Читать книгу No Boundaries - Passion and Pain On and Off the Pitch - Ronnie Irani - Страница 7

It only took a couple of days for the harsh reality to become all too clear: I was 36 years old and out of work. At an age when most men are settled into a career and in many cases looking to move into a senior position, I was starting afresh, as though I’d just left school. When I looked at my CV, it was obvious that, as impressive as it might be to wield a lump of willow effectively from the age of six, or make a small, hard ball swing out or in at will, neither talent was much use for anything other than being a professional cricketer. There was an additional snag – in honing those skills, I had somewhat neglected my formal education. There was no degree to impress a would-be employer, indeed not so much as an A level.

I had some ideas I wanted to pursue. I already had my own insole company with partners in Germany and the USA and I had high hopes for that. But it was very much at the development stage and was costing me money rather than bringing it in. I needed something that would make the most of my other talents and, when I analysed what those were, it came down to a willingness to work hard, boundless enthusiasm, a sense of humour and an ability to talk – some would say an inability to shut up.

Thanks to my natural gift of the gab, I was already commanding quite good money on the after-dinner-speaking circuit, and I would now have time to do more of that. And as Essex captain, I’d done a fair amount of broadcasting, which came quite easily to me, so at the back of my mind I thought I could probably follow some of my fellow ex-professionals into the media.

I’d been standing on my hind legs and speaking for about as long as I could remember. In my early days as a teenager at Lancashire, I would be asked to go along to a local cricket club or school and present prizes, sometimes to kids not much younger than I was. And usually someone would ask, ‘Would you mind saying a few words?’ I did mind, a lot. It was embarrassing. I’d mutter something about congratulations on last season and good luck for next season then try to get off as quickly as possible. I could chat forever in the dressing room, much to the annoyance of some of my senior colleagues who felt I should remember my place and shut up, but this was different. This was performing solo and I only felt comfortable doing that out in the middle of a cricket pitch. I felt like a plonker every time I had to speak and was tempted to turn down these invitations but then I remembered how good I’d felt when England footballer Francis Lee came to my cricket club at Heaton, and the excitement around the place when Olympic sprinter Allan Wells visited our school and showed us his gold medal. I reasoned that, if these people could put themselves out for a nobody from Bolton like me, the least I could do was to get over my nervousness and talk to a few kids from time to time.

Over the years, it became second nature to speak in front of people for a couple of minutes, but that was a lot different from my first proper ‘gig’ as an after-dinner speaker. By the time Woodford Wells Cricket Club invited me to speak at their presentation night, I was an England player and beginning to be a favourite among the Essex supporters.

‘Just come along and hand out the prizes and maybe talk for about 20 minutes,’ the secretary suggested, smiling encouragingly.

I didn’t like to tell him I’d never done anything like that before. I swallowed hard, agreed and then thought, What the hell do I talk about?

The shadow of that speech hung over me for several days. To say I was panicking would be an exaggeration, but not much of one. I started to scribble down all the questions fans usually asked me. Who’s the fastest bowler you’ve batted against? What’s it like facing a bouncer that flies at your head? Who was your favourite player when you were growing up? Who was the better captain – Mike Atherton or Graham Gooch? Who is the funniest guy in the Essex dressing room? What does it feel like to drop a catch? I reckoned, if I strung the answers to those into a series of stories, I would probably be OK, although I wasn’t sure if cricket was going to be high on the agenda when my formal invitation arrived and I saw that the other speaker was a guy called Sid Dennis, a scrap-metal merchant from Skegness. Wonder why they want to hear about the scrap-metal business? I thought.

As it happened, I turned up at the venue at the same time as Sid and the fact that he was driving an E-class Mercedes suggested there must be plenty of money in being a ‘metal-materials recycler’, as he described his job on the card he handed me. Sid looked like a dodgy nightclub bouncer. He weighed 20-odd stones, his head was as smooth as a polished egg, and, if owners grow to resemble their dogs, Sid definitely had a bulldog or two back in Skegness.

I sat next to him on the top table, looking out at a sea of around 300 faces. I was shitting myself. My nerves weren’t improved when one of the club members came up to ask for an autograph and said, ‘I’m really looking forward to your speech.’ Suddenly I realised that I was the entertainment and these people’s enjoyment of the evening was at least in part down to me. I confessed to Sid that I was an after-dinner virgin and feeling as nervous as hell.

He smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, lad, you’re not dead yet. You’ll be reet here. Every speaker is only as good as the crowd and this lot are OK. Just remember, they want to know what it’s like to be a professional cricketer. They would love to be able to do what you do, to meet the people you meet, and to be in that dressing room, padded up and waiting to go out to bat in front of thousands of people. Talk about what you know and they’ll love it.’

Just before I stood up, Sid slipped me a piece of paper and said, ‘Kick off with that.’

