The Gardeners' World Blog

What’s your favourite World Cup moment? Football’s showpiece is full of iconic images: Banks’s save, Gemill’s goal, Gazza’s tears, Maradona’s hand-ball.

And then, of course, there is Jimmy Hill’s Christmas tree.

Not to be confused with the tactical masterplan of Hill’s old sparring partner Terry Venables, this is in fact the moment that kicked off BBC TV’s review of the 1982 World Cup in Spain. The half-hour show opened with a stereotypical ‘80s title sequence, then mixed to a Christmas tree, before the camera panned across to reveal Our Jimmy, sitting resplendent in trademark beard, lemon-coloured polo neck and brown slacks. Think Val Doonican meets Ming the Merciless and you won't be far off.

It’s a televisual gem guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of football fans of a certain age. And I only know about it because I stumbled across it while checking out some of the footage in a new video archive of classic World Cup action that we launched on the website this week.

I'm Head of Sports News for BBC Sport, which means I'm responsible our sports news output across TV, radio and on our Interactive services. On a good day I get to work with some very creative people covering a range of interesting stories. On a bad day there's a lot of meetings and arguing with news editors over which story deserves inclusion and the right way to do it.

Luckily I'm fortunate enough to work with talented enough people that, in some people's opinion, the output is better when I'm busy in meetings! I love the unpredictable nature of working in sports news, never knowing what story might happen on a certain day. And because there's always something happening somewhere, the great thing is there's no off season.

We've launched this blog because we want to let you know what BBC Sport is doing, across all our outlets - whether it's on TV, radio, this website or any of our new media services.

We're also keen to hear your views and want people to engage and comment on what we have to say.

Hi, I'm the sports news editor for all our interactive services, which means I oversee the coverage we provide on demand in text and pictures, video and audio.

At the moment, that means my day-to-day focus is on our website, mobile and TV text services (BBCi and Ceefax), and also ensuring they enrich and complement our live output on TV and radio, primarily News 24 and Radio Five Live.

We have a team of talented editors, journalists and producers who deliver that distinctive and in-depth digest of the sporting agenda, and who work tirelessly to keep everything you see, hear and read on those services as up to date as possible.

I'm director of BBC Sport, which means heading a department of around 500 people with an annual budget running into hundreds of millions of pounds. We produce sports programming for BBC network television, radio (mainly Five Live) and for our interactive and web-based services.

I was born in 1958 and brought up in Bradford. My first-ever football match when I was four years old was at Bradford Park Avenue, but after they went out of the League we started going to Bradford City and I've supported them ever since. The other big sports for me when I was growing up were rugby league - our family were Bradford Northern fans, and Yorkshire cricket. Nothing like watching Geoffrey Boycott carefully piece together a century on a sunny afternoon...