A very few number of sports reporters make it to the top, but the ones that do, find themselves enveloped in a world of opportunity and are able to attend some of the most high profile sporting events on the planet. One of those selected number of journalists is the legendary sports broadcaster, Garry Richardson.

 
Garry Richardson hounded the BBC sports media desk and made cups of coffee before eventually breaking into the BBC. He now presents the most influential sports radio programme in the country, Sportsweek, on BBC Radio Five Live, in which he interviews the biggest names in Sport every Sunday at 9 am. He is also the sports presenter on the most influential current affairs programme in the United Kingdom that is the Today Programme on BBC Radio Four; a role he has been doing for over 27 years.

He is, quite simply, the best sports broadcaster with the most sought after sports contacts list at the BBC. This is a man that, during a rain break at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, passed a note to the Royal Box, requesting to interview the President of the United States of America at that time, Bill Clinton, where he was sitting, and ten minutes later, Garry was talking to the man himself in front of millions of viewers tuning in.

I have been lucky enough to meet Garry on a few occasions, sitting in on his brilliant programme; Sportsweek, and this month I phoned him for a chat about how to get into the world of sports journalism

Garry Richardson: I have been appearing on the Today programme now for 27 years. I am the longest serving member on the programme. I started way back in 1981 with the legendary presenters, Brian Redhead and John Timpson, and it’s great fun. It’s a programme that gets very high profile guests. There are some mornings when you can be sitting in the studio next to the Prime Minister which can be a little daunting and it’s been really good fun. One of the problems of course is that the time of day we are on, from six until nine in the morning, is that sports people don’t often get up too early. So you don’t always hear footballers on there but we do extremely well, we get some good guests and it is a great programme to work on.

GR: No, the programme was already there. It was presented before me by a chap called Brian Alexander, a very good journalist, and he had done it for a few years and I was asked to do it. Initially, because it’s on a Sunday I said I would do it for six months, but they loved it so much and I have been doing it ever since, which is for eight years now. Like the Today programme, it’s great fun. We get some great guests and probably the most satisfying thing is that we try to set the agenda with the news stories that we do, so often you will hear a guest on Sportsweek come out with some very good news making quotes and when you buy your news paper on a Monday morning, the tabloid newspapers; The Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, the Express, you will see those stories making page leads, and likewise in the broadsheets as well; The Daily Telegraph, the Times, The Guardian. So that’s probably the most satisfying thing doing Sportsweek. The programme does make a real impact.

GR: The thing that you should do is never ever give up. I’ve made a career out of asking. Often people will say that you can’t get that story or you can’t get that interview. The key thing is to actually ask because if you don’t ask you don’t get. There have been lots of times where I’ve managed to interview lots of famous people just because I have asked, notably Bill Clinton a few years ago at Wimbledon. I got to speak to him and a lot of people said “there’s no chance” but I simply asked and the answer was yes, and ten minutes later I was sitting in the Royal Box with the President for fifteen minutes, which was brilliant.

Indeed, it was brilliant. You can hear Garry Richardson’s Sportsweek every Sunday morning on BBC Radio Five Live at Nine o’clock in the morning and you can hear his sports reports every day on the Today Programme from six in the morning on BBC Radio Four.

Garry Richardson is truly an inspiration for all budding sports Journalists, including myself and it seems clear that the name of the media game is to “just ask” and to “never ever give up”.