Voice of football Butler dies at 67

Brian Scovell13 April 2012

One of football's most famous voices has been stilled by the death of Bryon Butler, who for 23 years was BBC Radio's football correspondent.

One of his duties was to introduce the live coverage of the FA Cup draw on Monday mornings. He always started: "The first voice you will hear is..."

Ewart Bryon Butler was 67 and died today at Mount Alvernia Hospital in Guildford. Born in Taunton, he served in the Somerset Light Infantry as a National Serviceman.

He worked for the Express and Echo at Taunton, the Nottingham Evening News, the Leicester Mercury, the News Chronicle and the Daily Telegraph.

Butler wrote the official histories of the Football Association and the FA Cup and collaborated with the autobiographies of Billy Wright, Cliff Jones, Rodney Marsh, Alan Hardaker, Ron Greenwood and Alec Stock.

He was a lifelong friend of Stock, whose funeral was taking place in Poole today. He said of Stock: "We had the same loves, football, the written word and, above all, cricket."

Despite battling against cancer for five years he still played cricket as an off-spinner for Merrow CC up to last season.

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