Steve Rider exclusive: 'The BBC is soul-destroying - their HQ doesn't even have a bar'

Steve Rider wants me to hear something. Wrestling slightly with his iPhone, as is the right of any 72-year-old, he pulls up an audio clip with an unpromising title.

The recording is radio commentary from 1949, engine roars and RP, crystal clear but unremarkable. “That very healthy note you heard just then was Frank Gerard and he's driving as usual,” says a dimly familiar voice. The penny drops with the next line. “This ERA is well over 11 years old, in fact I believe I’m right in saying it is 12 years old.” An unmistakable Murray Walker moment. This was his first ever commentary for the BBC, long since assumed lost.

Many retirements are spent shambling round a garden. Not Rider’s, though. His big project is preserving the legacy of motorsport, the longest love affair of his sporting life. He has set up the company Racing Past Media (RPM) which aims to collate an archive of footage from the earliest days of Formula One, a one-stop shop for documentary makers and research.

After finding the Walker clip, Rider alerted the BBC to its whereabouts, thinking it would be helpful for this year’s centenary programmes. He was told that there was not going to be any sport in the BBC’s celebrations. In its defence it has live coverage of the women’s Euros, World Athletics Championship and World Cup to concentrate on. But in general the broadcaster has retreated from live sport and seems uninterested in its strongest remaining sporting asset, a remarkable archive.

The BBC told Rider they could see the point in RPM's proposal to research its archive but that, in Rider’s words, “the contractual implications are just completely insurmountable and it would take a mountain of paperwork to climb.” In contrast to such intransigence, “We took the same idea to ITV who said: 'Yes, fantastic.' We’ve done a three-year deal.

“What they [the BBC] have got in their possession is something that can really contribute to the landscape. And not to put too fine a point on it, the British public have paid for it anyway. There is such a lack of imagination now, and nervousness. They see threats around every corner.”

They are not imagining those threats, I suggest, given the Culture Secretary wants to scrap the licence fee. “If they sit there and say it’s too complicated to research and monetise their own archive they deserve to have a few threats,” says Rider.

“I hope we get a little bit of cooperation. It's not just Formula One, there's a lot of stuff in the BBC archives. I think because of the current attitudes and philosophy, it just doesn't mean anything to anyone, it’s too much like hard work.”

We meet at a Thames Valley village pub, walking distance for Rider. Ever the pro, he suggests we move tables in a sun-dappled garden for the sake of my recording, away from a group of lairy lads who look in it for the long haul. For the record Rider orders a pint of IPA without hesitation at 12.30 on a Monday. It felt rude not to join him.

Clearly his quest for archive access is not purely altruistic. Formula One Management owns everything from 1980 onwards and if Rider’s company can consolidate most of what exists from before then F1 could be tempted to pay for it and take full control of its past. But I am in no doubt this is a passion project for Rider, which is why he is so disappointed with his long-time employer.

“I'm not saying that the old spirit was the good spirit, but we had a good time, and I don't get a sense of that going on at the moment. I went up to [BBC Sport HQ] Salford a few weeks ago and I got shown around. I said 'where's the bar?' 'We haven't got a bar'. Every single production meeting for Grandstand was in the bar.”

His last major event as a presenter was the 2011 Rugby World Cup for ITV, but he keeps his oar in fronting ITV4’s coverage of the British Touring Car Championship. “Possibly this will be my last year,” he says.

Traditional live motorsport coverage has stiff competition from shiny streaming shows. Has he watched Drive to Survive? “Yeah…” then a sharp, small chuckle. “The treatment of the climax of last season was disgraceful, really. For the Masi thing to be more exciting on the day, with access to all the bloody footage that must have been around… But you cannot ultimately do a documentary that is controlled by the subject. Technically, it's an astonishing piece of work, but I think they’ve created a monster.”

'I was horrified when I saw Harry Kane at the Masters in a pair of trainers and running shorts'

For most Rider will be remembered as host of Grandstand, which he presented on more than 700 occasions. But he started his career with Anglia and he moved to ITV to front Formula One and football in 2006. Does he consider himself more of a BBC or ITV man?

“I would never have dreamt of saying this when I left the BBC, but I feel a greater affinity for ITV and their attitudes, their ability to commit to ideas. I’m sure the BBC are the same deep down, but to plough through all the c--- you have to now is just soul-destroying.”

Working with Des Lynam gave him a blueprint of how to present sport. "The lesson I learnt from Des was ‘the greater the tension, the slower the delivery. When we shared the Olympic coverage I would take over and he'd been in the chair for three or four hours, the whole studio was working at his pace.

"I always think that the greater the profile of the presenter the poorer the job they're doing. If you don't notice the presenter, it's like a referee. The presenter is probably the most dispensable job within the entire operation. Having said that, when you're comfortable with the presenter then they're doing a great job. So I was lucky that nobody seemed to notice me.”

He wants TV sport to be treated with humour but also respect. “I was horrified when I turned on the Masters on Sky and saw Harry Kane standing on the balcony in a pair of trainers and running shorts.” Mark Chapman gets the Rider seal of approval, but his biggest praise is for Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine, Sue Barker and Gabby Logan.

“When they came in they transformed the attitude that the rest of us had to the job. I’m not making a women vs men point, but the standards they set in work ethic and research... Des and I had sort of blagged our way through 20 years. With Sue on ice skating and Hazel on golf, they showed us you needed a relationship with everything we were doing. We all had to sharpen up a bit.”

In person it is clear why Rider lasted so long on our screens. He is utterly at ease with himself and puts me, his viewer for the day, right there too. Maybe that is familiarity, all those years on Grandstand, World Cups of both football and rugby on ITV, dozens of Masters on BBC. It seems more like enduring professionalism. He is fabulous company. He wishes he could use a similar adjective to describe his former company.