Don Mosey, who died on Aug 11 1999 at 74, was only months off his 50th birthday when he uttered his first measured words on Test Match Special. It was at Headingley in 1974 against Pakistan, and there was a touch of homesters; honey about it because there was also a debut for Fred Trueman at the lip-mike. Mosey was also in the team for the Lord's Test – a soggy draw, Underwood 13 wickets – then he was rested until the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston in 1975, which was Gooch's sad first and Denness's even sadder last.

In those less frenetic, more calmly pastoral TMS days, when Arlott and Johnston were in their pomp, there was an endearing Edgbaston ritual whereby, dead on noon, the matily hospitable old Warwickshire chairman, Cyril Goodway, waledk along the pavilion balcony to the front of the commentary box to take the orders for generous pre-prandial drinks. Cyril would glide along the box's glazed window with some time-honoured silent semaphore which would somehow confirm, say, the Boil's gin and tonic, Blowers' Bloody Mary, Arlo's massive first-of-the-morning hair-of-dog refresher from the Jerez bottle, and so on.

On the first morning in 1975, Mosey, unaware of this rite, pauses, grunts and announces to the listening world: `I'm finding it impossible to describe Chris Old's next delivery because some blithering idiot is standing right in front of our window with a stupid grin on his face!'

At that precise moment, Mosey's persona was gloriously set in concrete. Hurrah for good old no-nonsense, bluff and blunt Don. He was perfectly happy with the casting, retaining the character to the last. And he had a ready-made nickname in place. His new TMS confrère Brian Johnston had once worked with the then BBC North radio producer at a quiz show in stately Lancaster City Hall. `The Alderman' fitted precisely the provincial pomp and civic certainties of this resolutely self-made man.

MOSEY WAS born on Oct 4, 1924, the eldest of three boys of `kind and loving parents who never had a penny to spare in their lives'. His father worked three days a week in t'mill for 30 bob, supplementing that with `anything he could find', like debt-collecting, or tending the village cricket pitch at Eastburn, between Skipton and Keighley. Young Don played league cricket at the age of 11, and later became a bustling wicket-taker in the Airedale & Wharfedale League. He had won a scholarship to Keighley Grammar. His last headmaster's report pronounced: `Good – but not as good as he thinks he is.'

With it, when he was 16 in 1940, his mother –`the driving force'– presented herself at the local rag in Skipton and demanded a job for her eldest. The men had gone to war, and the editor hired the boy as his editorial team of one. When he was of age, Mosey himself went to war. He trained with RAF aircrew, but ended up `teaching Indians English in the middle of the Iraqi desert'.

Some three decades later, on tour in India with England, we often shared a room – long, hot nights, mosquito nets and native-brew gin. He would confide the relevance to him of those RAF days keeping sentry to the Empire: `It dawned on me that the sergeants'-mess fellows could make themselves officers'-mess chaps with a bit of work. For starters, I made a conscious decision to learn to play bridge. It became a huge social asset. Then I knew the time had come to start improving my speech. I was pure bush West Riding – eh bah gum and all that. Not that I had any visions of a posh accent – I was mighty proud of being north-country. But I thought that socially it could help me. I though that if I could tighten up my speech and enunciate better, it might help me get somewhere in life.'

And so it did. Demobbed, he returned to the Craven Herald briefly, then moved to the Nottingham Evening Post, whence he sent odd bits and pieces to BBC Midlands radio. By the time he reached the Manchester newsroom of the Daily Mail, where he started to cover serious north-country cricket and rugby, he was increasingly heard at the microphone. He became a BBC radio producer in 1964, and was in charge of all northern outside broadcasts only three years later – and woe betide anyone, particularly from the south, who attempted to queer his pitch or operate on his patch without permission. It was after one of his regular diatribes about the `public-school hyphens' at the TMS mike (Neil Durden-Smith was still there, and young CMJ's dewdrop dulcets had just begun to be heard) that the London Head of OBs Cliff Morgan (to whom Mosey was devoted) was inspired to order Don, `Well you have a go yourself, bach.' And so it came to pass that good Cyril Goodway came out to take Don's drinks order at Edgbaston …

Don never let go of the public-school thing. Shamelessly, he was still in the TMS box in 1991 when his second autobiography The Alderman's Tale came out and slagged off most every colleague except Johnners and Sir Fred. The BBC winced and, with dignity, let the old boy just fade away without hurrahs when his time came to retire.

He probably liked it that way. Nor was his bristling burgher's ire reserved solely for southern toffs. He could turn against his own: he wrote a bitter, uncalled-for biography of Ian Botham and a twisted (though possibly called-for) book on his former friend Geoff Boycott. His memoir on Surrey's Tyke Jim Laker was his nicest hardback work.

But he was a terrific broadcaster. Morgan's pointing to the perfect niche was near-genius. `He was our wordsmith,' remembers Henry Blofeld graciously. ` Don never got his knickers in a twist like most of us by launching into overlong descriptive phrases. He went along at a measured pace, seeing the wider perspective, effortlessly selecting the right word or phrase. He was impatient with any lack of professionalism because he was so professional himself.'

I will miss terribly having a chunter with Don whenever I go up north. On tour, and I did three with him, his bridling cantankerousness somehow made you even more fond of him. He wrote daily reams of airmail flimsy to his beloved Jo –`The bride,' as he always referred to her. She survives him, along with their two sons – one of whom, Ian, became a successful golf pro.

Don's one change out of his holidaymaker's Morecambe Bay shorts for any evening do was into his blue blazer badged with the Vale of Lune RFC crest. Once, in Sri Lanka, I inadvertently wrote of the Sacred Tooth of Kandy without due care and reverence. Some local Buddhist monks demanded the Guardian heretic be deported, and there was a frightful to-do for a day or so. Mosey was tickled pink by my discomfort – and weeks later, back home, I received an elaborate parcel containing a large wisdom tooth, still bloodied at the roots, and a message telling me to watch my back. Don had a golfing friend who was a dentist, but the Morecambe postmark gave it away.

The good ol' boy remained true to himself to the end. This summer, in the course of a doodled essay for the Oldie magazine, I recalled sitting on a beach in Antigua some 20 years ago with Terry Brindle of the Yorkshire Post, `fondly watching the squat BBC man in his elastic-waisted shorts and his Woolworths daps … earnestly interviewing the handsome and godlike Vivian Richards– and Terry turning to me and saying, Have you ever thought it odd, old boy, how a nation of Moseys managed to conquer and subjugate a nation of Richardses for over 400 years?'

Don went bananas, and by return winged down the next month's star letter to the editor: `Sir, I have been sent a cutting of Mr Keating's impertinent, insulting and wildly inaccurate article. Normally, I have treated his cheap, unpleasant and personal jibes with the contempt they deserve, but this particular diatribe makes it necessary for me to point out: 1) The shorts I was wearing were tailored and not elastic-waisted; 2) I have no idea what Woolworths daps may be, but the surgical footwear I have worn since 1944 is not, to the best of my knowledge, available, from that store; 3) At 5ft 10½ ins and 11st 2lbs, I cannot think any rational person would describe me as squat. Yours disgustedly, etc …'

There was only one Don Mosey, that's for sure. He was a copper-bottomed self-made original.

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