I read what he’d written, memorised it and got to my feet, gripping my notes firmly and hoping people couldn’t see how much they were shaking. ‘Good evening,’ I said, my mouth as dry as an Indian wicket. ‘For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ronnie Irani and I play cricket for Essex. I should tell you that I wasn’t born in Essex but, one thing’s for sure, I could fucking die here tonight.’

The audience roared with laughter. The ice was broken and I started to feel a bit better. Thanks, Sid.

I went through my stories and the audience seemed to be interested and even laughed in the right places. By the time I reached my final story, I was enjoying myself.

I said, ‘You are probably wondering what it’s like in the dressing room before a big match. It varies a lot according to the captain. Graham Gooch is quietly encouraging, while others try to gee you up with a rousing speech, like Mike Atherton before the Test at Edgbaston. Ath was obviously feeling Churchillian. He stood before us and proclaimed, “What we have to ask ourselves is, are we men or are we boys? We are about to represent our country so it’s time to decide if we are men or boys. The fans expect us to deliver a victory. Are we men or are we boys? Millions will be watching us around the world on TV. Are we men or are we boys?” At that moment the umpire knocked on the door and Mike yelled, “Come on, let’s go, boys!”’

When I thought back, I wasn’t sure it was Mike Atherton who’d said it – his final gee-up was usually: ‘Let’s fucking get out there’ – but it was a good story and the audience laughed loudly then applauded as I sat down. One or two even stood up and clapped.

Sid squeezed my knee and said, ‘Well done, lad. You did great.’ Then he eased his way to his feet, looked out at the crowd and said, ‘I’d like to thank Ronnie for his speech. I thought it was brilliant. Mind you, gentlemen, I’ve played a bit of cricket in my time and I don’t fucking bang on about it like he does!’ That got the biggest laugh of the night.

As we made our way to the cars afterwards, I thanked Sid and said, ‘That’s a great motor. It’s even better than Graham Gooch’s and he was captain of England. It must be worth at least fifty grand.’

‘Fifty-five, lad, and paid for by doing stuff like this. You did well tonight. You can do this. You need to sharpen up a bit but that will come with experience. I’ll see you around.’

Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of fine comedians, people like Mike Farrell, Adger Brown, Jed Stone and Ian Richards, who can be guaranteed to put on a good show at any dinner. But Sid Dennis remains my favourite, partly because he’s hilarious but mainly because of his generosity that night.

As I’ll relate later, not all my gigs have gone as well as that one, but I managed to build up a decent reputation as a speaker who was not only entertaining but could also be relied on to turn up and not drop organisers in the shit at the last minute. However, as lucrative as the circuit can be, it wasn’t going to be enough to pay all the bills and provide the funds to get the company up and running. I needed something else.

As well as cricket interviews on Sky, the BBC and Channel 4, I’d appeared on a number of TV shows as varied as A Question of Sport, kids’ Saturday-morning programmes and the groundbreaking TFI Friday with Chris Evans and Will Macdonald, which was the only show where it seemed compulsory to down several pints before going on air. I’ve had a few nights on the lash with Chris and Will, including one where Chris tried to match Alan Brazil drink for drink and only realised he’d failed when he fell down the stairs while Alan strolled down nonchalantly. Chris is a terrific guy and for me one of the best broadcasters this country has produced in recent years. His radio work inspired me to get into it. Will is a brilliant producer and a keen cricket enthusiast like Chris, and is someone you can always rely on. A good mate.

Radio is my favourite medium. It is much more relaxed and spontaneous, more intimate. There’s not the clutter of cameras and lights that inevitably make TV more formal. There’s nothing between you and the listener but the microphone which allows you to chat to them in their homes, in their cars or on the beach. I’d always made myself available for interviews as a player and was happy for 5 live or talkSPORT to ring me up for a quick word and never dreamed of asking for payment. My first solo broadcast came when Kevin and Vicky Stewart, the owners of the Chelmsford-based station Dream FM, invited me to present the drive-time show every Friday night during the winter on the recommendation of my car sponsor Mike Lumsden of Mercedes Benz Direct. They really took a punt on my popularity as Essex captain and gave me loads of good advice, not least just to be myself and talk to the audience as though I was talking to a couple of people in a bar. I played some of my favourite music, chatted about sport and conducted my first interviews, many of them with mates like Jamie Redknapp, Jamie Theakston and Graham Gooch. Phil Tufnell even came into the studio for a chat and a laugh. It all seemed to go well and planted the seed that it might be something I could try when cricket was over.

