Brian Alexander Johnston (24 June 1912 – 5 January 1994), nicknamed Johnners, was a British cricket commentator, author, and television presenter. He was most prominently associated with the BBC during a career which lasted from 1946 until his death in January 1994.
Brian Alexander Johnston was born on Monday, 24 June 1912 at the Old Rectory, Little Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the youngest of four children (elder siblings were Anne, Michael and Christopher). His paternal grandfather, Reginald Eden Johnston, had been Governor of the Bank of England between 1909 and 1911. The World War II airborne division commander Frederick 'Boy' Browning was his first cousin. On 27 August 1922, his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Evelyn Johnston, DSO, MC, who managed the family coffee business, drowned at Widemouth Sands near Bude, Cornwall at the age of 44. In 1924, his mother married one of her husband's military colleagues, Captain Marcus Scully, who became his stepfather. After the marriage ended in divorce, she reverted to her original married name.
Johnston was educated at Temple Grove Preparatory School (1920–25) and then at Eton (1925–31), where he played cricket for the school's 2nd XI. He subsequently went on to New College, Oxford (1931–34), where he graduated with a third in History in 1934. At Oxford he was a keen cricketer, keeping wicket for his college team, Oxford Authentics, and also for the Eton Ramblers and I Zingari, but he never managed to progress to the Varsity side.
After Oxford, Johnston joined the family's coffee business, where he worked until 1939, but admitted years later that he had little interest or liking for the work. After a year at head office in the City of London, he was transferred to the Hamburg office in 1935, as Germany was an important market for Brazilian coffee.
The following year, he travelled to Santos, Brazil, where he worked in the company office for 18 months. However, in 1938, he was struck down with an acute neurological condition and had to return to London. After several months' convalescence he returned to the City office in October but resigned the following year to join the army on the outbreak of the Second World War.
In September 1939, Johnston joined the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, and was sent for officer training to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Following this, he was posted to the Grenadiers Training Battalion, based at Windsor, in the spring of 1940, where he served as a Technical Adjutant. His unit was due to join the British Expeditionary Force in France during May, but these plans were overtaken by the retreat from Dunkirk. He remained stationed in the United Kingdom until the invasion of Europe in the summer of 1944, when his battalion landed at Arromanches on the Normandy coast some three weeks after D Day. In the winter of 1944 and early spring of 1945, Johnston and his armoured division were in the thick of the allied advance, crossing the Rhine and fighting their way up to Bremen and Hamburg. He was later awarded the Military Cross in 1946 for his actions as technical adjutant after the battalion crossed the Rhine. Tanks were frequently stranded in the marshy ground and he was responsible for recovering these, and battle-damaged tanks, often under fire.
Brian Johnston joined the BBC in January 1946 and began his cricket commentating career at Lord's for BBC Television in June 1946 at the England v India Test match.
In these early years, Johnston was an occasional presenter of other BBC shows, including Come Dancing and All Your Own. Between 1948 and 1952, Johnston presented a live broadcast segment Let's Go Somewhere as part of the Saturday night radio series In Town Tonight. In some he stayed alone in the Chamber of Horrors, rode a circus horse, lay under a passing train, was hauled out of the sea by a helicopter and was attacked by a police dog.
He was also part of the radio commentating team for major state occasions such as the funeral of King George VI in 1952, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the Sovereign's annual birthday parade, the annual El Alamein reunion and in due course the royal weddings of Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and the Prince of Wales. He also appeared on other radio programmes such as Sporting Chance, Treble Chance, Twenty Questions, Married To Fame, Hancock's Half Hour and occasionally as an outside broadcast interviewer for the Today programme.
Johnston became a regular member of the TV commentary team and, in addition, became BBC cricket correspondent in 1963. In that year he also met and mentored his future TMS colleague the late Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who sought his advice about how to become a cricket commentator while still at school. From 1965 onwards Johnston split his commentary duties between television (three Tests) and radio (two Tests) each summer. In 1970 Johnston was dropped from the TV commentary team and he retired from the BBC two years later on his sixtieth birthday. However, he continued to appear in a freelance capacity as a member of the team for the radio broadcasts, Test Match Special (TMS) for the next 22 years. Johnston was responsible for a number of the TMS traditions, including the creation, often using the so-called Oxford "-er", of the nicknames of fellow commentators (for example, Jonathan Agnew is still known as "Aggers", Henry Blofeld as "Blowers", and the late Bill Frindall ("the Bearded Wonder") as "Bearders"). He once complained on air that he had missed his cake at tea during one match, and he was subsequently inundated with cakes from listeners. Even decades after Johnston's death, the TMS team has continued to receive cakes from listeners ever since.
In 1972, he was asked to stand in as the host of the long-running Sunday evening radio programme Down Your Way (first broadcast in 1946) when Franklin Engelmann, who had hosted the programme since 1953, died very suddenly. He went on to host a further ten editions before leaving to commence his last full-time summer as the BBC cricket correspondent. He was compulsorily retired from the BBC in September of that year having reached his 60th birthday. He was then contracted in a freelance capacity to host Down Your Way on a permanent basis since four other hosts trialled over the summer had proved to be less popular than him. He went on to present this programme for 15 years before bowing out on his 733rd show (equalling Engelmann's tenure) in May 1987 just before his 75th birthday. The final show featured Lord's Cricket Ground and included an interview with his old friend Denis Compton. A valedictory photograph was taken showing Johnston standing in front of the Lord's scoreboard, which showed 733 under the icon of Last Man to commemorate the event.
Thereafter the programme continued to be broadcast for a further five years, with a different celebrity host every week, before it was finally taken off the air in 1992.
Johnston was renowned for his on-air schoolboy humour and puns. In one incident during a Test match at the Oval in August 1991, Jonathan Agnew suggested that when Ian Botham was out hit wicket, trying to hurdle the stumps, it was because he had failed to "get his leg over" (a British slang term meaning to have sex; Botham's sexual exploits had attracted national attention). Johnston carried on commentating and giggling for 30 seconds before dissolving into helpless laughter.
Johnston's love for practical jokes was routinely evident. Due to the near-endless supply of cakes, his favourite one was to ask people questions on-air after they had taken a slab of cake into their mouth and before they could reply.
In one broadcast, Johnston stated of South African cricketer Peter Pollock, who had broken his ankle: "He’s obviously in great pain. It’s especially bad luck as he is here on his honeymoon with his pretty young wife. Still, he’ll probably be all right tomorrow if he sticks it up tonight." "Sticks it up" could be interpreted either as using crutches or as having sex.