Legendary Australian commentator Tony Charlton has died after a battle with bowel cancer.
Tony Charlton, pictured here in 2008. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis Source: Herald Sun
TONY Charlton wanted to be a Test cricketer but discovered early that he wasn't good enough at playing sport to make it his calling, so he decided to talk about it instead.
Excellent decision. In that role there may never have been anyone better in Australia.
That's a big call because there have been many eminent sports broadcasters, but Charlton's versatile professionalism behind a microphone - on TV, radio or simply in front of a live audience - earned him enormous respect and a list of official accolades probably unequalled in his field.
He was 83 when he lost his battle with bowel cancer, having been in the sports media since his first job as an office boy with 3AW in 1949.
From that humble but appropriate start - his father was also a broadcaster and was able to get him started - he was quickly embraced by an industry soon to be revolutionised by the arrival of television and its capacity to make stars of storytellers.
After stints in radio and advertising, he joined Channel Nine for the first major TV event in Australia, the 1956 Olympic Games.
Afterwards, he became Channel Seven's first football commentator before returning to Nine for 11 years as producer and presenter of footy shows and other entertainment.
Turning his professional attention to his favourite game, golf, he was promoter and tournament director of the Australian Open, the PGA Championship and the Victorian Open from 1970 to 1983. He was also a restauranteur and a pilot.
He covered three Olympics and two Commonwealth Games for TV as well as tennis champion Rod Laver's second Grand Slam in 1969, track stars John Landy and Herb Elliott breaking the four-minute mile and racing driver Jack Brabham winning the world championship.
Tony Charlton inducted into AFL Hall of Fame
In more recent years, he did a weekend interview program on 3AW and has been a much-sought master of ceremonies at important functions, especially at the Melbourne Cricket Club.
He gave his time generously to a long list of charitable causes - he served at length as chairman of the Alfred Hospital Foundation, where he was treated when his cancer was diagnosed - and was the voice of Anzac Day.
These and many other involvements resulted in an OAM and a AM, induction into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the AFL Hall of Fame, and the Order of Merit from both the Australian Olympic Committee and the Melbourne Cricket Club.
He was extremely good at what he did in many ways - a meticulous researcher armed with an enormous array of contacts and admirers and a distinctive speaking voice of perfect clarity. Interviewing the stars was a forte.
He expertly blew other people's trumpets but never his own, torpedoing plans others had hatched for a major celebration when he turned 80. "He was much happier celebrating other people's achievements and milestones," his long-time friend and media contemporary Harry Gordon said.
"He was thoughtful, caring, courteous, modest and abundantly generous."
When he began all those years ago, Charlton couldn't believe his luck that his career was unfolding in sync with the best footballer he ever saw, Essendon's John Coleman.
"To call Coleman was the best experience for any broadcaster, given he was so spectacular," he recalled. "I called him when he kicked his 100th goal in 1950.
"Has there ever been a more exciting footballer?"
That will long be debated. As will whether there has ever been a better broadcaster than Tony Charlton.
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