Abstract
Eddie Mair is remarkable. Whatever broadcasting space he is in, on BBC Scotland, Radio 5 Live, BBC Two's Newsnight or the programme he has made his own, Radio 4's PM, he occupies it with style, attracts a devoted following. Since 2010 he has also written a weekly column in Radio Times, on which this book draws.
He says in its introduction that the columns are the diaries he has never kept. They are, however, observations of things and people where the line between fact and fantasy suddenly wriggles and melts. This is the world observed from the funny side, but just as you're smiling at some imaginary nonsense or fantasied grotesquerie, you suddenly realise how closely he watches things, as in the arrival of the BBC chairman at PM.
“Like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, Lord Patten suddenly appears in the room, apparently from nowhere. Everyone in the office is in the same mode as me. No one acknowledges our visitor is there and each individual is furiously engaged in the act of appearing relaxed and nonchalant, yet busy and productive. It's not an easy thing for non-actors to pull off. There are lots of furrowed brows, some slightly shouty phone conversations, yet not a single swearword. The intensity of it all makes some people quietly wet themselves.”
His first sentence makes you see it as a cartoon. The sketch of office behaviour that follows is meticulous, realistic. He pays off with a shock, an incongruity, something to make you burst out laughing that needn't be taken literally. But could be.
He plays that trick a lot. I bet between the ages of 12 and 16 he devoured the works of Mark Twain, James Thurber and SJ Perelman. Before that I reckon he read Beano and Dandy while listening to Chic Murray on the radio. If not, some angel must have gifted him the art of storytelling and the blessing of the punchline. These columns run from 2010 to 2016. In their foreground are great events: the World Cup, the Olympics, regime changes, deaths. In the background there is Mair, fantasising.
“Here at Broadcasting House Fun Factory it's like a non-stop party. Imagine Lord Hall as Willy Wonka (the Gene Wilder version) and his eager staff as the dedicated Oompa-Loompas… Yes, there are chocolate rivers on every floor, lifts that go sideways and even Wonkavision. Not so long ago there was even a jacuzzi of cash, but Mark Thompson took that away with him to The New York Times.”
Those of us who remember Mark Thompson when he ran away from the BBC to be Channel 4's boss will also recall the night when, in a speech to the Royal Television Society, he flayed the BBC for moaning on about funding when it was in possession of said jacuzzi. Then he went back to the BBC. Then he went to America to run The New York Times. Clever Eddie, to wrap it all in such a delicious joke that anyone who read it would never again visit New Broadcasting House without seeing it all, including Thompson, in Eddie-vision.
He writes as he talks, with lovely breadth of reference and unique wit. What isn't here is what he really does on PM, his chill concision in the dissection of arguments put forward by blustering hucksters, political and otherwise. This book is a box of treats, full of flights of fancy and much fun with the names and reputations of colleagues, among them Corrie Corfield, Martha Kearney, Paddy O'Connell, sundry weather forecasters and, of course, Robert Peston. Here is Mair from May 2015 on the genesis of the series they did together, The Robert Peston Interview Show (with Eddie Mair.)
“We have had, I kid you not, only one production meeting at which Robert and I were both present. He's very difficult to pin down, but if Giant Haystacks was still alive I'd pay a lot of money to see him give it a go.”
The joke of that, and I say it as a fan of both, is that Mair is not only a humorous writer of distinction but a miles-better broadcaster than Peston.
Gillian Reynolds was the radio critic of The Guardian for seven years and filled the same role at The Daily Telegraph for 42 years until she left in January to pursue a new career at The Sunday Times at the age of 82. She is a fellow of the Radio Academy and the Royal Television Society.