If you want the best, look no further than Hazel Irvine

If ever you want an example of someone who’s the very best of the best, who makes a tricky job look unflinchingly easy and who has, in my opinion, no one in the country who can lace her boots when it comes to doing the job she does, look no further than Irvine.

It’s an opinion that, I know, is shared by almost every person who has ever watched Irvine in full flow.

The 59-year-old from St Andrews began her career back in 1987 on STV’s Scotsport and has gone on to become one of the BBC’s most recognisable sports broadcasters, presenting World Cups, Olympics’, Grandstand, Wimbledon plus a raft of other sporting events. 

Perhaps my favorite has been her presence fronting the BBC’s snooker coverage, in which her understated brilliance has been on show for over 20 years.

Hazel Irvine has been a constant presence on television since the 1980s (Image: Getty Images) Next weekend, Irvine will receive a BAFTA Scotland Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting at a ceremony in Glasgow, an honour she described as “unexpected” but which every other person in Britain was entirely unsurprised on hearing that she would be a recipient. 

The list of who has gushed over Irvine’s ability as a broadcaster is as lengthy as the Yellow Pages but perhaps one of the most telling testimonies came from Eilidh Barbour, when I asked her this week what she thought of Irvine.

Barbour herself is a fine broadcaster, who’s quickly becoming omnipresent across both Scottish and British sports coverage.

And she could barely hold back in her praise for her fellow Scot. 

“Hazel has always been and always will be my inspiration,” Barbour says. 

Eilidh Barbour cites Hazel Irvine as her inspiration (Image: Getty Images) “She exudes a warmth that only comes with a genuine passion for the sports she covers, and the audience. 

“Her knowledge is incredible and she speaks individually to each and every person watching at home which is a skill that I believe is disappearing and is why she is still considered one of the absolute best. 

“Simply, she makes you care

“It has been beyond a privilege to have the opportunity to learn from Hazel - she paved the way for Scottish female voices in sport and for that, I’m so incredibly grateful.”

And it’s not only Irvine’s fellow professionals who laud her, the public do, also. In a world in which social media comments, particularly towards women on television can be a cesspit of bile and hatred, it says everything about Irvine that I’ve never seen a word of negativity directed towards her.

Admittedly, it’s a fool’s game to judge anyone’s worth based on the reception they receive on social media – if that were the case, you’d swear there was barely a woman on television who was worthy of her place there – but the overwhelming love and respect online for every appearance Irvine makes in front of the camera is certainly worth something.

Being a television presenter isn’t ever going to change the world – they’re not saving lives - but my goodness, watch a bad presenter and you’ll know how easily they can ruin whatever they’re fronting.

Irvine has, and continues to, vastly improve every single programme she appears on.

The Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is a prime example.

Typically, the media attend a dress rehearsal of these events a few days before the real thing to allow them to do some preparation and get an idea in their heads of how they’re going to navigate their commentary as they broadcast to their nations.

In Paris this summer, there was nothing. This was due to both the fact a dress rehearsal on the Seine is all but impossible and also because the creative director of the ceremony wanted to keep the proceedings a surprise. Which was met with something other than delight by those who had to talk the public through the quite fantastical events on the night despite not having much of a clue themselves what they were watching.

Yet Irvine, alongside her co-broadcaster Andrew Cotter, made the Paris Opening Ceremony funny and interesting and engaging which is an impossibly hard task considering Opening Ceremonies are invariably tedious and boring and invariably far too long.

That Irvine makes such a difficult job seem so easy is no accident; I did some work alongside her ahead of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and I remember being shocked at the level of preparation she undertook.

It’s easy to assume that someone who’s been doing their job for as long as Irvine has would be able to take it easy, but not Irvine, who had literally hundreds of handwritten pages of notes to refer to during the Opening Ceremony of those Commonwealth Games.

And the impact Irvine has had on women in broadcasting is immeasurable.

It’s easy to forget, given how many women now have a presence in sports coverage, just how rare it was for a woman to be fronting sports programmes when Irvine began her career in the 1980s.

That Irvine was, and is, so good did more than almost anyone else in changing what certainly was in the past, and in some quarters remains, the belief that women just shouldn’t be a part of sports coverage.

When Irvine receives her BAFTA award next weekend, there’ll rarely have been a recipient that’s more deserving. 

Not only is Irvine one of the best Britain has ever seen, she’s changed the landscape for every female presenter who’s followed behind her.