Peter West

Peter Anthony West (12 August 1920 – 2 September 2003) was a British presenter and sports commentator best known for his work on the BBC's cricket, tennis and rugby coverage as well as occasionally commentating on hockey. Throughout his television career he remained freelance. His father, the son of a tobacconist, had made some money in the City of London after the First World War. In 1924, he set himself up as a poultry farmer in Cranbrook, but lost much of his fortune in the European banking crisis of 1931. By 1947, he was stuck in a dead-end job transmitting sports results via telegraph ticker tape. He worked for the BBC for nearly 40 years until retiring in 1986.

In 1956, West interviewed Walter Hurst, a surviving fireman from the steamship Titanic, which sank in April 1912 in the North Atlantic during her maiden voyage. In the program on BBC Television, Hurst described his ordeal and how he survived aboard upturned Collapsible Boat B.

He presented many BBC programmes not connected with sport, including the original version of Come Dancing (1957–72), What's My Line?, and Get Ahead (1958–62), about business entrepreneurs. He was a cricket and rugby correspondent for both The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

During interviews with sportsmen, West was in the habit of using words that were unfamiliar to his interlocutors. On one occasion, speaking to Viv Richards, he said "Viv, your genius transcends parochialism." In 1984, after Jimmy White had won the Masters, he asked White to comment upon the "wonderful ethos which had permeated the final". When White said he was glad he won, West continued to press him about the ethos. Eventually, Terry Griffiths, White's opponent, stepped in and rescued him. When interviewing Arthur Ashe after his famously deft victory over the belligerent Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon final of 1975, he congratulated Ashe on "manifesting a superb tactical acumen". "If you say so Peter!" rejoined a bemused Ashe.

Personal life West married Pauline Pike in 1946, the woman he met in his first job, the one-time secretary to the irascible SSAFA Air Vice Marshal. They had a daughter, Jacqueline, and two sons, Simon and Stephen.

West died from prostate cancer at his home in Combe Down, in Bath, Somerset, on 2 September 2003, aged 83.