Richard John Gwynne (23 April 1945 – 9 July 2022) was an English teacher, sports commentator and reporter. He was best known for his darts commentary, and worked at

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

for twenty years.

Early life

Gwynne was born in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

in 1945 and moved to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

in 1957. He attended Chorlton Grammar School. Upon leaving, he went into teaching, and taught English and was Deputy Housemaster (Fisher) at Moston Brook High School in Manchester.

Broadcasting career

Gwynne was a commentator for the PDC darts tournaments which air on

. He commentated on the first ever PDC World Championship in 1994, and the 2016 World Championship was his last tournament for Sky Sports. Gwynne's first media job was covering speedway at Belle Vue in Manchester for

Piccadilly Radio Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West is an Independent Local Radio station based in Manchester, England, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Greatest Hits Radio Network. It broadcasts to Greater Manchester and North West Eng ...

in 1980. He moved onto local north-west football. Premium-rate telephone information services such as ClubCall gained popularity during the late 1980s and Gwynne worked for a cricket equivalent, "Cricket Call" covering Lancashire County Cricket Club between 1988 and 1991. Alongside darts entrepreneur Dick Allix, they set up a similar darts phoneline service in 1989 called The Darts Line, for which Gwynne provided darts news and tournament updates. Gwynne had commentated on some darts tournaments for regional ITV programmes with

Dave Lanning Dave Lanning (24 March 1938 – 29 October 2016) was an English sports commentator and journalist, best known for his coverage of Professional Darts. He was brought up in Poole and educated at Poole Grammar School. Broadcasting career He was o ...

and when the darts split occurred in 1993 and Sky Sports took up coverage of WDC (later to become the PDC) tournaments, Lanning and Gwynne were chosen as commentators.

Sid Waddell Sid Waddell (10 August 1940 – 11 August 2012) was an English sports commentator and television personality. He was nicknamed the 'Voice of Darts' due to his fame as a darts commentator, and worked for Granada, Yorkshire, BBC and Sky Sports. D ...

was still working with the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Other work

He was also an after-dinner speaker and toastmaster. Gwynne was master of ceremonies at arts exhibitions and ran local darts tournaments in the Manchester area. From the start of the 2019 season, he was the announcer for Lancashire County Cricket Club. He wrote a monthly column, "The Mancunian Way", for ''Darts World Magazine'' (previously titled ''Piccadilly Line'') for 31 years, and at one time was responsible for

ghostwriting A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...

Wayne Mardle Wayne Elliot Mardle (born 10 May 1973) is an English former professional darts player who played in events of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) and British Darts Organisation (BDO). He was runner-up in three PDC majors, losing to Phil ...

's column, "Wayne's World", in the same magazine. He also wrote for north-west newspapers, covering local darts, for nearly thirty years. He gave up both in 2011. Gwynne was chairman of the Manchester Superleague and Manchester Log-End Federation, which he founded in 2003 to save the log-end dartboard from extinction. He worked for the

International Socca Federation The International Socca Federation (ISF) is an organization which sets up the Socca World Cup. It sets up as a governing body for six-a-side football specifically. History Formation The ISF was formed in late 2017 by leading providers of sma ...

as commentator on their Six-a-Side World Cup tournaments. In September 2020, in conjunction with David Mitchell and with a foreword by

Jeff Stelling Robert Jeffrey Stelling (born 18 March 1955) is an English television presenter. He currently presents '' Gillette Soccer Saturday'' for Sky Sports and hosted coverage of the Champions League between 2011 and 2015. He also presented the Chann ...

, Gwynne published a memoir of his football memories, ''Soccer Satisfied''.

Personal life and death

Gwynne's wife, Margaret, predeceased him. His son,

Andrew Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in List of countries where English is an official language, English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is freq ...

, is the Labour MP for Denton and Reddish in

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

. A lifelong fan of

Manchester City F.C Manchester City Football Club are an English football club based in Manchester that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded in 1880 as St. Mark's (West Gorton), they became Ardwick Association Football ...

., he died from cancer on 9 July 2022 at the age of 77.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gwynne, John 1945 births 2022 deaths British association football commentators Darts commentators British sports broadcasters Professional Darts Corporation Hall of Fame People from Shropshire