Page 2 - Dan Maskell News Today

Why would the world No1, an incredible athlete in his mid-30s, want to get vaccinated against a virus which can do him little harm?

WHEN my daughter at the age of 24, and while staying with us on Skye, made the decision to end her life – she was suffering from anorexia and other problems – by chance I found her tucked away in her bedroom one afternoon. Surrounded by pill packets and some alcohol she had left a note saying that she was sorry but she could not cope with life any longer. She wanted peace. In great distress I summoned help and she was taken away to hospital where resuscitation processes were set up and ...

Wimbledon Served as a Military Camp and Pig Farm During World War II The tennis clubs center court even took a direct hit from a 500-pound German bomb. Author: The tennis clubs center court even took a direct hit from a 500-pound German bomb. For 75 years, active-duty members of the British military have served as stewards at Wimbledon, the annual tennis “Championships” held at the storied All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club. Since 1946, uniformed men and women from the Royal Army, Air F...

113 shares It was an age before a multiplicity of channels blurred things, a time when the splendid instrument of the voice itself was a central part of the job in a way it is not quite today. Like O’Sullevan and the others, Walker could convey drama by lowering his register, for all his high-octane excitement and the odd malapropism that were part of his legend. His autobiography, ‘Unless I Am Very Much Mistaken,’ sold like hot cakes. When he was being treated for cancer — which turned...

Murray Walker with James Hunt in 1983 Credit: GETTY IMAGES It is hard to imagine that the late hell-raiser James Hunt is currently surrounded by too many cherubim or seraphim, but whatever the afterlife looks like for Formula 1 legends, he has been joined in the great Grand Prix commentary box in the sky by his long-term broadcast partner Murray Walker, who died this weekend aged 97. Hunt retired from driving Formula 1 in the 1979 season and roared into the broadcast studio to join Walker: toge...

167 shares Sometimes, broadcasters have a public persona that hides their real self. Murray was not like that. Murray was the same in real life as he was behind the microphone. He was vivacious and enthusiastic and passionate and knowledgeable. He loved motor sport with every fibre of his being. And most of all, he had not an ounce of malice in him. I got a message on Twitter on Saturday from an old friend. ‘Was lucky enough to go the British GP once with pit lane passes,’ he wrote. ‘Watc...

Murray Walker Credit: Gray Mortimore/ Getty Images Murray Walker, who has died aged 97, was for more than half a century the high-octane voice of British motor sport and a consummate exponent of – and, indeed, with a strong claim to have invented – the “pants-on-fire” school of broadcast commentary. At full throttle at the television microphone for a Formula 1 grand prix, Walker would typically let rip with what he called his “crash, bang, wallop” approach, developed during years o...