Ian Robertson
BBC Rugby Correspondent
Ian Robertson - BBC Rugby Commentator, Former Scotland International and Entertaining After-Dinner Speaker.
Ian Robertson was educated at Aberdeen and Cambridge University and won a rugby ‘Blue’ at both.
He played rugby for London Scottish, the Barbarians and won 8 international caps for Scotland between 1968 and 1970.
Ian Robertson’s first job was as an English teacher at the most expensive public school in Scotland – Fettes College in Edinburgh. He worked at Fettes for 4 years and even taught Tony Blair!
Ian Robertson joined the BBC as a rugby commentator in 1972 and for over 25 years, in his capacity as BBC Rugby Correspondent, he has covered all the great rugby matches all over the world.
He has appeared regularly on BBC TV for over 20 years including Rugby Special and Grandstand and he spent 3 years from 1980 to 1983 as the Rugby Correspondent for The Sunday Times.
Ian Robertson has also written 30 books including the ghosted autobiographies of Bill Beaumont and Andy Irvine, 2 books with Gareth Edwards and the family biography of Richard Burton. To persuade the late Elizabeth Taylor to write the foreword to this book, he was forced to spend a whole week with Miss Taylor in Hollywood!
In the summer, he masquerades as an expert on horse racing for BBC Radio and over the years has had numerous tiny shares in a succession of very slow horses that lacked any sort of ambition.
His most memorable on-air moments are Scotland winning the Grand Slams in 1984, against France, and in 1990, against England, plus Jonny Wilkinson dropping the World Cup goal in 2004
In the evening, Ian Robertson is a highly entertaining after-dinner speaker, whose wit and acute sense of humour provides some of the funniest speeches ever heard. His wealth of sporting anecdotes and one liners are an absolute joy to listen to.