Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. A cast to way today is a man what's described as a moral re-armour of sport.

For the past 40 years he's devoted his life to teaching it to athletes,

preaching its virtues to the public,

and commentating on it with the BBC. He's also been unafraid to reveal the problems of modern sports,

such as racism, violence, the use of drugs and shamaturism

in a way which has made him an important and outspoken figure.

And he is Ron Pickering.

Ron, welcome to your Desert Ireland.

What about your passion for sport?

Did that start as a very young man?

Yes it did.

I guess when I was a kid in school in the East End of London growing up.

The lack of facilities, the fact that we, you know, we did the high jump in the school playground

on a fiber mat and we didn't have any grass and we had to make facilities. That was part of it.

Plus the fact that most of the PE teachers had got off to the war, so by the time I was in the

sixth form of the grammar school I was running junior school PE and I was always

the teacher and the coach rather than the before

although I did make Victor Ladoram at the all-round champion of the school at the same time as my

present wife was Vittrix Lidoram except that she made it five years running from

13 right the way through. She was unbeatable and it just astonished me you know how

...