Johnners' It's Been A Lot Of Fun

Sep 29, 2024 3:28 PM

Author:Brian Johnston,Brian Johnston,Brian Johnston

When Brian Johnston died in 1994 at the age of 81, the Daily Telegraph described him as ‘the greatest natural broadcaster of them all’. In this delightful reading from his autobiography 'It’s Been a Lot of Fun', Brian recalls his schooldays at Eton and Oxford, his early career in the family coffee business in the City, Hamburg and Brazil, and his service as a Technical Adjutant in the Grenadier Guards during World War II. In January 1946 Brian joined the BBC Outside Broadcasts Department. For the next 48 years he presented hundreds of programmes on radio and television, from 'Let’s Go Somewhere' to royal weddings and 'Down Your Way', but he was probably best known as a cricket commentator and he became a national institution on 'Test Match Special'. Recorded in 1990 when he was 77, Brian tells some of his favourite stories and gaffes in this cheerful look back at a unique career behind the microphone, a life full of lucky breaks and private disappointments, but always a lot of fun.

Reviews

Breezy and affectionate ... a tender a gently humerous memoir of a man who, by his death in 2005, could truly claim to have acquired the status of national treasure.

—— Daily Mail

Great comic memories

—— Choice

A fitting tribute to one of our national treasures

—— The Sun

Closer to the work of someone like Malcolm Gladwell than to the... reminiscences of Brown's memoirs-writing contemporaries

—— Word

A lovely kind of magic trick in book form

—— Boing Boing

One of the few books to get to grips with the social, cultural, political and religious forces which drove the trio... He has you smell the open sewers of Trench Town, and feel its deprivation... Joyfully literate and philosophically penetrating

—— Mojo

Grant has approached a well worn topic in a lively and different way... Ever alert to Jamaica's adage that "there is no such thing as facts, only versions," he gives space to the ambiguities surrounding the Wailers' story without forcing conclusions, which bestows a rich sense of the mix of truth and fiction constantly at play in Jamaica... The bigger picture is painted in rewardingly colourful, often revelatory detail

—— Metro

The myth-making that surrounds the memory of Bob Marley has largely obscured the contribution of his fellow Wailers, Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later Bunny Wailer) and Peter Tosh. I and I restores these two to their rightful position

—— New Statesman

Grant...is skilled at peeling away layers of history

—— Observer

There are illuminating details and fresh revelations

—— Independent

This intelligent study...offers something more than the usual story of rags-to-riches and ganja-fuelled Rasta-speak. This book is full of...insights and revelations

—— James Ferguson , Times Literary Supplement

The three pillars - Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - occupy equal roles in this illuminating study from the cross-roads of music and society

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent, Books of the Year

Utterly riveting

—— Rob Fitzpatrick , Sunday Times

Vivid biography...This brilliant book is not just about Jamaica, but also about ourselves, no longer the country of The King's Speech but a post-imperial nation, many of whose citizens have a buried history of slavery

—— Maggie Gee , Guardian

Masterful biography...It is utterly riveting, taking in, as it does, true crime, West African folk magic and deeply corrupt politics

—— Rob Fitzpatrick , Sunday Times

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