James Alexander Gordon (10 February 1936 – 18 August 2014) was a Scottish radio broadcaster, best known for reading out

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

results on BBC radio. Born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

in 1936, as a baby he was paralysed with

polio Poliomyelitis ( ), commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe ...

and he spent a large part of his childhood in hospital. He worked in music publishing before joining the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

in 1972, becoming an announcer and newsreader (mostly on Radio 2) until the early 1990s. In 1974 he followed in the footsteps of John Webster, reading the classified football results, first on Radio 2 and later on

BBC Radio 5 Live BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts mainly news, sport, Talk show, discussion, interviews and phone-ins, and is on air 24 hours a day. It is the principal BBC radio station Broadca ...

. Popularly known as "Jag", he used his intonation, when pronouncing the names of the clubs, to indicate whether a match had ended in a home win, away win or draw. Gordon also worked as a freelance voice artist, recording voice-overs and commenting on company videos. He also recorded a sequence of fictional football results to introduce each scene in performances of Tom Wells' 2013 play, ''Jumpers for Goalposts''. He announced his retirement from radio in July 2013 following surgery to remove his larynx after being diagnosed with cancer which rendered his voice too weak for broadcasting. He was succeeded as the reader of the classified football results by former Radio 4 newsreader

Charlotte Green Charlotte Green (born 4 May 1956) is a British radio broadcaster and a former continuity announcer and news reader for BBC Radio 4. After 1988, she specialised in news reading, including reading the news on the Radio 4 breakfast ''Today'' pro ...

from late September 2013.

Death

Gordon died of cancer on 18 August 2014, at the Sue Ryder Duchess of Kent Hospice in Reading.

References

External links

*
Obituary
in

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

Marcus Williamson Marcus Williamson is a British writer, journalist, and campaigner. As an obituarist, he has written obituaries of more than 400 subjects, including artists, poets, musicians, actors and inventors for ''The Independent'', ''The Guardian'', ''The S ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, James Alexander 1936 births 2014 deaths BBC sports presenters and reporters Scottish radio presenters Entertainers from Edinburgh Deaths from cancer in England