Chris Dodd On Bert And Dickie, 1948

Bow: Matt Smith as Bert & Stroke: Sam Hoare as Dickie

I think many of us, rowers and rowing writers and historians, are eagerly waiting for BBC’s film Bert and Dickie. Greg Denieffe, one in the crew here at HTBS, pointed me in the direction of a BBC radio clip which was first broadcasted on 5 March 2010, a month after British Olympian Champion Bert Bushnell died. In the slightly more than 4-minute clip, rowing writer and historian Chris Dodd is being interviewed by Matthew Bannister about Bert’s and Dickie’s 1948 Olympic success in the double sculls. By that time, the script for Bert and Dickie was already under way, but the clip is a splendid reminder why the combination of Bert and Dickie was so unique at the end of the 1940s.

Greg writes, ‘Spot the error at the beginning when talking about Redgrave in 1984!’ [Redgrave took his first Olympic gold medal in 1984 in the coxed four – not the coxless four!]

To go to the broadcast, please click here.