1985: BBC Sports Review of the Year

This may be my last time, it may be my last time I don't know. Every year I ask myself the same question: should I bother watching the BBC Sports Personality of the Year programme again? Yet every year I give it one last go. But maybe 2025 is the time to say goodbye.

I have been moaning about the demise of a once great show for too long now. Back in 2013, this article had me harking back to the good old days, complaining about an evening that has lost its way. Little has changed in the intervening period to persuade me that the situation is about to change for the good.

SPOTY: Unlucky losers in the 1980s

There were many great winners of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) award in the 1980s, but also a few sporting figures who never had their names engraved on the shields housed on the famous old trophy.

This week I am taking a look back at some of the unlucky SPOTY losers, including a couple of snooker stars, a Grand Slam winning captain, and a golden boot winner who would probably be a cert for the SPOTY trophy in the current age.

SPOTY: It was better in the 80s

"Once, this show was the flagship TV event of the sporting year, a straightforward retrospective clips-fest. In recent years, however, it has been meddled with, overhauled and modernised to the extent that it has become barely watchable." These are not my words, but they might as well be, as they neatly sum up my feelings on the once great BBC Sports Personality of The Year show (or the Sports Review of the Year as it was once known). 

David Stubbs of the Guardian wrote this accurate preview prior to the 2011 programme, and his description provided me with some reassurance that it wasn't just me who felt this way. This blog naturally steers me to waffling on about how great a decade the 80s were, often avoiding some painful truths in the shape of Thatcher, mass unemployment, football violence, and the impending threat of a nuclear war. Surely though when it comes to the Sports Personality of The Year, I can't be accused of being completely biased towards my childhood years?