John Helm (sportscaster)

John Helm (born 1942) is a commentator from Baildon, near Bradford, with over 25 years of network television experience, mainly with ITV. Now he is the voice of international broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup and other events. Helm has also frequently covered other sports - in the main golf, cricket and particularly rugby league both for ITV and other broadcasters.

After working his way up through local and national newspapers, where he began his journalistic career in 1959, he broke into broadcasting on BBC Radio Leeds and was chosen from a number of local radio broadcasters to cover the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, New Zealand. After this, he joined national BBC Radio Sport, then broadcast mainly on Radio 2's old medium wave frequencies now used by Five Live. This association ended in 1981 with a move back to his native county and ITV company Yorkshire Television, replacing Martin Tyler as the regional station's football commentator. At the end of his first season he was rewarded with a berth on the ITV team for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, covering all of Scotland's matches and the second round group featuring Italy, Brazil and Argentina.

When ITV's regional system of football coverage was largely abolished in 1983, Helm found himself fourth in the network pecking order covering matches for The Big Match and Midweek Sports Special. Martin Tyler and Peter Brackley were chosen above him to cover the 1984 European Championships in France - Brian Moore headed for South America to cover the concurrent England tour of the continent.

In 1985 Helm experienced what was undeniably his most traumatic broadcast. Despatched to his native Bradford on the final day of the Division Three season for their promotion party against Lincoln, he witnessed - and broadcast live to the nation - the awful fire that caused the deaths of 56 football supporters.

Helm was subsequently part of the ITV team at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico - he covered a number of key live games including two of Scotland's matches and a second round meeting between World Champions Italy and European Champions France.

ITV won exclusive rights to live Football League coverage in 1988, but Helm was not to provide commentary on any of their games during the four-year contract. He was confined to highlights while the likes of Brian Moore, Alan Parry and Martin Tyler dominated the scene. He did however feature prominently in the ITV team at the 1990 and 1994 World Cups - covering a semi-final at USA '94.

After 1992, when ITV lost the rights to top flight English football, Helm was at least a regular voice of live football. For the following four years he covered live matches for Yorkshire TV, LWT and Granada as they carried coverage of the lower leagues. He also continued his network commitments covering live and recorded European football in the early years of the Champions League.

ITV confined him to a minor role at Euro '96 in England and the arrival of Peter Drury in 1998 meant that he had no part to play in the network's coverage of that year's World Cup in France. From there on his ITV work was restricted to recorded highlights in the Yorkshire region, but Helm branched out as a freelancer. International audiences heard him regularly on broadcasts of both the English Premier League and the Champions League. He also featured briefly on British Eurosport.

In 2002 FIFA recruited him as one of their commentators for the World Cup in Korea/Japan. Mainly from the comfort of the International Broadcasting Centre he covered 39 of the 64 matches. It is a role he has reprised at the tournament in Germany in 2006 and several other FIFA events. In addition to this, Helm cultivated a niche role for himself as five's chief football commentator. Their ad-hoc coverage of UEFA Cup ties and the occasional international ensured that Helm had clocked up a quarter of a century of national TV broadcasting in Britain.

John is a life long Bradford (Park Avenue) fan. He is currently an Associate Director at the club.

Trivia

*Helm was able to recite the names of the 92 Football League clubs in a rapid-fire time of around 26 seconds. [http://tv.cream.org/extras/timecapsule/ark90s2.htm]

*When asked if he could go to any match any where with no expense spared he replied "Oh that's easy - Kettering v Kidderminster on a damp cold November night -that's what football is really all about"