Fanny Blankers-Koen, far right, of the Netherlands finishes first in the Women's 100m during
the XIV Olympic Games Circa August of 1948 in London

Clare Balding's new 30 part series on sport in Britain starts today at 1.45pm on BBC Radio 4 after the World at One. The first part looks at the Rise of Olympism while tomorrow Clare visits Broad Halfpenny Down in Hampshire, regarded by many as the birthplace of cricket.

The series is also available to listen to online as well as a downloadable podcast.

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

For as long as I can remember Test Match Special has been the soundtrack of my Summer.

I admit I was jealous of commentators who got paid to watch the cricket and to talk about it - I still am. They are brilliant and the skill of the producers in bringing in recent ex-players such as Michael Vaughan has taken the coverage onto a new level.

As a child TMS was even more exciting in Winter when the slightly telephonic sound quality whispered out of my radio from Australia when my parents thought I was asleep. Now the quality of sound is much better particularly when it is on DAB on 5 live Sports Extra which will carry every ball of every Test Match.

When I became commissioning editor at Radio 4 in 1997 you can imagine my joy when the Controller of Radio 4 James Boyle asked me to look after the relationship between TMS and the network. He was Scottish and it wasn't really his game. Finally I fulfilled my dream of visiting the commentary box and sampling the cake.

What I was less prepared for was the detailed and hard work that goes into planning TMS on Long Wave. Here we had to balance the conflicting demands on the Long Wave frequency. The contest was, and still is, Parliament and the Daily Service and The Shipping Forecast vs. The Cricket. That task has not changed and as we will see this winter the time differences across Australia mean it is a different story for each match.

The principles have not changed. Sailors need to know about the wind, the nation needs to know what is going on at Westminster, The Daily Service is a daily cherished 'appointment to listen' so Long Wave listeners will miss a few overs or switch to listening online via the 5live website or to a DAB radio. The interruptions are a small price to pay for keeping the comprehensive coverage that Long Wave affords for those who live outside the DAB range or do not have a DAB radio. Long Wave Radio is the only analogue live coverage of the cricket but I know some listeners will be frustrated that they cannot hear normal Radio 4 on Long Wave during the cricket.

We hope FM coverage will work for most people and remember Radio 4 is streamed online and for night-owls the World Service is on 648 medium wave. Failing all that TMS is very special even for some who never watch cricket and, who knows, Aggers may be warming our winter with a story of triumph down under. Alternatively the Shipping Forecast may be a poetic relief from the gloom.

If you do fall asleep how about subscribing to the TMS podcast and catching up on the way to work or school.

Andrew Caspari is Head of Speech Radio and Classical Music, Interactive at the BBC

• Radio 4's LW schedule and FM schedule.
• Join the discussion of The Ashes on Twitter. Follow BBC cricket people and use the hashtag #BBCAshes.
• The Test Match Special blog brings together posts from all of the BBC's cricket blogs.
• Tim Davie, Director of Audio & Music, has written about the vitality of radio sports commentary on the BBC Radio blog.
• Adam Mountford, Test Match Special producer, has written about the BBC's Ashes coverage on his blog.
• Details of the BBC's Ashes coverage on the BBC Sport web site.
• The picture shows the stopwatches showing time of play remaining on TMS (it was taken in 2005 - they've probably gone digital since).

It didn't look much like a central hub of operations for one of the most successful professional gaming teams in the country. Just an ordinary suburban semi-detached, painted lemon-yellow. But as soon as we walked through the door of Mike 'Odee' O'Dell's family home, it was obvious this was no ordinary three-up-two-down. Team shirts & boxes of tech kit were stacked high in the hallway and stuffed into every conceivable nook and cranny. His two young daughters were busily tapping away on computers, and a sullen-looking young man sat frowning in concentration at a 50-inch plasma TV in the living room, practicing for a big FIFA World Cup match that weekend. Upstairs it was no different. The master bedroom was more office than peaceful retreat, with trophies and gigantic prize-cheques - most of them bigger than both Mike's daughters put together - littering every surface. Two things struck me during our brief visit to the UK headquarters of Team Dignitas. This man is seriously dedicated to his work and his wife must be an absolute saint!

