18 July 2024

By Chris Dodd

Chris Dodd visits the regatta with the ghost of the Voice.

Wandering around at the Henley qualifying races I couldn’t help but remember the ‘Voice of Henley’, Angus Robertson. He glided round the Stewards’ Enclosure as if he had walked out of a ‘Spy’ cartoon – tall, slim, slightly bent – going determinedly about his business.

Angus’s business was to announce races and results over the public address system and to ensure that his team of commentators was as adroit as himself at pronouncing the names of foreign crews. He was also in charge of entries, that is to say, vetting the status of crew members to ensure that they went into the appropriate level of event. This process often led to dispute over fillers-in of entry forms mistakenly, or never let it be said intentionally, attempting to enter, say, the Princess Elizabeth when their season’s competitive record indicated that the loftier level of the Ladies’ Plate was both suitable and required.

This process often involves foreign crews, which is one reason why some of the venerable stewards’ silver badge holders at the regatta hail from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. They are charged with monitoring status. Angus, though, harboured vast numbers of curiosities and coincidences about people who come to Henley to row. In a few years of checking entries, he accumulated a giant vestibule and a mausoleum of names and initials and records of when they previously competed in which challenge cup and with what result. And he was stuffed with revelations about Tristram So-and-So being the third cousin of Colonel Tufften ‘Twinkle Toes’ Bufften and the fifth generation of So-and-So/Tuftten-Bufftens to race in the Goblets.

At the regatta Angus – known to the Stewards as ‘Regatta Standard’ and to the punters as the ‘Voice of Henley’ – would impeccably pronounce unpronounceable names such as these culled from this year’s programme. And he kept it up for a week:

Ruder-Club-Havel Brandenburg e. V. and Hellenberger Ruderklub 1872 e. V. Germany.

Koninklijke Amsterdamsche Roei-en Zeilvereeniging ‘De Hoop’, Netherlands.

Ruder-Klub Normannia Braunschweig e.V. and Sportclub Magdeburg e.V. Abteilung Rudern, Germany.

Sõudekeskus Kalev and Pärnu Sõudeklubi, Estonia.

On finals day in 2024, the most recurring name for commentators to get their vowels around was Oxford Brookes University.

Angus was brought to mind by conversations on the towpath and by HTBS’s excellent obituary of the Voice of Henley by Mark Blandford-Baker (not to be confused with the late Martin Brandon-Bravo whose initials he shared and who in his time as chairman of the Amateur Rowing Association was nicknamed ‘B Squared’.

For journalists like myself, the thesaurus in Angus’s memory was of little use if he kept it locked away in his head. There came a point, however, when he realised that his privileged knowledge of the minutiae on Henley Reach brought him no notoriety if it stuck there. I found that when I strolled past his lair on pre-race days his door was open and, surrounded by thick record books of entries, he would usher me in and share a couple of secrets, plus the phone number of the coach or the landlady where the subject was staying.

Hence I and some colleagues became party to some human stories behind the entries which enabled us to write more colourful reports. The 2024 Henley, the Last Year of Our Knight, had everything – sun and heat, downpours and showers, record entries and heaving crowds. Sir Steve Redgrave was enjoying his last year as chairman of the management committee.

Sir Steve’s time in the chair maintained the regatta’s high standard of facilities and organisation, and there is no reason to believe that it won’t continue under the new chairman, Richard Phelps, who has been shadowing Redgrave for the last two years.

In tents and about the town the sense of ‘no change’ since the first regatta in 1839 persists, but the official outlets for souvenirs, Pimm’s, beer and fizz have surely increased in size and turnover during the Redgrave years, years that have also seen the competition stretch to six days and every race broadcast from start to finish on the regatta’s Youtube channel.

A subtle change in the daily programme is discernible while you are studying form when devouring an athlete-size excellent breakfast or dinner in the café by the Boat Tent. Under the name of each challenge cup is a line of tiny type informing you of the status of the people rowing in it. There is plenty of opportunity for confusion among the 26 challenge cups, but a bit of study in the hallowed pages of Angus Robertson Land will save you non-rowers from falling into the trap of thinking that the Ladies’ Plate is for women and the Prince Philip is for men.

There was one innovation this year. Accredited journalists were issued with HRR photo press passes to hang round their necks in addition to the traditional discrete cardboard badges that admit them to the box on stilts in the river from where they can see straight down the course (and is the only place from where you can see onto the Stewards’ private lawn and observe whom they are entertaining).

The backside of my press pass says that it should be worn and visible at all times ‘when on duty’, and I am ‘expected to adhere to the dress code associated with your accreditation at all times’. Stay vigilante, snappers and scribblers, or they’ll be telling us what to shoot and what to write next. Although I think that these are catch-all items for the secretary to distribute to his army of volunteer car park keepers and errand runners.

One item of good news in Henley which is close to my heart, though not directly related to the regatta, is the revival of activity at the River & Rowing Museum which is celebrating its 25th birthday. It is undergoing refreshment and refurbishment and has put together an Olympic exhibition to mark Henley’s historic role in the games tied in with next month’s meet in Paris.

I encourage everyone in rowing to seek opportunities to visit and support the museum and its energetic director, Steve O’Connor. It has significant collections, including a unique flotilla of boats, and a massive archive put together in a quarter of a century. It contains the heritage of our sport, and we founders built it for you!

The museum is also involved with issues concerning the environment and health of the River Thames. Henley is one of the most E. coli-polluted flows according to studies published just before the regatta. So, it is good to see that the Stewards have again supported a post-regatta clean-up in conjunction with schools and environmental and community campaigners. And the Stewards continue to pour money from their charity into ‘grass roots’ schemes throughout the country to close the rowing gap between state and independent schools and create opportunities for those who may live close to necessary assets such as rowable water but have been unable to go afloat until now. Schemes supported by the Stewards are afoot in Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Warrington to name some.

Well, that’s enough of Henley 2024. It has been entertaining to be there with the ghost of Angus, the ‘Regatta Standard’ and the ‘Voice of Henley’, a good fellow armed with ephemera to keep the show on the road in the correct nomenclature. There is one thing that Mark Blandford-Baker left out of Angus’s obituary, however. The giveaway is the magnificent caricature by the late genius cartoonist, Keith Ticehurst, that accompanied Mark’s piece on HTBS. Angus was born with a prominent proboscis that any Roman would have been proud of. So, the Henley press corps nicknamed him, affectionately, ‘Angus Hooter’. RIP.