Last week I was guest speaker at a Derbyshire Cricket Society Lunch at the County Ground. That venue had changed out of all recognition since my last visit about 20 years ago and it required an eight-mile tour of the city before I found it.

Constructed near the finishing post of a pre-war race course, its main features were the domed grandstand that served as a pavilion and a cramped stable block that housed the players' dressing rooms. Both had vanished and I recognised not a single feature of the ground where I had experienced two monumentally embarrassing disasters. The first involved John Arlott. We were broadcasting from a truck parked beside the sightscreen across the racecourse from the grandstand. I was given the driving seat and the engineers provided a wooden lectern that fitted neatly over the steering wheel to house my scoresheets and other paraphernalia. We had a perfect view of the game, looking straight down the pitch and, as John was required to commentate, from the passenger seat, for only three 20-minute spells each day, our box attracted visits from his many Derbyshire friends, most of them former players.

Our first visitor was always Eddie Gothard, then the County's treasurer. Eddie was hospitality personified and he never greeted John without being in possession of wine and glasses. An amateur, he had skippered the county in 1947 and 1948 with great enthusiasm, once creating a sensation by slipping himself into the attack when Cliff Gladwin, Bill Copson, 'Dusty' Rhodes and George Pope were resting and taking a hat-trick against the eventual champions, Middlesex. The scalps of Alan Fairbairn, Bill Edrich and Walter Robins had brought his career tally of first-class wickets to four!

No sooner had we finished our pre-lunch broadcast at the Derbyshire v Hampshire match in 1968, than the chef, white-hatted and in full regalia, with John's wine, salad, Ryvita and glasses on a silver salver, marched solemnly out of the grandstand restaurant and around the boundary to our vehicle. 'Arlow' did full justice to this bounty before settling down to his customary nap, confident that I would wake him five minutes before we were scheduled to broadcast.

He had barely nodded off before the batsman moved away from his stumps and pointed at us. The umpire turned to see what was wrong and immediately waved and shouted in our direction. It was Cec Pepper, an Australian with a typically colourful vocabulary: Get those f*****g lights off,' he boomed. I was totally bewildered. I had not switched any lights on, nor had my snoozing companion. The f*****g fog-light's on,' roared Pepper.

As I started trying various switches, John woke up. What have you done now, Frindalius?' he asked blearily. I think I've put the fog lights on, John.' Hell's Teeth!' he muttered and started turning on switches too. Soon we were lit up like Blackpool Tower. Pepper was beside himself with fury and most of the players were writhing on the ground in hysterics. The crowd was laughing. None of our engineers knew where the fog-light switch was and the vehicle's driver was not due back for another two days.

Eventually a spectator, who had once driven a similar lorry when they had been field ambulances during the war, shouted up to my window: It's on the steering column!' I had knocked the switch with my knee without realising it.

After a delay of four minutes, order was restored, play was restarted and John resumed his nap. I was so unnerved that I forgot to wake him until a few seconds before the studio came over to us. He asked me for the scoresheet and the score. Blinking his eyes into focus he began his commentary precisely on cue. Unfortunately I was the only one who heard his first sentence. He had picked up his wine glass instead of the lip-mike! It was the only time he began his commentary with: Oh, sorry!' The second disaster involved Brian Johnston. We had been invited to join the committee for lunch. A dozen of us were seated at a long table with me at the far end next to a sink of iced water housing a mammoth bottle of white wine. Pass the wine, Bearders', commanded Johnners. I lifted the vast, icy, wet bottle from the sink and was about to fill Brian's glass when it parted company from its labels, slipped its moorings (my hand) and landed on the table among plates, glasses and vases of flowers. The resulting devastation was similar to the effect of Dr Barnes Wallace's bouncing bomb. The bottle slid on down the table like a launched liner, its tide of wine washing salads off plates and drenching laps. Oh, Bearders, they'll never ask us again!' And they didn't.

Bill Frindall 6 November 2007