Voices: As a TV presenter, I know the secret to Wimbledon

My childhood sporting memories are crystal clear.

No, I don’t mean winning the bean bag race in primary school or scoring my first 50 on the cricket pitch. I’m talking about those captivating, inspiring and majestic moments that I watched on free-to-air television. The ones that were mesmerising and still live on in the deep recesses of my brain, etched there, like some kind of beautiful slow motion sporting montage.

I remember World Cup USA ’94. Diana Ross missing a penalty in the opening ceremony, Baggio missing the deciding one in the final, Romario, Bebeto, et al – and the little sticker book I had to write all of the results in (and still have tucked away in a box in my spare room).

I remember the Grand National in 1996. The excitement of heading home to watch it after I’d been to see Toy Story at the cinema for a friend’s birthday party. Mum and dad had recorded it on VHS so we could all watch it together – and the horse we’d picked won.

I remember Atlanta ’96. Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic torch, Steve Redgrave out on the water, Michael Johnson and Frankie Fredericks running slightly faster than I had in the bean bag race…

Then there’s the “Soul Limbo” cricket theme tune, Match of the Day, Trans World Sport, Des Lynam’s dulcet tones, Grandstand, Martin Offiah’s Challenge Cup try and of course, Wimbledon summers.

For two weeks every year, it felt like the whole country stopped to watch all of the action from SW19. In my mind, it was always baking hot (other than that time Cliff Richard got on the microphone) with those long shadows cast down on the hallowed grass courts in the late evenings.

There was “Pistol” Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, the Williams sisters bursting onto the scene, then the British hopes of Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman. All of the lovely cliches that get wheeled out every year – strawberries and cream, the Royal Box, Henman Hill (now the Murray Mound) and inevitably John McEnroe shouting “you cannot be serious”, probably while a player was lifting the famous trophy and giving it a kiss – or as Rafa prefers, a bite.

All of these things felt like they’d seep into my consciousness every 12 months. We moved down to Devon just before I started secondary school and their old, crumbling tennis courts – you know, the kind that felt like they were made out of the hardest black concrete that would be able to withstand a dystopian apocalypse and cut your knees into a thousand pieces when you fell over – were replaced by spongy green courts, shaded at the top of the hill on the walk up to where the cooler sixth form students would hang out.

We started wearing long tennis socks instead of little pop socks, replaced “cool” or “lush” with “ace” in our colloquial slang and knew that pressing circle on the Playstation controller while playing Anna Kournikova’s Smash Court Tennis was a strong forehand, whereas triangle was a lob or drop shot.

One stupidly hot summer, my friend Sam and I devised a new game. We’d stand on my parents’ driveway and throw a tennis ball against the wall above the garage but below the upstairs window. The rules were pretty simple: you had to serve from behind the long, silver drain at the back of the drive and the other person had to catch the ball in the court (the driveway) before it landed. We’d score it like the tennis matches we were watching Sue Barker present on the box. “15 / Love” and “Game, Set, Match.” What a time to be alive.

There’s so much talk about linear TV, audience viewing habits and capturing younger audiences, but you can’t replicate the magic of watching live sport. Despite what I said about watching the Grand National on tape, it’s not the same as watching something in more or less real time and sharing that experience with millions of others.

I feel really lucky to be playing a small part in the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage again this year. Like last summer, I’ll be talking the audience through all the action on BBC iPlayer and across the six red button channels, with every court being available to watch live and on demand.

For me, that means sitting in a dark room, trying to keep tabs on all of the courts and breaking stories via multiple TV monitors, computer screens, social media accounts and my trusty handwritten tables of who’s playing who on which court and on which channel.

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To do all of that while simultaneously listening to the gallery team, commentators, pundits and network presenters, like Sue, broadcasting her final Wimbledon, is a thrill.

I’m trusting that my reactions and skills to vocally navigate the action will be far superior to my tennis playing pedigree – and I can’t wait to get started.

Who knows, there might be some primary school kids watching over the next couple of weeks, ready to make up their own tennis games, pretending to be Emma Raducanu or Coco Gauff, and remembering these gloriously sunny two weeks in 25 years time, just like I am.