Генри Блофелд: Ұлыбританиялық спорт журналисі және крикет комментаторы

English sports journalist

Henry Calthorpe Blofeld (born 23 September 1939), nicknamed Blowers by Brian Johnston, is an English retired sports journalist, broadcaster and amateur ornithologist best known as a cricket commentator for Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra. He has established a reputation as a commentator with an accent, vocabulary and syntax that is quintessentially Old Etonian both in style and substance. He also writes on cricket and has authored eight books to date.

Blofeld's family were landowners at Hoveton in Norfolk and he was the youngest of three siblings. His elder brother, Sir John Blofeld, became a High Court judge. Henry's father (Thomas Robert Calthorpe Blofeld, 1903–1986) was at Eton with Ian Fleming and his name is believed to have been the inspiration for the name of James Bond supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld is a distant relative of the Honourable Freddie Calthorpe, a former England Test captain, but, contrary to common belief, he is not Calthorpe's nephew.

Blofeld was educated at Sunningdale School and at Eton College, followed by King's College, Cambridge, but failed both his final exams "by an innings".

Blofeld played cricket at both Sunningdale and Eton. He was wicket keeper for the Eton College First XI and had an exceptional career as a schoolboy cricketer. In 1956, Blofeld scored 104 not out for a Public Schools team against the Combined Services, and he was given the Cricket Society's award for the most promising young player of the season. Appointed Eton captain in his final year at school, Blofeld suffered a very serious accident, when he was hit by a bus while riding a bicycle, where he won his Blue "as an opening batsman of sorts the worst Blue awarded since the war" according to Blofeld himself.

Blofeld took a job at the merchant bank Robert Benson Lonsdale for three years, but it was not to his taste and he drifted into sports journalism. Blofeld's cricket commentary was characterised by his plummy voice and his idiosyncratic mention of superfluous details regarding the scene, including things such as construction cranes or numbers of pink shirts in the crowd; as well as pigeons, buses, aeroplanes and helicopters that happen to be passing by. After the tea and lunch breaks he was also known to talk for extended periods of time about the food on offer, in particular cakes, with occasional interruptions to describe the situation on the field. He also used the phrase "my dear old thing". In 1995, Blofeld was censured for an allegedly antisemitic comment made live on air on Test Match Special, when broadcasting from Headingley. He referred to onlookers watching a match from the balcony of a tall building outside the ground at Headingley as being at "the Jewish end". Blofeld and the BBC apologised for a comment that was "not spawned by malice". From 2006 he commentated less frequently, missing the 2007 World Cup, despite having covered the opening ceremonies of the two preceding World Cups in 2003 and 1999 for TMS. Speaking to Michael Parkinson about this on BBC Radio 2 on 26 August 2007, he responded to the question of why he was commentating less these days, by remarking that "they obviously want to bring in new faces" adding that during the Ashes series during 2006–7 "I felt in a funny way that I wasn't part of it any more". During the summer 2008 season, he resumed a full commentating quota on Tests and ODIs. Blofeld missed the 2009 home test series against South Africa but returned for the 2010 home series against Pakistan. He did not cover the Ashes series in Australia during 2010–11 but returned for the Indian tour of England in Summer 2011. In January 2012, he rejoined the TMS team covering England's tour of the United Arab Emirates against Pakistan and also the autumn 2012 England tour of India. On 23 June 2017, Blofeld announced his retirement as a BBC Test Match Special commentator. His last test commentary was when England played West Indies at Lord's on 9 September 2017. He was given a standing ovation on a lap of the ground following the match.

Blofeld was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2003. The following year, he appeared alongside Fred Trueman in the "Tertiary Phase" of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series playing himself. Blofeld has written a partly autobiographical book entitled My Dear Old Thing: Talking Cricket. He undertakes an "Evening With Blowers" theatrical show which has toured all over the UK, as well as many other public speaking engagements. Together with TMS producer Peter Baxter he tours with the theatrical show Memories of Test Match Special from 2013 on. His fourth book was entitled Squeezing the Orange. Outside cricket, Blofeld's favourite hobby is "drinking wine", followed by "eating food" and "going out." He has his own Côtes du Rhône label which he markets as Blowers' Rhône and unashamedly promotes this during his one man theatrical chat shows An Evening With Blowers, that he mainly performs during the cricket close season. The show has been recorded on DVD He often wears vividly coloured outfits, which he ascribes to partial colour blindness. Blofeld celebrated his 70th birthday by hosting an evening show in front of 2000 paying "guests" at the Royal Albert Hall, with appearances on stage by friends such as TMS commentator Jonathan Agnew, who narrated the event live, West Indian commentator Tony Cozier, TV personality Stephen Fry, cricket journalist John Woodcock, TV celebrity Christine Hamilton and his elder brother, former High Court Judge Sir John Blofeld. In January 2015 Blofeld was a guest, and the winner, on the BBC One's comedy series Room 101. In December 2017 he was a guest on the BBC One comedy panel show Would I Lie to You? He was one of the travellers in series 4 of the Twofour production The Real Marigold Hotel.

Blofeld has been married three times and divorced twice. He has a daughter, Suki (born 1964), with his first wife. He separated from his Swedish second wife, Bitten, in 2007. He had a double heart bypass operation in 1999 after being diagnosed with angina and was given the last rites after he nearly died in intensive care following the operation. Blofeld lived in Chelsea for many years, but moved to Menorca in 2018. In a Boxing Day 2013 interview on the Radio New Zealand Summer Noelle programme, Blofeld said he had recently married an Italian woman, Valeria. as of 2013 his main occupation was on stage at the theatre. The book recounts his personal and professional life, including encounters with various celebrities and politicians, and a 46 day road trip from London to Bombay in a vintage Rolls Royce. In 2017 he published Over and Out, a recollection of his years spent with the Test Match Special team.