Golden Jubilee award recalls Walker's hill-start

Murray Walker celebrated fifty years of commentating when he was a guest at Prescott Hill in September. Hillclimbing was the subject of his first ever session behind the microphone, when in 1948 he stood in at Shelsley Walsh after the regular man was seconded to the BBC.

Within months Walker had followed his father Graham into the corporation’s Grand Prix radio commentary box. In 1949 he made his first television broadcast, also a hillclimb event, and hasn’t looked up from the monitor since.

At a dinner attended by other motorsport commentators Simon Taylor, Bob Costanduros, Tony Mason and John Watson, the ‘voice of motor racing’ was presented with a gold microphone by Auto Windscreens to mark his jubilee. Murray was later driven up the Gloucestershire hill by Martyn Griffiths, five-time British hillclimb champion, in a supercharged MG, before having a rare chance to be the one actually spraying the champagne. GC