Page 225 - They Also Served

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Peter West 1939.
Peter Anthony West was born on 12th
August 1920 in Cranbrook, Kent.
Educated at Cranbrook School where
he was captain of the cricket, rugby
and hockey teams as well as head
boy. He entered Sandhurst in 1939,
being commissioned into the Duke of
Wellington’s Regiment. After attracting
the ire of his commanding officer for
playing cards with his NCOs and also
suffering from back problems, West
was posted back to Sandhurst as an instructor in 1941. However, attendance on a commando course further exacerbated what was, by now, diagnosed as spondylitis and he was invalided out in 1944.
Facing a post-war world with no qualifications nor impressive war record, West secured a job as assistant to the controller of SSAFA, a retired air vice-marshal, but was soon sacked after a run-in with his boss. By 1947, he was stuck in a dead-end job transmitting sports results via telegraph ticker tape. However, one day, when sitting next to the legendary test cricketer and BBC journalist C B Fry in the press box at Taunton, he was able to transmit Fry’s report after the telephonist failed to turn up. Fry recommended West to the head of the BBC outside broadcasting. and West was signed up as a cricket commentator. By 1952, he was a television commentator summing up the events of the day’s play, a role he continued well into the 1980s. In addition, he was right-hand man to Dan Maskell in BBC’s Wimbledon tennis coverage from 1955 to 1982 and reported on the Olympics from 1948 to 1972.
As the ‘go-to’ Jack-of-all-trades broadcaster, West presented small-bore shooting from Salisbury Plain, which was, for a while in the mid-1950s, prime time Saturday night viewing on the BBC. He also commentated on almost 30 other sports as diverse as archery, cycling and swimming. At the 1972 Olympics, he was given 30 minutes to become an expert on judo. West had an unfortunate habit of bemusing sports players with his turn of phrase. To a mystified cricketer, Viv Richards, he said: ‘Your genius transcends parochialism’, and to snooker player Jimmy White: ‘Your wonderful ethos
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