Talk:Brian Johnston

message: Johnners deserves a better write up than this !  It's good so far as it goes, but there is more. --jrleighton 11:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion 

message: From Barry Johnston's life of his Dad:
"When I was compiling the Johnners at the Beeb cassette for the BBC I spent hours digging through the radio and television archives and I found recordings of most of his famous slip-ups. There was one noticeable exception. In 1976 England played the West Indies at the Oval. At one point England's Peter Willey was facing the fearsome West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding. What happened next has gone down in cricketing history: 'We welcome World Service listeners to the Oval,' said Brian cheerfully, 'where the bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey.' Or did he? I think Brian made it up. It was too good a pun to resist but I do not believe that even he could have said it without laughing. The BBC engineers would also have kept a recording of such an outrageous gaffe. More revealingly, Brian never actually said that he had spoken the words on air. He was an honest man and he would not have wanted to tell an outright lie." PaddyBriggs 09:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: This is probably the truth of the matter...

message: This issue was discussed a little while ago:
I stand by my version, 'the batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willey'.  It is how I and my friends remembered it subsequently.  It was a purely accidental occurrence: Brian Johnston must have said variants of ‘the batsman’s Smith, the bowler’s Jones’ dozens of times.  And it occurred naturally as part of the commentary, not after ‘we welcome listeners’.  It was very funny and I treasure the memory, and it is a pity someone along the line has decided to rewrite history.  Possibly, just possibly, Brian Johnston recommitted the gaffe on purpose, and the second time Holding was bowling to Willey and not the other way round (which would have occurred more often).  Here in Portugal I do not have easy access to cricketing literature, but I did cite www.thecustard.tv/thecrumble/thecrumble_36.html, which gives the correct version of events: ‘the radio lot famously dissolved into a five-minute bout of hysterics one day when one of them announced that "the batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willey"’.  The ‘five minutes’ is an exaggeration, half a minute more like, but the stunned silence followed by the sound of three grown men (Johnston, Bill Frindall the scorer and whoever the ‘expert’ commenter was) helplessly giggling are not easily forgotten.  There must be a source somewhere that tells it like it was. - Rothorpe 14:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem here is that, in terms of Wikipedia, what you remember counts for nothing. Per Wikipedia:Attribution, The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true. In this case, We have Blowers, CMJ, Johnners and his son all saying the same thing: The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey. Hence this must be the version of the quote to be included in the article. →Ollie (talk • contribs) 18:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It's available on his website,  (go the Gaffes and Giggles section, it's the fourth one down). In this he even admits to not knowing whether he actually said it on air or not. The quote needs mentioning as it is widely attributed to him, but it needs to be explained that he probably didn't say it, per the sources. →Ollie (talk • contribs) 11:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks! Lovely to hear Johnners tell the story. Bowler=Holding, Batsman=Willey in this version. I think that it is apocryphal and that we now have it about right on the Johnners Wiki page. PaddyBriggs 17:37, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: For the truth, see my user page. Rothorpe (talk) 02:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

text: The correct version, "The batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willey", is also listed here:  Rothorpe (talk) 22:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: From [[Talk:Test Match Special]]

message: Cut from the article:
:An incident illustrating Brian Johnston's fast thinking and terrific wit occurred in about 1951-52 when he was on "In Town Tonight" the BBC programme which included interviews with celebrities who were in London at various times. Brian was interviewing an obnoxious American who, when asked about his visit, made the statement; "London is the asshole of the world". To which Johnston instantly replied "Oh, so you're just passing through, then."
 
:[This obviously was never used on air but I heard the story the next day from the father of a schoolfriend. He was a producer on the show and came home still laughing about it when he arrived and told us. I have never heard any reference to this in any of the various memoirs about him. If any of my schoolfriends, who heard this at the same time as I did, are still alive, they will verify this.(Terry Hallard, Worthing)]  
Did this really happen? I've heard about this too, but as with the Holding/Willey quote above it may be apocryphal. Maybe here should be a section on apocryphal quotes. Totnesmartin (talk) 09:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Town Tonight quote 

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thread_title:  External links modified