BRITWRES MEMORIES - Tommy Boyd

[IANdrewDiceClay]

I was reading Hat Guys lovely Revival thread today at work, and there's a been a load of threads on here recently discussing da booooom period~ of British Wrestling in the early to mid-2000s. So I thought I'd continue what might be a series of threads (depending on how this one goes) on random bits and bops of stuff that dont quite get discussed unless its in the middle of a massive super thread (and super threads need to die to be fair). And since loads of people who not only attended the shows, but actually worked on the shows are on this forum, this could be a cool thing.

 

So who better to start off with than Tommy Boyd. Pretty polorizing figure. He seems to have been forgotten about, but I doubt i'd have given half a shit if it wasn't for him promoting it on Talk Sport every Saturday. British Wrestling had expsoure on national radio and broadcast it on Bravo (as well as live on Talk Sport). He was a public figure with a lot of connections. You cant buy that if you are a startup. I wonder how the business would have went if he'd not have got the sack and threw his hands up on it. Obviously more people on here would know better than me, but how was the FWA landscape looking following the Bravo show? Was there a chance of getting on TV regularly? Bravo seemed open to putting wrestling on the channel over the years (with ECW, WCW and TNA etc). I'll always credit Boyd as being the bloke who got the ball truly rolling. Revival was exactly what the country was looking for post WrestleXpress.

[Astro Hollywood]

I'm still laughing at the typo I saw on here over a decade ago when someone called him Tommy Body.

 

I can't stand Boyd, and don't get why he's so highly regarded by radio nerds. He's literally the contrary troll. "You know that opinion people have? I THINK THE OPPOSITE. Now ring in and argue with me." Zero effort involved. See the whole "ketchup under the ring fiasco." All the 'classic' Boyd bits online are him doing what people do on here when they shit up threads by pretending they think Hogan wasn't over, or Duggan never had less than a ***** match. Fuck off back to CITV, you're not Chris Morris.

[Cannibal Man]

My only exposure to Tommy Boyd at the time of WrestleTalk was his stint on CITV a few years earlier politely introducing Round The Bend and Grotbags, so I remember thinking how odd it was that the guy was hosting a wrestling chat show on Talk Sport. Wasn't until a few years later when a mate of mine who's quite an enthusiastic fan of Tommy's radio work did I realise what an absolutely fucking world class wind up merchant the guy is.

 

He played me a bunch of his call in show stuff, Human Zoo and a few other earlier things, and it's when he starts arguing that the sun is blue and Mixu Paatelainen is the king of the fucking moon or whatever he decided on that week and and standing his ground expertly with total grace to red faced, ranting pensioners who've completely fallen for it that I realised some of it had worked it's way into the Wrestletalk show, specifically the argument about whether blood was real or not. If I remember rightly he used to claim that there were make up artists under the ring and all sorts of other bollocks and people would fucking go on and on and on about it for weeks, I even texted into the show talking about Mass Transit and all sorts like a twat, and he never backed down. He was brilliant. Took years for me to realise what a brilliant showman he was and had he got onto TV with the show he would have made a brilliant bastard character.

[bAzTNM#1]

Sacked for not hanging up on a guy on TalkSport who said the Royal Family should be shot, in case anybody didn't know. Sacked in March 2002.

[Wretch]

See the whole "ketchup under the ring fiasco." 

 

 

 

Unbelievably, even more ridiculous than that. He said there was a make up artist underneath the ring who applied fake blood to the wrestlers faces. There was another claim he made that was equally ridiculous but its not coming to mind. Anyone?

[Devon Malcolm]

I never listened to any of his wrestling shows because at that time I hadn't quite got back into wrestling yet. But he was a high quality wind-up merchant even if The Human Zoo, which he pushed as some kind of radical radio concept, was nothing more than an hour of unscreened calls and that was it. I much preferred James H Reeve, personally.

[eugenespeed]

Sacked for not hanging up on a guy on TalkSport who said the Royal Family should be shot, in case anybody didn't know. Sacked in March 2002.

 

I remember listening to that live. There was some guy standing in the week after who happened to get the show full time, I forget his name.

 

The wrestling show was replaced with "Champagne and Roses". 

[Big Benny HG]

I was reading Hat Guys lovely Revival thread today at work, and there's a been a load of threads on here recently discussing da booooom period~ of British Wrestling in the early to mid-2000s. 

 

Don't worry - I'm already semi-thinking about the next big '10th anniversary' thread coming up in a few weeks...

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

Champagne And Roses with Gerald Harper. At least good old Gerald didn't believe that one day there would be a holographic ring announcer.

[AshC]

Tommy Boyd was fantastic for British wrestling. Or, probably more accurately, he really could have been. And should have been. He had that mainstream/casual perspective needed to orchestrate a break through to that next level. And I thought his double-act with Alex was very good, back in the day. Anyone remember the angle they did on air, where Shane broke into the studio after they'd had a falling out? "SECURITY!... SECURITY!!!" *fade to black*. 

[Linus]

I've not really sat down and thought about this before, so this might be a bit stream of consciousness. Boyd as a radio personality was not my cup of tea, but a master of his craft. There are few as good as him as creating a furore out of a sentence - maybe Adrian Durham is one of the few left - and few as good as playing devil's advocate to even the most sensible idea - Nicky Campbell is one. Whether you liked his show or not, it was never dull, which is exactly what talk radio should be.

 

Why did Boyd get involved in wrestling? Well, he told the story that his kids started watching WWE and he thought there'd be something in it. Were his motives purely selfish? Perhaps, at first, and there's a carny blood in the long-time TV journeyman that will always look for the next way to get back into the spotlight ("Monkey tennis?"), but you always got the feeling that he'd happened upon something he genuinely thought he could give a leg up to, as well as benefiting himself on the back of it.

 

He seemed to like Alex a lot, and was always pleasant and encouraging to the rest of us, and I sincerely believe that the FWA - and perhaps the rest of the industry - stepped up a notch because of their involvement in the show. I guested a few times when Alex was unavailable - including once when I helped set up the show at Harrow High School, hopped on a tube to Southwark for the radio show, and made it back for the main event - and he was great to work with, particularly encouraging my RVD dislike (you people like RVD at the time - Boyd's devil's advocacy obviously infectious!).

 

Revival the show possibly could have happened without him. The TV show (and accompanying live radio broadcast) definitely could not have, and I remember how excited we all were that Boyd had managed to get us a 2-hour TV show on Bravo, a top cable channel at the time. We also got paid well, which was so unlike the rest of the business at that time! After the show wasn't picked up for a series, however, the light went out a bit, and I think Boyd's interest waned. Although he was still prepared to encourage and promote British Wrestling, the audience ratings were in sticking with WWE, which probably caused a few ructions down the line. I don't know for sure, because I manouevered myself out of the business after we didn't get TV, because it didn't seem like we'd ever make it properly.

 

Boyd lost his job at TalkSport not long afterwards, and nobody since has championed the sport in such a way on any mainstream channel. However you feel about him, that's a massive shame.