Eleanor Oldroyd: 30 years of "my radio family"
One of my early 5 Live publicity photos shows me standing in the sports room, rather more smartly dressed than I’d normally be for a day shift, editing a clip for a bulletin.
It doesn’t show my hands, but I know in one of them was a razor blade and in the other, a chinagraph pencil, hovering over a reel-to-reel tape machine.
At the bottom of the photo, how to listen to 5 Live: 909 & 693 medium wave. This was very much the analogue era.
It’s strange to think how life has changed since that pre-internet, pre-laptop, pre-smart phone world.
Covering football matches on a Saturday afternoon meant lugging heavy COOBE units (standing for Commentator Operated Outside Broadcast Equipment) to the ground, where they’d be plugged into a fixed line in the press box.
Once the game kicked off, if you happened to be looking at your notes when a goal went in, you were reliant on the kindness of newspaper colleagues to find out who’d scored it; no checking the 大象传媒 Sport app back then, and probably best not to rely on the crackly announcement on the ancient tannoy system.
Not everyone was keen to help the solitary woman in the press box, mind you. Sometimes it was easier just to wait for confirmation from the producer back in the studio, watching the vidiprinter chuntering away on a screen nearby.
Back at 5 Live HQ, it was generally a supportive environment, but if listeners thought that Clare Balding, Charlotte Nicol or I belonged back in the kitchen rather than on air, they weren’t slow to let us know — or at least, only as slow as a first-class letter.
This was the pre-social media age, too, and although there were probably more people back then who objected to women being allowed to talk about sport on the radio, they at least had to go to the trouble of finding pen, paper, an envelope, a stamp, and the 5 Live address before they could vent their feelings, rather than sitting behind a screen and splurging it all on X.
I never felt it was a hostile environment for women; there was behaviour which might overstep the mark on occasion, but I made friends then who are still friends now.
The firmest friendships were forged on the road, at Olympic Games, Six Nations Championships, Formula One Grands Prix and on football OBs
The firmest friendships were forged on the road, at Olympic Games, Six Nations Championships, Formula One Grands Prix and on football OBs. In Atlanta we knew that British gold medals were going to be thin on the ground, but I was set to be at the rowing lake for the one that was almost guaranteed: from Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent.
I woke early that morning to the phone in my room ringing. A bomb had gone off in the Olympic Park. I diverted to the studio to present a news programme on the unfolding tragedy, with some extreme gear shifts to bring 5 Live listeners commentary on what did indeed turn out to be Team GB’s solitary gold of the Games.
Plenty more gold medal moments have followed since 1996, and one of my best ever shifts was Super Sunday at Rio 2016; five GB golds in a single day, with me dashing around the Olympic Park on a radio mic, from the pool to the velodrome, to the gymnastics hall for Max Whitlock’s history-making golden double, to the tennis arena as Andy Murray beat Juan-Martin Del Potro in a bloodcurdlingly intense final.
I can’t wait for my thirteenth Games in Paris this summer, which I think will have the same kind of passionate fan engagement as we saw in Sydney in 2000 and London 2012.
What else has changed? The 大象传媒, including 5 live, were podcast pioneers in 2004. Now they’re part of everyday life, even though when I recently said on air, “the latest Football Daily will drop in your feed later”, I did wonder whether 1990s me would have thought I was describing an unfortunate incident involving a pie at a football ground.
During Covid, we had many messages telling us how important we were to people who were isolated from friends and family
And our audience talk to us directly, through social media or text, and often direct what stories we tell. During Covid, we had many messages telling us how important we were to people who were isolated from friends and family, and I know I took consolation from being able to spend weekend mornings (remotely) with my breakfast co-host Chris Warburton and our listeners.
The way they find us may have changed too, digitally, on smartphones and smart speakers, on Sports Extra as well as 5 live, but what hasn’t changed is the people behind the sounds: the most dedicated, professional, up for a laugh, talented bunch anywhere, and my radio family for the last thirty years.
