SATURDAY PROFILE: On the cover of his autobiography, Des Lynam looks like he's just about to wink. Or has just winked. Or is ever-ready to wink at a moment's notice. It is the classic Lynam pose: eyebrows half-cocked; head of hair that looks like it's been borrowed from an Old English Sheepdog; a smirk creeping out from beneath a moustache that looks like a cat that's found a cosy lip to curl up on, writes Shane Hegarty
Some years ago, Lynam perfected the art of being knowing without being arrogant, of being smooth but not smarmy. He so often seems only a lip's whisker away from becoming Leslie Phillips, yet consistently restrains himself. It has helped make him hugely popular with the viewing public, who would be all a-twitter as they tuned into the great sporting events to be greeted by Lynam's wry understatement.
"Hello again," he said before an England v Germany game, "You have obviously heard there is a football match on tonight." Those turning on one of England's daytime World Cup matches in 1998 were greeted with a conspiratorial "shouldn't you be at work?". During penalty shoot-outs, while the nation chewed on its St George's flags, John Motson would hand back to Lynam, who would raise an eyebrow and ask coolly, "how are you doing at home?" He once advertised a brand of deodorant, which would have seemed apt if Lynam didn't come across as a man who hadn't been troubled by sweat in at least three decades.
This week, then, people turning on Channel 4 each afternoon would have seen something most unusual: Des Lynam looking nervous. Four months after the death of Richard Whitely, Lynam has taken over his role as presenter of Countdown. The delightfully nerdy afternoon quiz show of letters and numbers is unseen by most of the working population, but is popular with about two million students and pensioners. It is not glamorous. It is not a giant ratings winner. But Whitely was something of a British institution, which is why the press has forensically examined his successor's debut.
Former Countdown Champion Andy Bodle wrote in the Guardian: "It was clear that Des Lynam was as comfortable in his role on his first day as Richard Whitely was after 23 years in the hot seat. That is to say, not very."
In choosing Lynam, Channel 4 has gambled on replacing one institution with another, but has chosen a man who could well have been Whitely's alter ego. Lynam is well-dressed; Whitely was famously naff. Lynam is not someone given to bad jokes; Whitely revelled in them. Lynam is a genuine ladykiller; the self-deprecating "twice-nightly Whitely" was not. Lynam looks like he'd actually have a chance with Carol Vorderman.
IT'S A CHANGE for a presenter who has previously been more a leader than a follower. During the 1990s he was the BBC's face of sport, when his eyebrows would pop up at Wimbledon, the Grand National, the FA Cup Final, the World Cup, the Olympics, Grandstand, Sportsnight and Match of the Day. Wherever he was, though, he always gave the impression that he was covering the event from the bar of his local gold club. In his chummy rapport with the sporting experts he managed to be cosy yet calculating and was not given to using a word more than was necessary. (Go hunting in Colemanballs - Private Eye's repertoire of commentating howlers - and you'll find that Lynam hardly features at all).
It was a style that came into its own when England hosted the 1996 European Championships. As its national team provided the nation with a couple of glorious victories and the requisite glorious defeat, the public finally reclaimed football and the flag from the tattooed knuckles of the hooligans. Lynam was the steady hand guiding the viewers along the wave of euphoria while also providing a little something extra to ladies of a certain age who may not previously have been interested in football. Lynam, in his neat blazer and open-necked shirt, has long been something of a sex symbol - "the menopausal woman's Tom Cruise," as Mrs Merton called him.
His autobiography, I Should Have Been Working, is dotted with "gorgeous" girls and "leggy blondes" with lovely figures who he chases and wins. After splitting from his wife in 1972, he says that he had "my 20s in my 30s . . . The trouble was, I was rarely short of a pretty girl on my arm. It sounds arrogant now, but I was spoilt for choice . . . there was my 'air stewardess' period, my 'model' period, and my 'BBC' period. The problem was, they intermingled."
When he finally settled down with his partner Rose, he admits that he did his best to ruin it. An affair seven years ago was splashed across the tabloids, although it was by no means his first taste of headline hell. In 1979 he dated Caroline Cossey, another model. But she had a secret. She used to be a man called Barry.
Lynam writes of the episode with wit and genuine tenderness. First spotting her cleavage, he writes that he decided he'd "better arrange a closer look at that". He pursued this six-foot tall, enigmatic beauty. A phone call warned him of her past, but he refused to believe it. "Her breasts were magnificent." Despite the public attention, Lynam and Cossey would remain friends for some years afterwards.
The book also writes about his Irish roots, although it has certainly never been essential to his persona in the way it is to Terry Wogan.
LYNAM WAS BORN in September 1942 in Ennis, Co Clare. His parents met in England where they had trained in nursing; his father was called up into the army in 1941 and posted in Northern Ireland, while his mother settled in Ennis. His father was shipped out to the Far East just after his wife became pregnant, so that young Desmond spent the first four years of his life with only an abstract idea of who this "Daddy" was that was mentioned frequently, and whose letters would occasionally arrive from India. When he finally returned from the war, Lynam writes, "this was an invasion of privacy - and he was paying a rather undue amount of attention to my mother as well. I cried my eyes out."
Following the death of his infant sister the family moved to Brighton, where they shared a house with a family whose boys mocked Lynam's accent. His earliest memory of school is being asked to draw a line, which he interpreted as being a four-legged jungle animal. Within a few months, he says, the accent was gone. It has never returned.
What replaced it worked a treat, first on radio, then on television. Lynam covered some of sport's seminal moments, events that transcended their genres such as the murder of Israeli athletes in the 1972 Olympics, 1974's Rumble in the Jungle and Ben Johnson's disgrace at the 1988 Olympics.
During that time, he became something of an icon to a new generation of sports presenters. Lynam left the BBC in 1999 to present ITV sport before leaving the broadcaster last year, but Lynam's legacy lives on in the countless open-shirted presenters with their relentless chumminess and wit so dry it has desiccated. Unlike RTÉ, where analysts are still expected to analyse, the coverage of sport on British television has been largely spoiled by hosts and experts treating half-time like it's open mic night at the comedy club.
Nowhere is this more obvious than on Match of the Day, in which presenter Gary Lineker tries to model himself on his mentor while smirking at Mark Lawrenson's appalling puns. Of course, Lynam can hardly be blamed for doing his job so well that everyone wanted to copy him, but those who bemoan the shallowness of British sports coverage believe he has a lot to answer for. He had better not ruin Countdown, or he may never be forgiven.
Who is he? Television presenter and British institution
Why is he in the news? This week he took on the tough job of replacing the late, great Richard Whitely on Countdown
Most appealing characteristic: He has hung onto his moustache long after even army majors deserted the feature. That shows a man comfortable in his skin/facial hair
Least appealing characteristic: Treads the fine line between being consummate and being smug
Most likely to say: "It's a sudden death penalty shoot-out in the World Cup final. Let's not get too excited"
Least likely to say: "I've forgotten my lines"