Bungle by a Ninny?

Into the jaws of American commercial television last week flew Britain's suddenly famed runner, Roger Bannister, the world's first four-minute miler (TIME, May 17). But just as the jaws were about to snap tight, cables crackled across the Atlantic, Parliament rocked and anxious hands reached out to preserve Roger Bannister for purer things.

Not since the coronation-day monkeyshines of J. Fred Muggs had U.S. television inspired such ringing editorials in London papers and public wailing in the streets. But this time the acknowledged villains of the piece were fellow Britons--Foreign Office chaps, to boot. Cried the London Daily Mirror:"What a muck-up the Whitehall maulers have made of Roger Bannister's visit to America. . . The public wants to know who bungled. Who spiked the fastest man on earth by grossly mismanaging his good-will trip to the States? . . . Was it some ninny at the Foreign Office?

Official Crackdown. When 25-year-old Trackman Bannister was hustled aboard a plane at London airport under the alias "Richard Bentley," his flight to the U.S. was supposed to be a secret. He had been asked to appear on the CBS-TV panel show I've Got a Secret. The British Foreign Office came to the aid of the producers, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, by persuading the British Amateur Athletic Board that the trip would help "cement British-American relations." By the time Bannister landed at New York's Idlewild airport, Reuters had broken the story and reporters, radio-TV men and diplomats outnumbered the Goodson & Todman agents, who claimed first crack at the athlete because, after all, they had thought up the idea and paid his passage.

Three hours later the British Information Service announced that Bannister would not appear on I've Got a Secret after all, or on any other sponsored show. Daniel J. Ferris, secretary-treasurer of the Amateur Athletic Union of the U.S., had started the chain of events by inquiring of his British counterparts whether Bannister's going on the air on a sponsored program would jeopardize his amateur standing. The British officials promptly reviewed the case and cracked down.

Dizzy Whirl. The I've Got a Secret producers, much miffed (they had even offered to drop their opening commercial) but happy to accept the Information Service's offer to reimburse them by the $522 spent for Bannister's airline passage to the U.S., managed to struggle along with another, if less famed, athlete: Jack Warhop, the oldtime Yankee pitcher who served up the first major-league home-run ball to Babe Ruth.

Meantime, Runner Bannister got caught up in a dizzy, two-day whirl in Manhattan, amiably submitted to interviews, posed for pictures, appeared on a few radio-TV shows free from a sponsor's taint, and took in the sights. Another compromising situation was averted in the cloud-banked Rainbow Room of Rockefeller Center when Bannister accepted a small silver cup, guaranteed to be worth no more than $32.90, from a Southern California amateur athletic group. It was a substitute for a $300 sterling silver bowl--the Roger Bannister Trophy--which he could have received only in defiance of British rules--part of an international amateur code--forbidding athletes to accept gifts worth more than -L-12 ($33.60). Before flying off home, Bannister revealed a final secret about I've Got a Secret. Even if he had been permitted to appear on the show, he wouldn't have gone through with it, he said. The sponsor, he had since learned, was a cigarette company (Cavalier). Not only does he not smoke, but he is convinced that "smoking doesn't do anyone any good."

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