Really sad to hear earlier today of the death of Midlands broadcasting legend (and that title’s not an exaggeration!) Tony Butler. Growing up in the region, he was a TV and radio presenter who was known by everyone, and I got to work with him for probably about 18 months back in the late 90s. It was right at the start of my career, in my first job working at local cable TV station Birmingham Live.

Tony Butler at Birmingham Live TV in 1999.

He certainly was a larger-than-life character, and very much had his own way of doing things, but I really enjoyed getting to work with him making low budget TV! I did quite a lot of shoots with him at various sports venues, and so many random people would come up and talk to him, and he just seemed to know everyone!

I remember a couple of things from working with him – one day I was on a shoot with him at Villa Park, and I got a phone call from the boss who was angry over something that had been filmed or edited for the sports department (I can’t remember what it was, and it probably wasn’t really anything important!) – but basically both me and Tony got ‘sacked’ over the phone! I was a bit stressed over it, but Tony was really laid back about the whole thing, and by the time we got back to the office, it was pretty much all forgotten about!

And the other thing that will always stick with me is a tale about a missing presenter and his ice cream! So, every day, we had a live half-hour programme at 3pm, which contained a mix of sport and entertainment news, and was presented by Tony and our other main presenter, Anj. Anyway, I was helping out with the show – I think maybe Ian was directing and vision mixing, and it was getting very close to going live when we realised that Tony wasn’t around in the office, and no-one was sure where he’d gone! There was a bit of a panic with Anj sitting in the studio with an empty chair next to her, when literally seconds before the programme start, Tony strolled back into the office, having been to the shop next door to buy a Solero, totally oblivious to the time! I remember shoo-ing him into the studio as the titles to the show were rolling, getting him into his chair and trying to help him get his clip mic on him. He basically made it with a second to spare, and in the opening shot, Tony looked a bit flustered and had a mic cable trailing over the outside of his jacket, but he carried on like a pro! We got him looking a bit more presentable during the first sports VT package, but he was sad to discover during the ad break that his Solero (which had been dumped behind his chair) had melted! There’s a recording of it on YouTube where you can see him flustered at the start, plus him reacting to his melted ice cream later on!