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BBC

Veteran broadcaster to retire after reading the football final scores for decades

By Hamish Mackay

November 7, 2011 | 2 min read

A UK broadcasting institution, Tim Gudgin, who has become of the most recognisable voices in history, has announced he is to retire from his job of reading the football results on television.

Scotland on Sunday reported yesterday: “Best known for his distinctive rising and falling intonation as he delivers the scores to fans around the country, the veteran broadcaster is hanging up his microphone after more than 60 years on air.”

Gudgin is due to do his final Score programme on the BBC on November 19 - the week before his 82nd birthday.

Starting out on British Forces Network Radio in Germany in 1950, Gudgin joined the BBC two years later to take up the job of studio manager for the corporation’s European Service, where he also worked as a news reader.

In 1976 he joined Grandstand, one of the BBC’s longest running sports programmes, where he read out the racing and rugby results in the final-score segment of the programme.

His role on Grandstand continued until 1995, when he became only the second person to read out the football results for BBC television on Saturday afternoons.

When Final Score became a separate programme in 2004, he continued in the job, despite being past retirement age.

Football pundit Gary Lineker described Gudgin as “one of the most familiar voices in sport” and “a quintessential part of Saturday afternoons in this country”.

He added: “They will never be quite the same again.”

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