Poor old Michael Fish! He actually got fed up with this a couple of years ago and spoke out, stating that he wasn't the forecaster that evening, and that the reference usually played on TV clips is of him saying that someone phoned in today saying a hurricane was coming and him saying that that was not the case. That's when the clips usually stop. So in the public consciousness, we have this image of Michael Fish poo-pooing the idea of a big storm.
However, if they continue the clips after that point, you have Michael Fish saying "however, it will be very windy" (not verbatim!) and going on to warn of very strong winds for that evening/night.
If I remember, it was John Kettley doing the evening forecast. Both Fish and Kettley (and the Met Office) underestimated the strength of the winds, but then that was because the low intensified unexpectedly quite late on.