One of the team's star players, David 'Zaccubus' Treacy, agreed to meet us for a chat about his life as a professional gamer. Hiding beneath a huge floppy hat I was expecting his interview to be a bit of a struggle. Computer gamers don't have a reputation for possessing highly developed social skills. As a gamer myself I am thoroughly opposed to this generalisation, and as soon as David started to speak I realised I had utterly misjudged him from his appearance. This young man was friendly, open and eloquent. Despite having suffered with dyslexia throughout his school years, he was clearly very bright and ambitious. The difference here was that his ambitions centred around becoming the best video gamer on the planet. Now you might think that sounds like a waste of a person's drive and passion - but when you consider he has the potential to earn in excess of $100,000 in a year, and travel the world on expenses while he's doing it, it begins to sound a lot more palatable.

The final stop on our tour of the UK gaming fraternity was the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, where Team Dignitas were contracted by hardware manufacturers to battle head to head against members of the great unwashed public. Young lads bashed away at computers worth thousands of pounds as their parents looked on, somewhat bemused. They were routinely wiped out by a few carefully planned flicks of a Team Dignitas mouse-hand on the other side of the partition.

Dr Dominic Micklewright, a sports psychologist from The University of Essex was also at the event. He ran some scientific tests on our gamers and see if any comparisons could be made with professional athletes, he subjected the poor victims to a rigorous session of bouncing, cycling and reaction-time tests. They were sharp - as sharp as any good athlete who takes his sport seriously. But when it came to the fitness tests - well, let's just say there can be no denying that most avid computer gamers probably do need to get out into the fresh air a bit more often!

Kate Russell is presenter of The eSportsmen on BBC Radio 4

• Part one of The eSportsmen is on Radio 4 on Friday 4 June at 1100.
• There are some pictures of Kate Rusell and the eSportsmen on Flickr.
• Follow Kate Russell (@katerussell), Mike O'Dee (@dignitasODEE) and David Treacy (@zaccubus) on Twitter.
• Dominic Micklewright's Sport, Performance & Fatigue Research Unit at Essex University.
• The picture is by Go International Group. It was taken at the Dreamhack Malaysia finals in 2009. Used under licence.

If you're a regular Today listener you'll know that the daily racing tips are a treasured (and sometimes comical) element of the the programme's sports coverage. So it seems quite appropriate that when Garry Richardson, the programme's long-serving sports presenter, came into the Today studio at the end of this morning's 8:10 interview, he took the opportunity to ask your new Prime Minister to provide two tips of his own. Here they are:

The picture, showing David Cameron making his selections, was taken by World at One presenter Martha Kearney through the studio's glass wall and posted on her Twitter account, @marthakearney.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• For the record, David Cameron selected five year-old Daring Dream in the 15:50 at Ayr and four year-old Midnight Fantasy in the 15:00 at Wolverhampton.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mjr9v

One of my delights over the past few years has been following the so-called 'children of the Olympic bid'. If you've missed it let me fill you in.

These are the youngsters who back in 2005 played a key but little known role in snatching the games for London from under the Parisian nose. Aged between twelve and sixteen at the time, they were selected from east end schools to demonstrate the diversity that London would bring to the games.

Up on stage, as Sebastian Coe put the London case to the International Olympic Committee. Their contrast with 'the suits' that the other cities had on show might just have made all the difference.

I was in Singapore at the time, but I have to admit, it was my producer who cooked up the idea with our commissioning editor at Radio 4 that we should follow these youngsters all the way through to the games themselves and see how their lives were shaped by the event they'd done so much to bring about.

It's been a joy! The first in the current series went out last Monday. We've spent a good deal of this week editing and scripting the second programme.

The great thing about these youngsters is that they have been so welcoming, so frank, so un-phased by having microphones thrust in front of them. There's a presumption that teenagers between about thirteen and seventeen are loathe to utter more than a monosyllable, but nothing could have been further from the truth with this group.

They've welcomed me into their homes, let me watch at close quarters their disasters, sporting and otherwise, and then politely answered questions about them! Talked about their love lives, their beliefs, their ambitions, without a hint of defensiveness. None of this "lessons will have been learned from this". When things go well for them, they share their uninhibited delight; when they screw up, they tell you what went wrong! Anyone with a jaundiced view of today's younger generation should listen to them; they could learn a lot!

You and Yours has also thrown up two particular delights for me this week: first of all my guest on Monday was Margaret Mountford, the businesswoman who has become something of a heroine to viewers of the BBC's 'Apprentice' for her withering look when dismissing the antics of Lord Sugar's most excruciating job applicants.

The You and Yours team have had quite a lot of fun trying to explain to me what a 'withering' look is; one of the great advantages to having been blind from birth, is that withering looks can be safely ignored!

