Signing Off – A Master At His Trade

Already out there on the Internet is the audio from the BBC Radio correspondent at Saturday’s game at Molineux – please go and find it.

It’s not that any confirmation is required of another unwelcome full-time outcome but the man delivering the post-match thoughts was about to exit the stadium’s broadcast area for the last time.

Pat Murphy used to enjoy jousting with Bill McGarry, enlisted Derek Dougan’s assistance in writing a book, was friendly with John Barnwell and proud that, at a Walsall v Liverpool cup-tie, he helped give Andy Gray some summarising work at the start of the striker’s media career.

Yes, he has been around THAT long but, with a minimum of fuss, he slipped away into the darkness following the Wolves v Crystal Palace game and into retirement.

Presenter Mark Chapman had welcomed him to the show before kick-off by announcing that this was his final match and thanking him for all his hard work over the decades.

On X later, the reporter confirmed he had indeed signed off, so that appears to be that after 51 years at the BBC, the first few of them in local radio. What a gap he leaves!

Like John Richards, Barney and others, I’ve known Pat for more than 40 years but, in my case, as little more than a work colleague. He is private about his life away from the microphone, although he did reveal in an interview he gave me more than 20 years ago that he was glad to be wintering in the Midlands after spending the previous ten elsewhere in the world with the England cricket team.

He covered 18 tours in all but cited the fact he had an 89-year-old mother and a brother with cancer as good reasons to be in Wolverhampton and Birmingham rather than Melbourne or Colombo, adding: “There’s not too much fun in watching the players in the nets on Christmas morning before doing an interview.”

Until a few years ago, Murphy had been the corporation’s Midlands football man since 1981; forthright, opinionated, authoritative and utterly essential listening. He doubled up by reporting on county and Test cricket and, in his spare time (wherever he found that) wrote or collaborated on books about Brian Clough, Ian Botham, Alec Stewart, Graham Gooch, Imran Khan and more than 30 others.

His love of Sports Report, about which he wrote a 2022 book containing a lovely anecdote about Raul Jimenez and his after shave, kept him busy on this patch on Saturday afternoons but there has been more time in recent years for gentler assignments, like the mini ‘Behind The Mic’ theatre tour he undertook with Nick Owen and Jim Rosental last year.

Pat was very grateful I had not only bought a ticket for the evening in Redditch but also that I had written so positively about it afterwards.

I wanted to go having seen him in a similar setting at Molineux in the 1990s when he emerged as very much the eloquent star turn at a Q&A night in the Billy Wright Stand also featuring Brendon Batson and Jonathan Hayward.

He gave a brilliant eulogy in May at the funeral in Worcester of his close friend, the former Press Association sports-writer John Curtis, and remained quick-witted to the end.

“Always leave a party before they start hoovering round your ankles,” he told Mark Chapman by way of explanation for his departure.

And he added: “I look across to my left and see John Richards. I interviewed him 50 years ago, an absolute doyen of Wolves. He’s 75. I must find out what monkey gland injections he’s taking because I need to borrow some.”

His off-script comments came as Hi Ho Silver Lining was booming out in the background – but he revealed himelf to be no particular fan of Jeff Beck.

“They played it in 1974 when I first came here for the BBC,” he told his listeners. “I shan’t miss that. As a fan of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, I’m loathe to quote Oasis but, as Noel Gallagher once warbled: ‘Don’t look back in anger.'”