Happy birthday – Fionnuala Ward on 100 years of the BBC

The BBC is 100 years old this week. The celebrations so far have been all about its influence in the UK but it’s had a huge effect over here as well.

My home town is Navan, which meant that in the 1970s and well into the 1980s when everyone else in the country lived in one-channel and eventually two-channel land, us residents of the east coast had access to Dan Maskell at Wimbledon, muttering in disapproval as McEnroe let rip at an umpire or contestants on the Generation Game being coaxed by Bruce Forsyth to remember the cuddly toy on the conveyor belt or John Noakes excitedly going “Get down, Shep!” to his ever-jumpy dog on Blue Peter.

John Noakes and Shep were kindred spirits, by the way. When Shep died, Noakes appeared on the BBC and sobbed openly.

I was into my twenties by then but I had a little moment too.

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We watched a lot of Blue Peter, you see. When our cousins in far-flung areas of the country were out playing wholesome games or communing with nature on a walk in the countryside or learning new life skills, my siblings and I found out how to make a replica of a four-storey medieval fortress from washing-up bottles and sticky-back plastic. Mind you, when we’d rush into the kitchen to tell our mother of our plan to do just that while at the same time analysing exactly how much liquid was left in the bottle on-the-go, we’d be told that, sadly, sticky-back plastic existed only in the UK, having never made it across the Irish Sea, and also could the washing-up bottle be put back where it belonged, please.

Sport was the biggest advantage of having access to the BBC. Tennis, golf, soccer, cricket, showjumping – we watched them all.

I can still recall the effect the young, gorgeous Severiano Ballesteros had on his first British Open, a golf competition not particularly renowned for its glamour and edginess at the time.

Ballesteros’s ball landed in a clump of bushes. “And that ball will shortly be joined by a posse of screaming 17 year olds,” Peter Alliss, BBC’s stalwart golf commentator, noted jovially.

My Dad particularly liked cricket. He came home for lunch in those days and if the BBC was showing a test match, the telly had to be put on 20 minutes beforehand to heat up. As soon as Dad came in, the first thing he’d ask was how “we” were doing.

Now, “we” could be the West Indies or Australia or Pakistan or basically any country that didn’t include the word “England” in its name.

When I went on my travels much later, I ended up in a house in the gold country of Victoria.

I’d been invited there by a fellow-traveller I’d met en route.

Her father promised a tour of the local sights but first things first, the Ashes were on the TV – England v Australia.

And so I sat in that front room with my new friend and her family and at one point found myself looking at the screen and, without even realising it, uttering the acronym “LBW”. LBW was “leg before wicket”, as Dad would have explained on any number of occasions.

My friend’s father looked over with genuine surprise and what I like to think of as respect. He drove us all over the neighbourhood later that day.

That same trip resulted in me living in Japan for a few years. This was in pre-internet times.

But I had the most up to date technology available – a shortwave radio. And this radio was permanently tuned to the BBC World Service for news and entertainment and drama. And it was while I was pottering around one Saturday morning that I heard a report from Ireland on the upcoming divorce referendum.

And suddenly a familiar voice resonated around my Japanese apartment – that of my brother who was active on the pro-divorce side of the argument.

I stopped what I was doing and stared at the radio. It was as if the world had contracted for that sliver of a moment.

And even now, the BBC has a role in my life.

As a primary teacher, in need of a trustworthy source, I’ll check BBC Education. As a consumer of food, in need of a simple recipe, I’ll check BBC Food. As a TV viewer, in need of a different perspective, I’ll check one or all of the BBC channels.

It’s an institution that hasn’t always got it right. But then nobody’s claiming it has. It’s been there, though. Always there. For as long as anyone can remember.

Here’s hoping that it always will be.

Happy Birthday, BBC!