John Snagge

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John Derrick Mordaunt Snagge OBE (8 May 1904 – 25 March 1996) was a long-time and well-known British newsreader and commentator on BBC Radio. He was educated at Winchester College, a famous boys' independent school in Winchester, Hampshire, in southern England.

He joined the BBC in 1924 after graduating from Pembroke College, Oxford, taking up the position of Assistant Director at Stoke-on-Trent's newly-founded local radio station. He broadcast his first sports commentary (of a Hull City versus Stoke City football match) in January 1927, after the BBC obtained the rights to cover major sporting events.

In 1928, Snagge was transferred to London to work as one of the BBC's main announcers alongside Stuart Hibberd. From 1931 until 1980, he commentated on the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, once uttering the memorable line "I can't see who's in the lead, but it's either Oxford or Cambridge." He provided commentary for the coronation of King George VI in 1937 and again in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

At the start of World War II, Snagge was made the BBC's Presentation Director and thereafter delivered many important radio announcements as the war unfolded. By the time of the D-Day landings in 1944, he was presenting the magazine programme War Report which featured regular news updates from the beaches of Normandy.

In the early 1950s, Snagge played a key role in the negotiations that led to the ground-breaking radio comedy series The Goon Show being commissioned by the BBC. He subsequently provided many self-parodying announcements for the show, usually pre-recorded. Later, in the 1970s, he would echo his original wartime role by appearing as the Newsreader in the radio version of Dad's Army.

Snagge retired in 1965, but continued to provide commentaries for the Boat Race until 1980. Around this time he also appeared on Noel Edmonds' Radio 1 show on Sunday mornings, a role subsequently taken up by Brian Perkins.

John Snagge died in 1996, aged 91.