In the old days of Television Newsreel (which existed between 1948 and 1954 and was entirely on film) Richard Dimbleby used to introduce a Sunday edition called ‘Weekly Review’. This consisted of nothing more than excerpts from the week’s newsreels interspersed with filmed links that Richard used to record on Friday evenings. The complications of this are hard to believe nowadays. For Union reasons, the film laboratories would only process our film on weekdays, up to and including Friday night, but on two or three occasions a year – by agreement with the cinema newsreels – they were prepared to work on Saturdays if there was a major sporting event. Richard’s links for ‘Weekly Review’ did not qualify under this agreement, so they still had to be done on the Friday night.
So on the eve of the Boat Race, on the Friday night, Richard Dimbleby found himself recording a comment on a race that hadn’t yet happened. This worked perfectly well in 1950, so we decided to risk it again in 1951, and I remember that Friday night very well.
We ran the cameras:
‘And so,’ said Richard, ‘Cambridge win the Boat race for the fifty-third time.’
“That’s fine,’ I said, ‘now do the other one.’
The cameras ran again.
‘And so,’ said Richard, ‘Oxford win the Boat Race for the forty-fourth time.’
We were all laughing about this and then Richard said:
‘What happens if they tie?’
This seemed most unlikely and we couldn’t think of a possible remark which would be suitable. For one thing we didn’t know how many ties there had been before. And then, as much for a joke as anything else, we hit on the idea of recording:
‘Well, that’s something no one expected to happen.’
The next day Oxford sank.
