Leonard Martin (17 April 1919 – 21 August 1995) was an Australian results reader. He was known in the UK for reading out the

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

results, associated

football pools In the United Kingdom, the football pools, often referred to as "the pools", is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking place in the coming week. The pools are typically cheap to enter, and may encou ...

statistics and horse-racing results on the BBC's Saturday afternoon sports programme, ''

Grandstand A grandstand is a normally permanent structure for seating spectators. This includes both auto racing and horse racing. The grandstand is in essence like a single section of a stadium, but differs from a stadium in that it does not wrap a ...

''. Martin was born in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

where he began his broadcasting career. He came to England on holiday in 1953 for the

Coronation A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a coronation crown, crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the ...

and received a call from the BBC the day before he was due to sail for Australia. He never used his return ticket home, and only twice went back to Australia in 1983 and 1993, on holiday. He performed his role on ''Grandstand'' from the programme's very first edition in 1958 until his death in 1995. Martin was well known for his intonation when reading the scores. It was clear from the way in which he presented the home or away team name, followed by number of goals, whether the result was a home win, an away win, a no-score draw or a score draw; this was important for the

results. He was succeeded by Tim Gudgin who also used the distinct BBC intonation. In addition to his role on ''Grandstand'', Martin was a voice-over artist heard on Movietone newsreels. He also used to run four flights of stairs at

Lime Grove Studios Lime Grove Studios was a film, and later television, studio complex in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England. The complex was built by the Gaumont Film Company in 1915. It was situated in Lime Grove, a residential street in Shepherd's Bush, and ...

in the late 1960s after ''Grandstand'' to introduce

Simon Dee Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd (28 July 1935 – 29 August 2009), better known by his stage name Simon Dee, was a British television interviewer and radio disc jockey who hosted a twice-weekly BBC TV chat show, ''Dee Time'', in the late 1960s. Aft ...

's programme, with 'Simon' elongated, in the distinctive manner.

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Death date
1919 births 1995 deaths British sports broadcasters Australian emigrants to England {{UK-tv-bio-stub