Legendary cricket commentator Henry ‘Blowers’ Blofeld is leaving London and moving overseas, complaining that the capital has become “horribly violent” and observing that “you don’t see many Englishmen” there anymore.
The 78-year-old, who was a familiar voice on Britain’s airwaves for 45 years as part of the Test Match Special on BBC radio, told the Daily Telegraph: “I don’t like [London] any more. I think it’s become, not exactly dangerous, but it is horribly violent, isn’t it?”
He added: “I had a friend who was knifed from one of those mopeds, and you don’t see too many Englishmen where I live.”
Blowfeld’s observation is controversial in the era of enforced diversity and state-sponsored multiculturalism, with comedy legend John Cleese having prompted fury when he suggested the English capital was “no longer an English city” after an outbreak of mass rioting, looting, and arson in 2011.
‘Blowers’, who commentated almost every England cricket match from the late 1950s to his retirement last year, gave a nod to the censorious atmosphere in British public life in his assessment of the state of modern sports broadcasting.
“I think we live in an age of conformity, whereas when I began, we lived in an age of fierce individuality, and when you live with conformity, there is a danger that everything and everyone sounds the same,” he said bluntly.
“The reason, of course, is political correctness. I’m very anti-political correctness, and don’t want to sound like I’m on a tirade, but I did hear they’re re-writing West Side Story because of political correctness, I mean… Jesus wept.
“When I started on [Test Match Special], we were all encouraged to go our own way and try things, take risks. Now, if for example [former TMS colleagues] Brian Johnston and John Arlott were 25 and went to Broadcasting House for an audition, I wonder if we’d even be given one…”
Mr Blofeld’s comments are likely not without some basis: BBC Controller of Comedy Commissioning Shane Allen recently declared that Monty Python, which launched the aforementioned Mr Cleese’s career, would have been rejected by the publicly-funded broadcaster if it were pitched today.
“If you’re going to assemble a team now it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world,” insisted the upper-middle-class executive.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.