Brian Scovell - Learie: The Man Who Broke The Colour Bar

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

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Copyright 2021 Brian Scovell

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ISBN 9781913913571

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A host of good people helped me to write the story of this remarkable, decent man Learie Constantine. First Solly Chandler, the sports editor of the now defunct Daily Sketch in early 1963. He wasnt a cricket fan and probably he hadnt heard of Learie but he knew the sports writer Reg Hayter, who launched a sport agency with his name. Reg ghost wrote Denis Comptons columns in 1947 when the Middlesex player scored 3,816 runs and eighteen centuries, records that have never been bettered. He was inundated with letters and asked Reg if could he take charge of it. The absent minded Compton (1918-1997) was my first cricketing hero and got to know him well when I started writing for the Daily Sketch.

Reg knew Bagenal Harvey, one of the first sporting agents, and recommended him to sign up Compton. The exotically named Bagenal was named after the United Irish Republican commander Beauchamp Bagenal Havey who led the Irish against the British Army in 1798 in the battle of New Ross. Bagenal had lots of critics because cricket lovers thought agents were dodgy people and some newspapers labelled him Mr X including the Sketch.

Reg introduced him to Learie who had just resigned as the first High Commissioner of Trinidad and Tobago in Britain and needed extra income to complete his training as a barrister. If Compton hadnt become famous through the selling expertise of Bagenal Learie wouldnt have become the Daily Sketchs first cricket analyst. There were posters all over the country advertising Brylcreem using Comptons picture. Half the male population used Brylcreem for a while.

I got to know all these people and they were fine men.

The next person to be mentioned was my late wife Audrey who soon became friends of Learie and Lady Norma and they became godparents of my daughter Louise in 1967. Audreys parents were Lucy OSullivan, a much loved Welsh lady with nine children and an inventor Irishman Eric OSullivan. The children grew up in India and they made an early start to understand diversity.

After Learie sadly died at the age of sixty nine in 1971, and soon Norma died in the following year, we went to see their only child, the Hon Gloria Valere and his lawyer husband Andre. They were lovely, talented people and their son Maurice, a lawyer and his family were equally impressive. I thank them sincerely for their memories of Learie and Norma.

My final dedication is to my family. When the beautiful Audrey, an etcher of the Royal Academy, died on Christmas Day 2000 I wrote an article in the Daily Mail about my psychic experiences following her departure. Lots of ladies wrote to me and one, Gillian wrote a wonderful, heart warming letter. Her husband John died at the same age as Audrey 58 of the same disease, cancer of the liver. Gill has six sisters and Audrey had the same number and her grave grave is 250ms across the road. Gill, a former head mistress, is making our lives happy and contented.

The first aspect one noticed of the Baron Learie Nicholas Constantine of Maraval in Trinidad and Tobago and Nelson in the Palatine of Lancaster was his laugh. He was a truly happy man whose guffaw outdid most peoples and a glimpse of his shoulders and his chest heaving was a memorable sight. Once seen, never forgotten.

He had a wonderful sense of humour and on my many visits to Trinidad and most of the Caribbean islands since 1967 I soon realised his humour was a major plus of the Afro-Caribbean people. Learie was descended from slaves in Africa and with many dying en route in inhuman conditions the survivors needed some relief when they landed. And when the exodus to Great Britain after WW2 began they needed to smile and hold their heads high. Learie soon became a torch-bearer for his people, in hard times.

I was lucky enough to spend five summers between 19659 as cricket correspondent of the Daily Sketch working with him. He took over from Jim Laker, who had a four-year stint; Jim wrote his own copy and, later on, phoned it over to the Sketch . Solly Chandler, the sports editor of the Sketch , had little knowledge of cricket and his successor, Scotsman Bob Findlay, also from the Daily Express , knew marginally more. They relied on the advice of Keith Miller, the great Australian all-rounder, and Bagenal Harvey, the Irishman who acted as agent of Denis Compton. Both thought Learie would shake up the cautious English players whose main aim in life was to qualify for a benefit. He did but it took fifty years before they got the message, with Andrew Strauss, the now ECB Director, telling them to be more aggressive in 2016.

Findlay signed up Keith Nugget Miller to write a cricketing column when he was sports editor of the Daily Express and Keith used to give him horse-racing tips. Most of them proved to be costly mistakes. The flamboyant Miller often arrived at matches after lunch and the other journalists had to supply him the facts about the first two or three hours of play. Before the close of play he had phoned his 400 words and was ready to go off to see a beautiful lady companion, not one, but many. He was a true cricketing Casanova.

Learie wrote six books, mainly about advising young people how to play cricket, and was able to write a good article himself but he recognised that the Sketch had an earlier first edition than all the other national newspapers and speed was essential. At tea intervals in Test matches he gave his opinions about the happenings of the day who was at fault and who was doing a good job. It was trenchant stuff enough, but true and honest.

He was trained in his youth to type at a fast pace and so was I. He was happy to leave the writing of his 500 or so words to me. Half an hour later I would hand the corrected copy to a phonist who dictated the words to a copytaker at Carmelite House off Fleet Street, the headquarters of the Sketch , which had one of the best views of the Thames on Victoria Embankment. The dark and dingy Daily Mail was hidden away sixty metres back, also owned by Associated Newspapers.

Learie wasnt making a fortune at the time and was grateful for the rather modest amount of money from the Sketch . I was his chauffeur as well as his ghost. Earlier in his career he owned cars but living in a high-rise block of flats in Kendall Court on the Edgware Road he dispensed with a car. He was the ideal passenger and the hours spent together before motorways the 193-mile-long M1 was being built from 1959 to 1968 were like sitting alongside an eminent university lecturer who specialised in imparting knowledge about the game of cricket. I learned so much from him.