Michael Race meets the Test Match Special legend Henry Blofeld

When you meet Henry Blofeld and Peter Baxter in the flesh, you are taken straight back to their heyday as Test Match cricket broadcasters.

All that’s missing is the distant sound of leather knocking on willow.

But few broadcasters have managed to string out their already extensive careers by transforming into a touring comedy troupe.

In Blofeld’s own words: “Rogues on the Road, (which tells of their escapades following the England Test team around the globe) is not a cricket show, it’s more a comedy about our adventures over the years.”

And boy have these two dear old things had some.

Bastions of the beloved Test Match Special with more than 80 years in the commentary box between them, Blowers and Backers have some great tales to tell.

For example, 77-year-old Blowers recalls a moment of embarrassment on a hotel landing in Nottingham, after a long day’s commentating on a Test at Trent Bridge.

“I got locked out of my bedroom and stuck on a hotel landing naked at one o’clock in the morning,” he guffaws.

“Another time I met a girl in Australia, a tall blonde, and rang to ask her to come to Monte Carlo with me.

“But when I got to the airport, the girl was not a tall blonde at all – somehow I had managed to phone the wrong girl. So, we both have stories, and have been doing this for a long time – it’s an extension of what we did before and it’s been very successful,” the former Eton schoolboy says.

“The only cricket part of the show will be the questions we get asked, and our stories about our adventures.

“We never rehearse before doing it either because we have done over 1,000 shows now,” he says, with no sign of abating.

It was always going to be cricket though, and while older brother Sir John Blofeld became a High Court judge, Mr Blofeld set his sights on becoming a cricketer himself.

He was wicket-keeper for Eton College and had an exceptional career as a schoolboy.

In 1956, Blofeld scored 104 not out for a Public Schools team against the Combined Services, and was given the Cricket Society’s award for the most promising young player of the season.

Appointed Eton captain in his final year at school, Blofeld, then 17, suffered a very serious accident when he was hit by a bus while riding a bicycle – leaving him unconscious for a month.

His injuries curtailed his subsequent cricketing career, but he did go on to play 16 first-class matches for Cambridge University during 1958 and 1959.

The 1958 side was skippered by future England captain Ted Dexter and his first victim behind the stumps on his debut for Cambridge against Kent - was another future England captain, Colin Cowdrey, whom he caught off Dexter’s bowling.

Slotting into the Test Match Special hotseat in 1972, it was from here he developed his famous partnership with producer Baxter for 34 years - which is the foundations for their tour show at The Mill Theatre in Banbury on Wednesday evening.

His anecdotes, which continue to enliven Test Match Special and invigorate the stage show with former producer Baxter.

Much of his humour, many of his observations and a clutch of his anecdotes have little or nothing to do with cricket.

This is why TMS and his stage shows attract both the cricket obsessive and non-sporting audience.

“I found India is the best to tour, I have some terrific stories from there,” Blofeld adds.

“It’s the most wonderful place in the world. A wonderful country. It has the best hotels in the world, has lovely people, it’s cricket is lovely and the traffic is most fun.”

And despite him turning 77 in September, Mr Blofeld has no intentions to slow down.

“I think I feel very privileged when you stand back and think about it. My job seems exciting and something everyone wants to do, but it’s very hard work,” he says.

“I think I’m bloody lucky to have a life as one has.

“I have been to Oxfordshire many times, I think I have performed at the playhouse four times.

“Oxford is well known - but it’s not the best, like Cambridge”.

“It’s a lovely city, heave above. I have spent a lot of my life in Oxford and have many friends here, I love it.

“My job is fun, I love it. Why would one want to retire? I will never retire, god heavens I could not imagine anything more awful.

“Even if I was confined to a wheelchair I would work.”

Blofeld & Baxter play the Mill Arts Centre, Banbury on Wednesday. Tickets from themillartscentre.co.uk