PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Invaluable tips and advice, long and entertaining car journeys.
This is how Lasse Granqvist remembers his former colleague Arne Hegerfors.
– It is Swedish sports television’s, next to Lennart Hylland, the biggest that goes out of time.
Lasse Granqvist, TV4 Play’s presenter and commentator, first thought after the news of the death of his former colleague Arne Hegerfors is about the family.
– All warmth and concern must be directed there.
Hegerfor’s death
Then he remembers Hegerfor’s greatness as a commentator and entertainer, but also the advice and tips he received from his colleague and the car trips they took together after Allsvenskan matches.
– Arne’s greatness was the timing. So what is timing? It is saying the right thing in the right tone at the right time. To do that is insanely difficult, he says.
– Arne had it genetically, he had it in his DNA, he had it in his spinal cord. It just came. For him it was no problem, but when he had to get others to understand how it should be done, then you had to sit down and think for a long time about: how the hell am I going to do this?
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Granqvist and Hegerfors worked together at Canal+. With Hegerfor’s “invaluable tips and advice”, Granqvist managed to take the step to combine his role as presenter with commentary.
Granqvist’s words
Arne Hegerfors also offered other things. He made sure that his colleagues’ car journeys were entertaining.
– He didn’t have a driver’s license, he sat next to him as a “co-driver”. He had been involved in a traffic accident where the driver fell asleep, so he was talking the whole time. He did it by telling his “stories”, entertaining events from his rich professional life, says Granqvist.
– There was a lot of happy laughter.
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Early in the morning, after some ice cream stops on the way, they were back in Stockholm.
– The car skidded in at half past four, four in the morning at Birger Jarlsgatan. He jumped out and then he said: the next match – say it was in Gothenburg four days later – then we’ll make the same trip again. And that was looked forward to.
“Tongue in cheek”
Sven-Göran Eriksson commented football championship matches with Hegerfors, not least during the WC 1994.
– An incredibly talented, very knowledgeable person who found himself in all situations with humor all the time. As a person, he was amazingly nice. It was easy to get along with him, he always had a twinkle in his eye. It’s an art to be able to make fun so that it doesn’t affect anyone, so to speak. He was fantastic at that, says Eriksson to SVT.
READ MORE: Biggest sports moment with Arne Hegerfors – the TV profile was nicknamed Alexander Lukas: “Love my job”
In hockey broadcasts, Hegerfors formed a radar pair with the expert for a long time Anders “The Duck” Parmström.
– There will be a lot of tears and my closest thoughts naturally go to Arne’s family. Arne was one of my very best friends, says Parmström to SVT.
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