Executive vandals who abolished the classified football results on BBC Radio 5 Live's flagship Sports Report couldn't call the tune on a jukebox.
What are they going to scrap next – the shipping forecast? Tell fishermen to look overboard to find out if any big waves are coming Auntie, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.
Recital of the football scores at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon is not just a sacred ritual informing the masses who won or lost. The soothing, mellifluous tones of James Alexander Gordon and Charlotte Green provided an oasis of calm after 90 minutes in the emotional torture chamber.
If the clots knew anything about the touchstone they trashed, they would know Simon Bates read the football results before he became a Radio One disc jockey, presiding for 16 years over Our Tune , the Mills & Boon tales of star-crossed lovers who always seemed to meet on the Titanic and get married at the North Pole.
That little-known gem about Bates' previous incarnation as a continuity announcer is in the treasure trove of Pat Murphy's definitive history of Sports Report* published next week.
The world's longest-running sports programme on the radio reaches its 75th anniversary in January.
If they keep chopping out the important bits, like the football results, Out Of The Blue – the call to arms which rivals The Archers and Desert Island Discs for the most recognisable theme tune on the wireless - may not reach its centenary. As Oscar-winning lyricist Sir Tim Rice, who knows a decent tune, observes in the book, Saturdays at 5pm without that stirring march back to the car “would be like taking Don't Cry For Me Argentina out of Evita.”
Murphy, at 75 the longest-serving contributor to Sports Report (since Leicester's icy 1-1 draw with Watford in 1981, when it was so cold the windows on his commentary box frosted over), is more optimistic.
“Obviously I hope the programme makes it to 100 years and I think most people who love it believe it will,” he said. “I hear the misgivings about the hour being halved (to accommodate live football commentary at 5.30pm), but that happened in the early years of this century and we survived.
“I also appreciate the furore over the classifieds, but the most important issue is that we retain a high volume of football at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. I'm biased, because from the age of seven Sports Report was a programme I always wanted to work on – I used to tell my parents that as we listened around the dinner table to Eamonn Andrews presenting it, and what a precocious, snivelling brat I must have been.
“But from Stanley Matthews to Harry Kane, Sports Report has kept pace with the sporting landscape. Eminent sportswriter Patrick Collins called it the 'weekly miracle' because from apparent disarray in the studio, with one presenter linking reports from around the world, it conjures up what appears to be a seamless robe for an hour.
"The chattering classes may not see it the same way but, without it, Saturday afternoons wouldn't be the same. It would be like ravens fleeing the Tower of London. We've survived from Clement Attlee to Liz Truss. Sports Report has been through more Prime Ministers than Queen Elizabeth II.”
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From monumental FA Cup upsets to dramatic title finales, the programme has conveyed a breathtaking scope of football drama into our living rooms, cars and transistor radios since 1948.
Sports Report has also brought us unfolding tragedy, notably the late Peter Jones' searing reflection on the Hillsborough disaster, closing with the devastating line, “And the sun shines now.”
Murphy's exhaustive cast of interviews includes heart-wrenching testimony from Mark Chapman, the polished anchorman on BBC's Match of the Day 2, who revealed Sports Report gave him sanctuary amid the devastation of his wife Sara's battle with cancer. She succumbed in 2020, leaving Chapman and their three children rudderless and bereft.
He told Murphy: “We decided I'd work on the programme for as long as possible, to bring a semblance of normality to every Saturday. I'd be driving home after the programme, energised, hoping that Sara would be feeling better but at least ready to deal with anything.
"It was horrific, but Sports Report each Saturday helped make me a better carer, a better husband and a better father.
"Since Sara passed away, the affection and compassion we received have at times been overwhelming. I still grumble and moan about comparative trivia, but that experience made me appreciate those 20 years of marriage.
"Without being able to work on Sports Report, I don't know if I could have dealt with it all.”
But with every shade there must be light, and the BBC's long-serving rugby correspondent Ian Robertson supplies wonderful comic relief recalling his attempt to interview South African deity Nelson Mandela in 1993.
“Sir, there's a punishment awaiting me if I don't get this interview – the BBC will send me to Robben Island for 27 years,” called Robertson through a phalanx of security personnel.
Mandela roared with laughter and ushered BBC Radio's man into a side room for a half-hour audience.
That's the pulling power of Sports Report.
BBC Sports Report: A Celebration of the World's Longest-Running Sports Radio Programme, by Pat Murphy, published by Bloomsbury on September 29, £20 hardback
