Each week, the self-righteous and highly judgmental journalist Rab McNeil puts one of the country's weel-kent creations, names or faces under close scrutiny in his Scottish Icons series. This week, lgendary sports commentator Arthur Montford falls under his Sauron-like gaze...
Footer has been much in the news. It’s a subject that frequently sees folk frothing at the mouth.
Although I watch it on TV every week – going to an actual match in Scotland is generally speaking an awful experience – as I get wiser I tend to agree with my old Dad’s opinion that it was “just 22 grown men kickin’ a daft wee ba’ aboot”.
Soon, national sides will be competing in the World Cup, where we’ll witness spectators weeping as their national anthems are played. It’s deplorable, even if I confess to welling up when Sunshine on Leith rung out at Hampden in 2016.
Television sports commentator Arthur Montford usually controlled his emotions at matches, despite his love for Greenock Morton and his heartfelt words, “It’s a disaster for Scotland”, when the national side performed its traditional feat of shooting itself in the football.
A household name in soccer-loving households, Montford spent 32 years presenting Scotsport, a typically amateurish STV production compared to the taxpayer-funded BBC’s output. Some weeks, you were lucky if you saw the ball. Or the players.
With equipment refurbished from fairgrounds, pawnbrokers and nurseries (joking), in the early days it was not unusual to hear Montford apologising to viewers for the loss of film “somewhere in Hope Street”.
However, our Icon’s integrity, quiet charisma, evocative descriptions and passion combined with knowledge, raised the tone and made him one of Scotland’s most liked and respected faces on television.
His catchphrases – “It’s a stramash!” and “Up go the heads!” – are still remembered today, as are his houndstooth-checked jackets. For these alone, he should have knighted, even if jacket-wearing was far from unusual back in his day.
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Today, in another symptom of civilisation’s decline, most otherwise decent ratepayers eschew wearing a proper or sports jacket for fear of persecution.
That said, some of Arthur’s jackets bordered on the garish. In 1973, he sold one particularly lively number at a charity auction in Dundee for £11—more than he’d paid for it originally.
Jacket in
IN 2004, he told The Herald Diary: “I have a recurring fear that when the day comes for my obituary to appear in The Herald, they’ll be talking about my sports jacket instead of the 2,000 programmes I presented or the 400 match commentaries I supplied.”
Arthur Montford was uncharacteristically jacketless when he was born in Glasgow on 25 May 1929, the son of a journalist who worked at the Glasgow Evening News and Daily Record.
After the family moved to Greenock, young Arthur was educated at the Academy there and, a man after my own heart, was one of a band of rebels who tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce football to the rugby-playing school.
He recalled being a “very poor” pupil and was grateful for his dad’s “good sense” in taking him out of school when he was 17. Father had him spending one half the day learning shorthand and typing, the other being a copy boy – later reporter – on the Glasgow Evening News.
In those days, incipient career paths were often diverted by national service, and Arthur did his with the Royal Army Service Corps. Alas, any dreams of strutting his own funky stuff on the footer field – he fancied himself as a left-half à la Jim Baxter – died in the Egyptian sands, where he damaged his ligaments.
On demob, his first job was with a local newspaper in Coatbridge. Montford then joined the Daily Record followed by the sports desk at the Evening Times. While there, producer Peter Thomson asked him to audition for a role doing football match reports for BBC radio.
Second win
MONTFORD recalled that he “fluffed it”, but was asked back a second time and got the gig, covering games at grounds near Broadcasting House. He did well and, when BBC sports editor John Wilson joined Scottish Television in 1957, he headhunted 28-year-old Montford.
Another audition and again Arthur fluffed it. This time, it was in, of all places, Maryhill Burgh Hall, a venue that phased our boy. He “couldn’t put two words together”. Wilson couldn’t believe he was so bad.
Again, he got a second chance, this time at the Theatre Royal, STV’s headquarters, where he felt much more at home. Offered the job, he swithered but eventually took up the challenge afforded by the brave new world of black and white commercial television. Not to mention a pay increase of £6 a week.
Despite having had only one television lesson – “Smile at the camera, and the camera will like you” (never worked for me) – Montford excelled as a continuity announcer, newsreader and presenter of Scotsport.
Soon, he was entirely focused on the last-named, leading to a commentating career that encompassed half a dozen World Cups and 380 domestic and European games, including 38 Old Firm matches.
A passionate supporter of the national team, his “disaster for Scotland” comment came during a World Cup qualifier against Czechoslovakia at Hampden in 1973 when goalkeeper Ally Hunter let a shot slip through his hands. On a memorable evening that saw Scotland come from behind to qualify, Montford later admitted becoming personally involved with comments such as “Watch your back, Billy” and “Watch your legs, Denis”. Understandable.
Growing up in Greenock had given Montford a lifelong love of local club Morton where he served as a director for several years under the chairmanship of his friend Douglas Rae. After stepping down as a director, he continued as honorary vice-president until his death.
It wasn’t all football, though. Sadly, Arthur was a fan of golf, and his commentary work on the peculiar pastime for ITV earned him the attention of a wider public. He served as both president and captain of Glasgow Golf Club.
Father figure
ANOTHER favourite sport of his was ice hockey, and I think we’ll just leave that there.
From 1974-77, he served as rector of Glasgow University, the first sports journalist so honoured. He did charitable work with the homeless and also helped with the hopeless, being Father of the Chapel, where National Union of Journalists members pray and seek spiritual solace.
Arthur Montford died at home in Torrance, East Dunbartonshire, on 26 November 2014 at the age 85, after battling illness intermittently for a couple of years.
His good pal since schooldays, the aforementioned Douglas Rae, recalled: “Arthur was an outstanding individual and an excellent man all round … He was always good company, and I have never met a more genuine person than my friend.”
