The guest speaker at this years Festival Dinner is Pat Murphy. Pat has been broadcasting on sport for BBC Radio for more than forty years, specialising in football and cricket. He can still be heard reporting on football every Saturday afternoon on Radio 5 Live.
Pat covered 18 England cricket tours and developed personal friendships with a lot of the players, resulting in many books. Among those he helped with their autobiographies were Alec Stewart,Andrew Flintoff, Graham Gooch, Bob Willis, Graeme Hick, Bob Taylor, Chris Broad and Devon Malcolm. Also Viv Richards, Wasim Akram, Imran Khan and Allan Donald.
Pat has also written acclaimed biographies of Brian Clough and Ian Botham.
Needless to say he has personal anecdotes to share about all these top sportsmen.
His latest book is the Official History of Sports Report, the legendary Saturday evening programme on Radio 5 Live, born 1948 and still going strong!
