After 29 years with Sky and 43 in live broadcasting, Nick Powell will be switching off his mic later this week, retiring on his 66th birthday. A face familiar to both Sky Sports and Sky News viewers over the years, Nick reflects on a career both making and breaking stories…
My phone rang at 5.40am on holiday in Sicily.
It was the duty editor at Sky News.
Muhammad Ali had died. As Sports Editor, I was needed live on air at 6am.
Still in my pyjamas, I drove down the coast in search of better reception trawling my sleepy brain for my best thoughts about boxing’s greatest legend.
I recalled, too, the one time he and I had been in the same room, a decade earlier, when his mere presence had exuded electricity.
I was on air at a minute past six: “Let’s get the thoughts of our Sports Editor Nick Powell…”.
The good, the bad and the surreal…
And there you have my job in a nutshell: holiday irrelevant; knowledge, authority and quick reactions essential.
I have built all that up over 43 years of live broadcasting, good and bad.
The good – being there for England men’s first Ashes win in 20 years at The Oval in 2005, Super Saturday at the 2012 London Olympics and Andy Murray’s 2013 Wimbledon triumph.
The bad – the Bradford fire, the Hillsborough disaster and the premature loss of sportspeople like Gary Speed.
And the surreal – interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu and covering a Bruce Springsteen concert on the same afternoon for Yorkshire Television, or explaining The Hundred to viewers of Sky Germany. In German.
I never actually wanted to be on television. As a…
