Nick Powell: Sky Sports News reflects 29 years with Sky and 43 in live broadcast on eve of retirement

After 29 years with Sky and 43 in the live broadcast, Nick Powell will stop the microphone later this week, and retires on his sixty -sixth birthday. Familiar face to each of the viewers of Sky Sports and Sky News over the years, Nick reflects the profession of making stories and breaking them …

Ren my phone at 5.40 am on a vacation in Sicily.

The fee editor was in Sky News.

Muhammad Ali died. As a sports editor, you needed directly on the air at 6 am.

I am still in Bejamati, I traveled to the coast in search of a better reception in my sleeping mind for my best thoughts about the greatest boxing legend.

I also remembered, at the same time I was in the same room, a decade ago, when his presence was just the presence of electricity.

I was on the air in one minute: “Let’s get the ideas of our sports editor Nick Powell …”

Goodness, master and surrealism …

There is my job in a nutshell: unrelated holiday; Knowledge, power and basic fast reactions.

I have built all of this over 43 years of live broadcast, good and bad.

The Good – Being there in the first ashes of men in England in 20 years in The OVAL in 2005, on the superior Saturday at the 2012 London Olympics and Wimbledon Triumph for the year 2013.

The Bad – The Bradford Fire, The HillsBorough Caraster and the early loss of athletes such as Gary Speed.

And The Surreal – Displacement with Archbishop Desconto Toto and covers the Bruce Springsteen party on the same day for Yorkshire TV, or an explanation of the hundred viewers of Sky Gemeny viewers. In German.

I never wanted to be on television. When I was a child, my dreams were in a profession on the radio, partly due to – at the time – it was much faster.

Yes, we had to modify the interviews we had on Pennine Radio in Bradford by cutting the registration bar with a haircut (not many injuries, but modern health and safety would have been appropriate!).

But with a little crime and imagination, you can happen, quickly.

I was in Leeds United Vs Norwich City in 1985, where the fog was very dense, and it was unable to get out of the far side of the stadium from the radio suspension position in the press box, with the 18 yard line.

Steve Grenal was commenting. I was only there because my game in Bradford has been postponed due to water skiing. But I had a Benser Benser’s mobile phone – larger and heavier brick.

So I prepared myself in a backup seat at the other end of the pregnant woman, and Steve delivered the comment on each other while the ball turned from half of my fog to mines.

When I joined the Yorkshire TV in 1986, everything looked a lot.

The four -wheeled news crew at Grimsby is still releasing their stories on an old -style movie, whose bicycles were 80 miles for a LEDS specialized laboratory for development, then participated in studios, where the liberation was hard.

Regardless of the size of the story in Grimsby, if this happens after lunch time, there will be no pictures on the TV until the next day.

Any live broadcast from the site requires the fully external broadcasting unit for furniture removal.

Skip thousands of hours from providing Sky SPORTS and Sky News, and we can “go directly” in a drop of hat, from anywhere you want, often with anything more complicated than a mobile phone.

Even in 2007, at the World Cup for Rajabi in Paris, she managed to present part of a direct program from a bus while traveling around the Eiffel Tower. As you do.

I was on a routine day at the Sky News SPORTS office on Wednesday when someone told me that I was on a 7.35 am from Heathrow the next day to present sports bulletins from Paris in the period before the final on Saturday.

From the support law to the anchor

England lost to South Africa. I was on a site in front of the camera after the match, expecting the rugby game in or near the Sky News summit in Ten.

Connected by Talkback to the studio in London, at 9:58 pm, I heard the product walking to the exhibition and told the director there: “Nick Powell will present the entire news in Ten, Live from Paris.”

“Do you know that?” Inquire about the director, almost calmly.

“No, I’m about to tell him.”

I go out six titles. The producer, Ronan Hughes, insisted on reading them again.

Wise step. I can only decode four of the six parts of the scribble. After thirty seconds, we were on the air. No Otocoi, no screen to check the photos. Ronan kept talking to me through what would have come after that, and I was on my way within a soft half an hour. Live and immediately from the heart of a big story.

It is that knowledge and experience again.

But as with everything on TV, he only worked because of the team’s strength.

A few months ago, I was a female header live on the FA Cup final (Chelsea against Manchester United) at the new Wembley Stadium.

We got the technical processors on our status on a hotel roof with a great view of the new scene and its iconic arc, which was designed by Norman Foster.

Lord Foster brought to our “our” ceiling. We crossed the electricity -enhanced point and there was a stadium. The great architect, there with his wife, stopped his paths. “amazing!” shake. I knew we found a great view.

Earlier that day, another surreal moment.

The hotel gave us a bedroom on the upper floor as our base for today, and I found myself sitting on a double bed with our product, camera player, Chelsea defensive legend Ron “Chopper” Harris, comedian David Badel and his brother Evor (both Chelsea fans), and Nile Ashton from Daily Mail.

“The sparkle of television.” I can’t tell you how many times I uttered this phrase through the exciting teeth, while I was feeling passed in the Ryder Cup, or winds in Wimbledon or frozen in football.

But of course, everything was worth it.

For the intimate friendship of colleagues, raising “presence there”, which is a sensation in digging a direct program from a hole by maintaining calm and the ability to speak without a Otocoic or notes.

And he made people laugh, perfectly, but I finished several times on “it will be good at night” and took out the other side.

The concession to present iconic offers such as private football.

Broadcasting from amazing places – Anfield, Lord, Royal Tron, deck of HMS Ark Royal, Sydney Opera House, and inside Buckingham Palace.

And the discovery in the past ten years in Sky that speaking the German language is fluently beneficial.

I was in Munich several times on the day of the deadline as a guest in Germany’s production in Sky, as the German speaker’s summary with a British perspective.

Don’t say “no” to Fergie

People often ask about difficult interviews. Very few. Even those pre -warned, from Sir Alex Ferguson to Princess Ann and theater writer Alan Bennett, can be charming if you play it properly.

Of course, Fergie was not always. But he once gave me an interview with a touch that I really did not want. Believe it or not, I wanted Cleiton Blackmore (who just scored the only goal in Sheffield United). We will get the great man himself later. But in the turmoil, he collected a finger to say “in one minute”, after which he presented himself in front of the camera. We did not send it away.

There is a different type of difficult interview – the person who will not stop.

I had the legendary boxing promoter Don King Life from New York as a final item in the program. I don’t think he would have stopped talking if his mouth was sold. He was definitely going as I said goodbye to the viewers.

Now it is a final farewell.

Favorite moment? Many, but as a Liverpool fans born and educated, are difficult to overcome the air in the first league title in 30 years.

As it turned out, between the final whistle revolving around the defeat of Manchester City in Chelsea, which means that Liverpool cannot be arrested, and the start of a special program by David Jones Liverpool, I had 12 seconds specifically.

But this direct TV for you.