OTD 1971: Alan Towers reports from Notts County FC

On this Day: March 12th, 1971.

ATV Today Sport reporter Alan Towers visited Notts County football club.

The report features shots of the fourth division club players training on the pitch at Meadow Lane. Alan interviews manager Jimmy Sirrel and player Tony Hateley on how the team are doing.

Alan Towers joined the ATV Sports department from Granada Television in 1970. He had prior to this worked as a newsreader for ITN, who proved the national and international news to ITV. Leaving ATV in late 1971 Alan joined BBC Midlands where he would remain for the rest of his television career, working in both the sport and news departments as a reporter and later the main presenter.

In the 1970s and 80s Alan was also a regular on network BBC news show Nationwide and made guest appearances as a news reporter in Beeb drama Dangerfield. In 1997 after 25 years with Midlands Today he quit live on air, noting:

“For me, this is a personal goodbye because I’m leaving the BBC after 25 years. When I joined the corporation, it was led by giants. Now, I’m afraid it is being led by pygmies in grey suits wearing blindfolds. How sad. But times do change. From me, for the final time, goodbye.”

The ‘pygmies in grey suits’ later controversially closed the BBC Pebble Mill powerhouse of a studio in Birmingham, where in 2004 – despite his earlier comments – Alan returned to bid farewell to the complex. Alan died in 2008 aged 73.