Tom Fordyce

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tom Fordyce is a former BBC Sport journalist.[1] He wrote text commentaries on cricket and tennis, also writing features on various other sports and blogging from a number of different events.[2]

Born into great wealth, Fordyce attended Westminster School, where he was a prefect. After graduating from Girton College, Cambridge, he started his career as a features writer on Total Sport magazine and as a writer on the Sported magazine. Both magazines are now defunct due to low sales, although not primarily as a result of his articles.[3]

In 2007 he "blogged my way round the Rugby World Cup in a camper van" with BBC colleague Ben Dirs. He drove 4,500 miles around France whilst producing written and video diaries of the matches and interactions they had during the 44-day tournament.[3]

In 2008 he covered the Beijing Olympics on a number of different sports. Fordyce also acted as ghost writer for the newspaper columns of a number of athletes while at the games. He is a fan of medieval French poetry and 15th-century Korean pottery, of which he owns an extensive collection and has loaned items to the British Museum. His contributions for the Olympics also included experiments to observe how well he could run in the Beijing smog, and he also "road tested" the new Speedo swimsuit for "groinal roominess".[4]

Fordyce competes in many sports, and is an amateur triathlete, mountain climber, parkour runner, and sky diver. He won the Upton Classic Triathlon in July 2007 and has climbed Mount Everest with a broken arm.[5]

In June 2009 Fordyce published his first book entitled We Could Be Heroes: One Van, Two Blokes and Twelve World Championships with Dirs, charting the madcap escapades that resulted from trying to become the world champion in something.[6][7]

Fordyce was the ghostwriter of Peter Crouch's book, How to Be a Footballer.[8] He is co-host of That Peter Crouch Podcast, with Peter Crouch and Chris Stark.[9] He is also co-host of the history podcast "We Didn't Start The Fire (podcast)" with Katie Puckrik.[10]

In June 2020, Fordyce left his post as chief sports writer at the BBC to “take up an opportunity in podcasting”.[1]

References[]

  1. ^ a b "BBC's chief sports writer leaving after two decades". Prolific North. 1 June 2020. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  2. ^ "Live blogging Big Brother: A new take on journalism or mindless rubbish?". Press Gazette. 11 June 2007. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
  3. ^ a b Fordyce, Tom (1 March 2008). "About Tom Fordyce". BBC. Retrieved 2009-12-26.
  4. ^ Fordyce, Tom (16 October 2008). "Olympics Blog". BBC. Retrieved 2009-12-26.
  5. ^ "Athlete History for Tom Fordyce". StuWeb. Retrieved 2009-12-26.
  6. ^ We Could Be Heroes: One Van, Two Blokes and Twelve World Championships (paperback ed.). Pan Macmillan. 2009. p. 256. ISBN 978-0230736153.
  7. ^ We Could Be Heroes (Unabridged ed.). Pan Macmillan. 2010. p. 320. ISBN 978-0330517386.
  8. ^ "How to be a Footballer by Peter Crouch". NBMagazine. 20 February 2019. Retrieved 2020-01-18.
  9. ^ "That Peter Crouch Podcast". BBC. Retrieved 2020-01-18.
  10. ^ "We Didn't Start the Fire: The History Podcast on Apple Podcasts".

External links[]

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