Although cricket was my chosen profession, I’d had a passion for all sports since I was a kid. I grew up in a house in Bolton where the talk rarely moved off Manchester United in the winter and local cricket in the summer, with plenty to discuss about athletics, tennis, rugby league, horse racing or anything else that happened to be on the television in between. I even had a couple of snooker lessons with local legend Tony Knowles. So, while it may sound corny for me to say this in view of my present employment, talkSPORT really was my favourite radio station. I used to have it on in the car as I drove to and from training or matches and loved its mix of informed comment, banter and irreverence. They realised I was always happy to go into their studios and I was interviewed on the afternoon show by Paul Hawksbee and Andy Jacobs, and on Rhodri Williams’s Sunday show. After one visit, Andy Townsend said, ‘You want to keep in here. You never know – when you’ve finished playing, it might be something you could do.’

I must have done something right because, when Paul Hawksbee went on holiday one year, I was invited to sit in with Andy Jacobs. I said yes straight away and hastily rearranged my other commitments to leave my afternoons free. After a couple of training days with Matt Smith and a chat with Andy, I found myself on air as a co-host on one of the most popular shows in speech radio. Looking back, I know I wasn’t that good but it was great experience and Andy was terrific, jumping in to rescue me whenever I started to struggle. My admiration for professional broadcasters went up enormously. It had never occurred to me that something as apparently simple as reading out an email or just holding a conversation with someone across the desk could be quite tricky in practice. You had to make it sound like you were chatting normally but without all the cutting across each other and half-finished sentences that you get among friends in a pub. Suddenly I realised that making it sound natural was harder than I’d thought.

For all the awkwardness I felt at times, I still enjoyed doing the show and the management clearly thought I had some potential because they asked if I would continue to do regular sessions. I was tempted but had to turn them down because it would have interfered with my cricket. But I kept in touch and, by great good fortune, when I was forced to hang up my cap, a vacancy came up to work as a pundit on their cricket coverage. Shortly after that, they offered me a regular spot alongside Alan Brazil on the breakfast show. It meant getting up at 3.30am, six days a week but I didn’t think twice.

Working with Alan turned out to be a fabulous experience. He knows what it’s like to make the transition from sport to radio and he helped me avoid many of the traps that lurk around the corner in live broadcasting. I was his first ‘rookie’ co-host but he was patient, generous and incredibly supportive.

Al may come across as a feisty Scot who just talks off the top of his head but everything he says is based on a profound knowledge and love of all sport and his exceptional ability as a communicator. There’s hardly any subject that he isn’t well informed about. I smile every time he comes out with ‘As you realise, I know nothing about cricket’ because I know he’s just about to utter a gem that cuts right to the heart of whatever we are discussing.

To say that Al likes a drink is like saying Ian Botham relished beating the Australians. He once said to me, ‘Ronnie, remember the glass is always half full,’ but I don’t think he could possibly know that because I’ve never seen him drink a half. There have been mornings, and remember I get to the studio along with the milkman at about a quarter to five – Al comes in about five to … well, let’s leave it at five to – when I could swear he has come straight from whichever bar he was regaling with his stories. Yet he is still switched on to the latest news and ready to ask all the right questions of the guests. Once that studio light goes on to indicate we are live, he is the consummate professional. He was a hell of a striker in his day, especially in his time at Ipswich, but I would venture to suggest that he is an even better broadcaster.

He has a wicked sense of humour and loves to take the mickey out of me. It was Al who gave me the nickname Vernon because he said I sound like Vernon Kay, who was also born in Bolton. He never misses the chance to tease me about my busted relationship with Nasser Hussain, or try to put me on the spot about some other member of the cricket fraternity that he knows I’ve fallen out with just as I’m bending over backwards to be fair to them.

Mind you, I’m not the only one who has to field his spiky probes. I remember England manager Duncan Fletcher coming into the studio to plug his autobiography and, after the usual pleasantries and some questions about the book, Alan said, ‘Duncan, something I’ve always wanted to ask you. Why didn’t you pick Ronnie more often?’

To his credit, Duncan didn’t blink and assured Al that I had been close on a lot of occasions. Close but no cigar.

One of my favourite moments with Alan came during the sparring that goes on between him and Mike Parry just before the handover at ten o’clock. All through our programme that day we’d been playing snatches of our favourite music from films and Alan had been threatening the audience with what he claimed was my number-one choice, which he wouldn’t even reveal to me. Mike Parry said that one of the main items on his show was to be whether or not funerals should be more cheerful, a celebration of the dead person’s life rather than mourning for their passing. Al cut across him and said, ‘Mike, got to interrupt because we have to play Ronnie’s favourite film track. I think it’s perfect for a happy funeral,’ and as he faded up the sound I heard the kids from The Sound of Music sing: ‘So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.’

Brilliant! And typical of the man who has helped make my transition from cricketer to broadcaster such a positive experience. Sometimes, when I look across the desk at him at six in the morning, it’s hard to realise he is the same person I used to watch run out for Manchester United when I was just 15 years old. It’s at moments like that I reflect on what an incredible journey I’ve enjoyed.