Norris McWhirter - Sports

Sports

McWhirter was an all-round athlete and represented Scotland at running during the 1950s. He and his brother became sports journalists in 1950. In 1951 they published Get to Your Marks and later in 1951 they founded an agency to provide facts and figures to Fleet Street, setting out, in Norris McWhirter's words: "to supply facts and figures to newspapers, yearbooks, encyclopedias, and advertisers". At the same time he became a founding member of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians.

McWhirter came to public attention while working for the BBC as a sports commentator. On 6 May 1954, he kept the time when Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile. After the race, he began his announcement:

As a result of Event Four, the one mile, the winner was R.G. Bannister of Exeter and Merton Colleges, in a time which, subject to ratification, is a track record, an English native record, a United Kingdom record, a European record, in a time of three minutes...

....at which the rest of McWhirter's announcement was drowned out in the enthusiastic uproar.

One of the athletes covered was runner Christopher Chataway, the employee at Guinness who recommended them to Sir Hugh Beaver. After an interview in which the Guinness directors enjoyed testing the twins' knowledge of records and unusual facts, the brothers agreed to start work on the book that became The Guinness Book of Records in 1954. In August 1955 the first slim green volume - 198 pages long - was at the bookstalls, and in four more months it was England's No. 1 nonfiction best-seller.

In 1954, the McWhirter brothers sued Daily Mail sports writer J. L. Manning for his critical piece about non-journalist (i.e. not members of the National Union of Journalists) sports writers. The McWhirters were awarded £300 in damages.

McWhirter was also part of the BBC commentary team for their Olympic Games coverage between 1960 and 1976.