Wally meets... John Kettley

By Mike Walters

Published 05:00 09/01/10

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When your match is wiped out by deep freezes, biblical floods, gales, heatwaves or fog, John Kettley is the man who saw it coming.

Kettley is familiar to millions of viewers as a cheery BBC weatherman, cricket lover and Burnley fan. Pop pickers may also recall he was immortalised in the charts by one-hit wonders, Tribe of Toffs, 22 years ago with their inane tribute John Kettley Is A Weatherman.

Less well-known, however, is his role as a consultant to the Football Association - and other sporting institutions, including horse racing’s Cheltenham Festival - as an early-warning siren when major events are threatened with disruption.

Kettley is now a freelance forecaster with British Weather Services, the meteorological experts who provide advice for businesses with a financial stake in our climate.

Their subscribers include football, and if your game hasn’t already been called off today, Kettley’s advice for most fans is chillingly predictable: Don’t hold your breath.

“We have a deal with the FA and the Premier League, arranged through a company called Sports & Stadia Services in Northampton, to provide bespoke weather forecasts,” said Kettley, 57.

“They help to protect football pitches, rugby grounds and racecourses and we supply localised forecasts independently to flag up any threat to live televised matches.

“Fortunately, I’ve never had a Michael Fish moment (Kettley’s former BBC colleague famously dismissed the threat of a 100mph storm which flattened southern England in 1987).

“There’s only so much God can do to help sport, and some people seem to think the weatherman is God, as in the bloke who makes it snow and turns the thermostat down to the lowest temperatures we’ve seen for 25 years.

“Even though a number of grounds are now equipped with undersoil heating, the best way of putting it is that this weekend’s football calendar will be decimated on a scale we have not seen for years.

“More snow is heading for the south, there are going to be health and safety issues for fans travelling to games and, frankly, it’s going to be a good weekend for staying indoors.

“The coldest I’ve ever been at a football match was watching Burnley against Sunderland in the 1970s, when a blizzard blew in over the open terrace called the Brunshaw end and the match was abandoned when we were 1-0 up.

“Assuming their games survive the cold snap, quite a few people may be able to say the same thing this weekend. Needless to say, when my coldest-ever Burnley game was rearranged in the spring, they lost 2-1, adding insult to frostbite.”

The two great loves of Kettley’s life - sport and the weather - are neatly entwined in his book, Weatherman, although his affection for football has been sorely tested this week by Owen Coyle’s switch from his beloved Clarets to Bolton.

Like a proper fan, however, Kettley does not regard one man’s defection as the stimulus for a saint to be recast as a Judas overnight.

“It’s only eight months ago that Owen gave us a fantastic day out at Wembley, and the weather was a good deal warmer,” he said.

“I don’t like to see grown men cry, but Sheffield United were rubbish that day and we were much the better side. Owen was always going to be a sought-after manager after leading Burnley back into the top division, and the phone was ringing from Celtic almost before the players had completed their lap of honour.

“Unfortunately, that was a taste of things to come, and it’s a reflection on the football business that he’s gone. He’s going to take a lot of replacing, but Burnley has always been a club built on people wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

“I’m sure we’ll be all right because Turf Moor hasn’t changed - opposition teams, especially from London, don’t like venturing into deepest Lancashire on frozen midwinter nights.

“The sad irony for me is that Owen was recommended to Burnley by Bolton in the first place - which makes you wonder why they appointed Gary Megson when he had a track record worse than Michael Fish!“

Ouch - that’s got to hurt. But since we are staring at a decimated sporting calendar this weekend, this column does have an important question for Kettley’s former colleagues at the Met Office.

Whatever happened to our barbecue summer and mild winter?

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