Andrew Cotter: The BBC commentator and social sensation who refused to cash in on his dogs

These days it is rare to unite people, rarer still to do it on social media. It can happen, but usually only for mass pile-ons and public shamings. So achieving online consensus for positive reasons is outright miraculous. Andrew Cotter, a self-described misanthrope, has done it twice.

The BBC commentator became a star of 2020’s lockdowns, although he did not do it alone. Videos of his Labradors Olive and Mabel have been viewed by millions. The first was Cotter commentating on their breakfast, the pause in live sport leaving a gap in his professional schedule. The videos quickly diversified into faux Zoom meetings and an intro to a TV cop show - Willing and Mabel.

Last month, Cotter was trending on X again, which for a commentator usually requires enraging fans of a football club or nation. In Cotter’s case, the posts were almost entirely favourable, a reaction to his drily witty coverage of the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies.

Olive and Mabel are semi-retired now but have been tempted into a photoshoot in Cotter’s Cheshire garden by a lucrative offer of biscuity treats. We get off on the wrong foot / paw when I reveal I am more of a cat person. Cotter remarks on this to Olive and Mabel with mock (I think) incredulity several times. “I’ve stopped making the videos so much now,” he says. “Olive’s not far off 12 so it’s a bit sad to keep wheeling her out.”

It is impossible not to be charmed by the three of them and the tenderness they share. Cotter’s voice is better known than his face, so it is usually the dogs people recognise when he is out walking them. Even their props are famous. Midway through our interview, Olive enters holding a familiar plastic orange bone between her teeth. The first was lost forever to the garden but “this one has been in so many videos now it has become like the Claret Jug. It’s not the original one, but it’s the one that they get presented with”.

The Olive and Mabel output dried up as Cotter’s commentary engagements returned to pre-pandemic levels, but what a time they had. There was a speaking tour and two books, one of which he is not entirely delighted to learn tops the Telegraph’s list of books to help you sleep more soundly.

The world-straddling appeal of his videos left an impact. A woman receiving cancer treatment in Canada was cheered up by a relative showing her Olive and Mabel on YouTube. She enjoyed them so much they were mentioned in her obituary.

“You can’t help but be affected by that in a positive way, but also you’re feeling all the sadness that that family is going through. That all got to me quite a bit, and made me want to keep making them for that reason.”

Nevertheless, he did not milk his second career for all it was worth. “I never wanted to monetise the dogs on social media. We had any number of brands wanting to do stuff but I’ve never advertised anything. I’m an influencer without any influence.”

He also received offers to reprise his humorous commentary for everything from rental cars to pizzas but declined, fearing that becoming known as a parody commentator would compromise his main gig. Despite his success as a canine film auteur, commentary is where Cotter really excels.

He specialises in two of the most challenging sports to cover, the Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of rugby and the unending skies, lawns and waiting of golf. Both require a judicious combination of narration and wit but nothing compares with the start of an Olympics. “Opening ceremonies are the most challenging broadcasts that I am ever going to do.”

Work began in January on notes which he knew would go 95 per cent unused. This year’s was especially difficult with no dress rehearsal, little idea of the running order and miserable weather. Most of his night was spent underneath a poncho, craning forward to see the screen he was sharing with Hazel Irvine.

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“It’s such a stressful event to cover anyway, the weather’s the least part of it. You’re concentrating so hard on saying the right thing and getting the information across that the soaked back, neck and puddle that you’re sitting in is not really a concern.”

He felt the Seine-based ceremony was received too harshly in the UK. Creative director Thomas Jolly spoke beforehand about the starring role which would be played by a summer sunset. Of course, the skies had other ideas. “I was thinking, what if there isn’t sunlight? That’s just me being from Scotland.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to since I came back says what an awful opening ceremony it was. I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt it was slightly too long in parts, no doubt about that. I felt the mechanical horse was never going to get to the Trocadero. It certainly dragged a little bit towards the end, but all ceremonies do.”

The first challenge was to avoid a major gaffe, the second is tonal and recognising that ceremonies provide as many moments of farce as poignancy. During the closing ceremony, France’s star swimmer was shown walking away alone, holding a lantern. “That was the last we ever saw of Leon Marchand,” deadpanned Cotter. This mix of gravitas with well-judged one-liners makes him beloved by viewers and his peers. John Inverdale calls him “a Manchester City, when most commentators these days are a Manchester United”.

“I always say, if in doubt, don’t say anything,” says Cotter. “The music is playing, people are waving, the crowd noises are there, just take a breather for a moment. Otherwise, it’s four and a half hours of a torrent of talking, which I think is quite wearing.

“If there’s any great skill to commentary, it’s thinking ‘can I add anything here?’ I’ve been as guilty as others in TV of talking too much. But silence is your friend and it’s the friend of the viewer as well. No one’s ever going to complain that there wasn’t enough commentary.”

Peter Alliss taught him the power of keeping things simple, always returning to the tenet of observing the picture on the screen in front of you. It also helps to maintain a relative lack of ego. “You’re this tiny little flute in the orchestra that just has to add a little phrase here or there. Now, if a flute doesn’t play, no one’s going to go, ‘well, I didn’t enjoy that at all,’ it’s just adding that extra thing.”

This metaphor is pursued with enthusiasm and soon Cotter is riffing that none of the flautist’s woodwind friends would even miss him, unless it’s Mozart’s Magic Flute. He senses he has gone in too deep and needs to sum up: “There’s no need for the flute to play all the time.” He cannot resist a topper: “Don’t tell James Galway.”

This is the fun of listening to him work, freewheeling, bright and playful. He is desperate to avoid criticising his contemporaries but keen to praise his ceremony co-star Irvine (“a titan”) and 5 Live’s John Murray (“so natural, brilliant”). Yet there is a certain distaste for some modern developments, especially commentators being filmed.

“There’s a trend for putting cameras on commentators for the big moments to make into clips for social media, with the title ‘commentary team lose it!’ accompanied by a hands-clapping or mind-blown emoji. I’ve never felt comfortable with them so make sure I’ve slid out of shot or just refuse to have them.

“I feel bad for the social media people but I don’t think it’s really about our visual display as a commentator. Being heard and not seen is always better and gives you a freedom to concentrate on the event and produce a genuine emotion.

“Not everything in sport is dramatic. We live in an age now where you’ve got to feel emotion all the time. ‘This is going to be amazing, that’s incredible,’ these overused words, whereas quite a lot of sport just bounces along.

“That’s why, when you have the big moments, they stand out. But they’re not going to stand out if everything is up here at this dramatic level. Sport is not just this intense and serious thing, it’s got to have a bit of levity as well to it sometimes, because sport is silly.”

Cotter grew up watching TV in an era when BBC commentators were the voices of their sport, namechecking David Coleman, Alliss and Bill McLaren. That would be him now, I suggest, had the BBC hung on to more rights. Does he feel any sadness that he is unlikely to match the ubiquity of his predecessors? “No. If you really wanted to be the voice of a sport you’d be in it for the wrong reasons.”

He also points to changing consumption habits, with viewers as likely to watch Keely Hodgkinson on TikTok or Instagram as TV. Despite his less-is-more approach, Cotter should have no problem thriving on social media. After all, he has managed it twice already.