television. He used to get so frustrated.’
Bernard’s death left his old friends wondering about the ‘forgotten’ interviews. Cryer says, ‘We all knew that the interviews existed, but Bernie never discussed them with me. After his death, I often wondered about them. He saw the interviews as a verbal history of the 1960s.’
It was only when Barbara died last year that the tapes came to light, after being being bequeathed to Braden’s former assistant, Gillian Best, who then contacted Five. And when the channel decided to not only air the interviews for the first time, but also to reinterview the stars who had recorded their dreams and hopes back in the 1960s, Bernard Braden’s dream finally came true.
Watching themselves, frozen in time, proved to be an emotional experience for many of the stars. Says Syms, ‘As I watched my interview with Bernard, it was so painful – like having a little twist under your heart. I looked about 16, although I must have been 30. We were young and happy, and now suddenly we are old. And hearing Bernard’s voice again, with his warm and gentle questions, was like a physical pain. It was as if he was back in the room again.’
Lulu was also deeply moved by the sight of herself on screen. She says, ‘I look so young and naive. I wanted to get married just the once and have lots of kids. In fact, I was married twice and only had one child.’
Life’s like that Lulu.Meanwhile, the poignancy for Tom Jones in watching his own Braden interview decades later was not in his lost youth, but in an uncanny family likeness that had never occurred to him before. ‘I look and sound so much like my grandson. There’s a real similarity there, and it has never struck me before now,’ he said. Never would have occurred to me either Tom that a young Tom Jones would look the spitting image of his grandson. ‘
The stork usually brings life but for Bernard Braden the Stork ad brought about his sacking from the BBC and possible early death. Men in suits and all that, but his wife felt he never got over it and his health suffered. I go a step further.
He could have performed a triple backward flip somersault, or interviewed a dope in a dolce and Gabbana dot dress – nothing would change the men in suits minds.
At 37 Bernard was covering the Queen’s coronation from Hyde Park. He fell from grace later when tempted by the Stork. No work on the main menace apparently killed him. Have I mentioned this before ?
I wonder if he ever dropped his mic and ventured out into the British countryside and experienced the solitude in 1953 in a green setting. What I remember was finding myself lost somewhere in Kent and feeling completely detached from civilization.
Fancy a tin of condensed soup ?
That’s a touching and insightful write up Gamble. My memory of Braden is sketchy,
but Braden’s Beat came to mind pretty quickly. I read up a bit on him because of
your amble down memory lane, I didn’t realise how many things he was involved in,
writing, acting (film and stage), interviewing and let a lot of young yet to be stars,
such as Peter Cook, Jake Thackry and Tim Brooke-Taylor show their wares. I was sorry
to hear how he suffered a lot before the end, he was undoubtedly a very talented man.
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