Dickie Davies, who was the face of ITV sports coverage for nearly two decades, has passed away at the age of 94. The celebrity-hosted the Saturday afternoon program World of Sport from the 1960s through 1985.
The show, which featured a variety of live sports like horse racing, wrestling, and soccer results, competed with the BBC’s Grandstand.
Former ITV colleague Jim Rosenthal made the announcement, stating that Davies’ family was “very proud” of his “great television career.”
“Dickie was a wonderful coworker and friend. RIP DD, “he added.
Simon Thomas, a fellow sports broadcaster, paid tribute to Davies, calling him a “business titan.”
Additional condolences have poured in from fellow sports broadcasters, including Sky Sports’ Jeff Stelling, who grew up watching Davies on World of Sport and described him as “one of my inspirations along with sports broadcasting legend Des Lyman.”
The BBC’s Gabby Logan referred to him as “one of the very finest,” while Richard Keys stated that the passing of a “gentleman and excellent broadcaster” marked the “end of an era.”
Mark Pougatch, a football commentator for ITV, put it succinctly on Twitter: “Ach, Dickie Davies. The remainder of us follows in the steps of giants. RIP.”
Davies, a native of Cheshire, began his television career as an announcer for Southern Television in 1960, after spending seven years as a purser for Cunard Line.
In 1968, he replaced Eamonn Andrews as the host of the ITV program World of Sport, for which he had previously served as an understudy.
Every Saturday, he presided over a five-hour TV marathon, leading coverage of a wide array of sports, including numerous minority activities never before shown on television.
It was a time before round-the-clock sports channels engaged in billion-pound fights for sports broadcasting rights. In May, Davies led ITV’s all-day buildup to the FA Cup final, which at the time was one of the few live football matches televised throughout the season.
Also, he contributed to ITV’s coverage of the three Olympic Games.
Notable World of Sports episodes includes the Christmas Eve special from 1977, in which comedian Eric Morecambe performed a series of distracting sketches while Davies hosted the program.
At one point, the pair engaged in a game of snooker, with Morecambe balancing his cue with Davies’ head.
Davies’ bushy mustache and dark hair with a white stripe in the front made him one of the most recognizable and imitated ITV performers of the day.
His most improbable claim to fame occurred in 1986 when Half Man Half Biscuit paid tribute to him in their song Dickie Davies Eyes.
During his early years in the World of Sport, he had an unexpected sideline: he had invested a portion of his TV earnings in a pub called the Globe in Andover, Hampshire, where he was occasionally spotted working behind the bar on Saturday evenings, barely hours after broadcasting to millions of viewers.
At the conclusion of World of Sport in 1985, Davies remained at ITV as a broadcaster for an additional four years until accepting a new position as sports editor at Classic FM.
His speech was severely impaired by a stroke in 1995, which drove him off the air while he slowly recovered.
Later, he returned intermittently to the screen for a number of events, including ITV’s 2005 50th anniversary of World of Sport and certain Sky Sports programs.
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