As a self-confessed football and comms geek it was difficult not to feel a bit star struck when I logged into a zoom call this week and saw the name ‘Clive Tyldesley’ on screen…

With a career as successful as his – commentating on 17 Champions League finals and covering six World Cups, to name a couple of achievements – it was easy to feel a bit out of place on the other end of the call, but a quick exchange before the recording started eased off any nerves.

One of the many reasons why Clive Tyldesley is such a well-loved commentator is because of his friendly nature… the feeling that you’d “love to have a pint with that guy”, and after 30 seconds on the phone to him, that comforting feeling was there in abundance.

Any “fan-boy” nerves on my part were cast aside and the opportunity to ask him as many questions in the space of an hour was one that I was going to make the most of.

But first – a gift! Clive had gone out of his way to send over an amazing piece of artwork. It was a framed commentary chart from his coverage of the 2005 Champions League Final – AC Milan vs Liverpool if you need reminding.

Having recently become a freelance broadcaster – he’s been exploring some new opportunities, one of which, by the popular demand of fans, has been to start sharing some of his work – and with that, www.commentarycharts.com was born. A truly unique (and low-cost!) way to immortalise football games that mean the most to you – go and check out the website.

As a budding communicator in the world of sport, I could’ve listened to his stories all day… but we managed to cram quite a lot into an hour – listen below to hear about how he got into football commentary, his highlights in the game, his favourite players to commentate on, his work with Rangers TV, his early experiences in the cauldron of Scottish football and much, much more.

- Thomas Nicoll

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