I think Margaret must have got most of her withering looks out of the way while she and the producer negotiated over what she would, and wouldn't answer questions on!

By the time she got to me, she was all smiles (one of the joys of being a presenter; we're a cosseted bunch). She was only too happy to talk about women in the city, the fact that a lot of people came on The Apprentice just to secure a career in television, and even what she thought of a man whose nose was ensured for five million pounds, because it was so good at grading cheese.

But an even higher point than that was my trip on one of the first Greyhound buses to make a scheduled journey in Britain, from Southampton to London.

The iconic American company (actually now British-owned) reckons it can make a go of it here, but we probably haven't helped! And it was all going so well: barrelling up the motorway, Managing Director giving me his pitch, American studies academic waxing lyrical about the music the Greyhound had inspired! In fact, my worry was that this could all turn into far too much of a puff for the company!

I needn't have worried: somewhere near Windlesham in Surrey, so far not a subject of popular song, a keening, whining sound impinged on my interviewing. It quickly became apparent that we were losing power: Soon, with a nifty bit of piloting, the driver slid us to a halt on the hard shoulder! We'd broken down! It's the moment a company dreads

I have to be fair; they took it on the chin, fronted up for the inevitable interview, and summoned taxis to take everyone on to their final destinations. In fact, judging by the response to our programme, its probably done them less harm than they think; but, given that one of their great selling-points was tickets for a pound, I did rather treasure the pay-off: the lady who phoned her son to tell him what had happened, only to receive back this text: "you get what you pay for, mother".

• Series four of Children of the Olympic bid is on-air now.
• The picture shows Ashley Mitchell whose 'light-touch organisational unorthodoxy' features in episode two of Children of the Olympic bid.
• Peter's Greyhound Bus item was on Friday's You and Yours and Margaret Mountford's on last Monday's.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c67t1

Test Match Special is a favourite programme. I first started listening more or less forty years ago. I remember not only the wonderful Arlott and Johnston - but Alan Gibson and Don Mosey and Alan McGilvray and EW Swanton. Like many others I turned down the TV commentary to listen to TMS - unless Richie Benaud was on TV duty.

That is a bit harder to do now as Sky (who do a very good job I rather think) and TMS are not in perfect sync. Alas.

Of course everyone with an interest in cricket and/or TMS knows of the Brian Johnston corpsing moment - or should that be corpsing minutes. I was listening live at the time. But I have other favourite moments. I do this next bit from memory - and someone out there correct me if this is wrong - but I recollect a New Zealand batsman in the 1970s (perhaps Bev Congdon?) making two successive huge hundreds. John Arlott asked Trevor Bailey what were Congdon's weaknesses. Trevor Bailey replied... "He loses concentration when he gets to 170." Very fine.

Why is TMS so good? Because it is about metaphor and simile - about literature and art, about weather and place - about food and drink - as well as about a great game (though not necessarily a better game than baseball - but that's another story). And we are always looking for the perfect balance between the sporting ingredients and the other delicacies that surround the cricket. Everyone has a different opinion about what that balance should be... and it is an art form. We must not miss a ball but it would be a mistake not to let the team go off piste.

We are in good nick at the moment. The programme of course is now online and on 5 Live Sports Extra but it will long stay a defining part of R4's culture. It will not be a sports commentary programme alone. I am going to see the TMS team on Saturday morning at the Oval. Let us hope the match is still alive at that point. I have an Australian wife and my children have Australian passports and some of them will be with me. I do not know whether I am impartial. I would not wish to fail the Tebbit test. So I shall pray for Freddie's knee.

• 5 Live's Test Match Special page and details of how to listen in Jonathan Agnew's Oval preview.
• Adam Mountford, Alison Mitchell, Mihir Bose and Oliver Brett contribute to the Test Match Special blog and producer Adam Mountford has his own.
• Dozens of great Ashes moments from 5 Live's archive.
• Subscribe to the Test Match Special podcast and embed the Test Match Special widget.
• Follow Jonathan Agnew on Twitter.
• A page of 'gaffes and giggles' from Brian Johnston's web site.
• Dave Podmore's Ashes, a comedy about 'the game's laziest bits-and-pieces player' starts tonight at 2300 on Radio 4.
• The picture is from the BBC's picture library and shows (L-R) Alan McGilvray, Trevor Bailey, Freddie Truman, and Henry Blofeld in the Test Match Special commentary box at Lords in 1981.