http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv_idtcK1-E

Many televised sports are now associated with theme tunes. Think of Test Match Cricket’s Carribean-style  Soul Limbo and Formula 1 motor racing’s The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. But I’ll eat my hat if anyone can find a more enduring one than that which has been played by BBC radio every Saturday at 5pm since January 1948.

Again today Hubert Bath’s 1931 march Out of the Blue was dutifully trotted out. There was almost a riot earlier this year when the Beeb messed up and got it wrong, and they had to placate the civilised world by playing it an hour later.

And can any sporting theme evoke such memories? Even today it conjours up for me the taste and smell of boiled eggs and brown bread, presumably our normal Saturday tea when I was a child in the 50s/60s.

And a little later I started attending matches at St Andrews, home of Birmingham City. In those days the majority of supporters would travel to and from the ground by public transport. Games would finish around 4.45 and everyone would head for the buses. Some of the crowd owned a transistor radio and, as 5 o’clock neared, each would gather a flock of followers eager to hear the football results that followed straight on from the theme tune. Frustration invariably followed unless you were lucky enough to be getting on the same bus as the radio man!

Most people have a tune or two that takes them back many years in an instant. Maybe that dance tune that transports you back to an otherwise-forgotten holiday. The number you chose for the first dance at your wedding. The one that was playing at a special moment in your life. I’d like to hear about those.