Len Martin

Leonard Martin (17 April 1919 – 21 August 1995) was an Australian-born British classified results reader. He worked in radio broadcasting at Australian radio stations and was known in the United Kingdom for reading out the football results, associated football pools statistics and horse-racing results on the BBC's Saturday afternoon sports programme, Grandstand, from 1958 until the end of the 1994–95 English football season.

Biography Martin was born in Rockhampton in the north of Queensland on 17 April 1919. He was educated at Columban College in Brisbane and spent his apprenticeship at sea with the Blue Star Line when he was a teenager prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Martin made the choice to start a career in commercial radio broadcasting, Martin later moved to Murwillumbah, New South Wales to work at Sydney station 2GB,

In late 1949, Martin joined 2CH in Sydney and became the station's chief night announcer. He was the compere of the evening programme Stump the Experts, and the entertainment programme All Shades of Harmony. In 1953, Martin chose to take a break from Australian broadcasting and he and his wife Cynthia went on a three-month cruise to Europe and saw the Coronation of Elizabeth II. he left mid-way through reading the results during the 9 October 1993 edition because of a sore throat caused by a cold he caught on a visit to Australia and was replaced by Tim Gudgin for the rest of the programme. He was the inventor of the technique of intonation when reading the football scores. It was clear from the way in which Martin 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 football pools results. His tone lowered when there was an home win and rose when there was an away win but was level for a draw.

In addition to his role on Grandstand, Martin was a voice-over artist heard on Movietone and Pathé News newsreels, documentary films and on commercials across the world. and also used to run four flights of stairs at Lime Grove Studios in the late 1960s after Grandstand to introduce Simon Dee's programme, with 'Simon' elongated, in the distinctive manner.

Personal life He and his wife adopted a daughter.