Abstract
After spending 32 years in his captive audience at breakfast time, my favourite John Humphrys moment remains something that the great man did not say. It was towards the end of the Blair-Brown era when Radio 4's Today presenter was finding it increasingly hard to disguise his gut conservatism and a working-class Cardiff lad's instinctive distaste for smooth-talking New Labour graduates with whom he had clashed over the Iraq war and much else.
I can't have been the only one who'd noticed the rising blood pressure because a listener wrote in to the Feedback programme wittily to complain: “I was really enjoying the John Humphrys interview, but Alistair Darling kept interrupting.” Spot on, I murmured. Mild-mannered and thoughtful, the then-chancellor was just the sort of middle-class progressive Humphrys likes to rough up. It's been calmer since 2010.
Several years earlier, the then-editor of the British Journalism Review had asked me to write a piece saying Humphrys should be put out to grass. John was 62 at the time (2005) and had no intention of retiring, merely of airing the possibility once in a while, like Frank Sinatra. It keeps them interested. I duly tried to argue that the safest place to keep a national treasure is in the ground, but my heart wasn't in it. So it was my duff piece, not the presenter, that got buried, deep inside the next BJR.
Now that he's promised to go by the time the leaves start falling, I'm relieved for him. Always jump before you're pushed and the time seems ripe. The Dimblebys – the Habsburgs of the BBC – are finally abdicating, the Age Police have cornered Andrew Neil. How long can David Attenborough escape the hospice studio, when even Kirsty Young is giving up?
Of course, the Beeb must periodically work to refresh the embattled brand by widening its appeal to youf, to diversity and – yet again – to improve gender balance and sound less “middle class.” It's not a problem I detect much. Even Radio 3 can be a bit too chatty on a bad day (“Did Mahler use Twitter much, do we know?”). Then there is on-demand audio, the heavy promotion of BBC Sounds, the take-up so far disappointing. Radio is under sustained financial pressure, new faces are in place at the top, headed by Mohit Bakaya, appointed after an embarrassing six-month delay to become controller of Radio 4. Let us hope the new chancellor does not persuade him to fund soup kitchens along with the licence fee.
But I also feel conflicted. Yes, Humphrys can be boorish and ignorant, inappropriately flippant (don't mention Carrie Gracie's pay), philistine even. It is a rash duty editor who lets him anywhere near high-end arts or one of Martha's nature rambles, the kind of non-political broadening of Today's agenda which the Sarah Sands regime has fostered. Both the new agenda and Humphrys can sometimes be irritating, but often good for us: like chia seeds in the muesli. He tends to ask his challenging questions from the Right side of any argument and is sometimes put down for it. Excellent, it is all part of the mix. “Humphrys” is not the name that springs to mind when someone says “podcast” or “disco on transitioning”.
But being an Old Fartonian curmudgeon myself, I know I will miss the old throwback and share what I suspect are his doubts about self-declared gender. The other presenters – Nick and Justin, gentle Mishal and Martha the happy beekeeper – are very good in their different ways. But you just know none of them ever went even slightly hungry or left school at 15 to work on the Penarth Times. They wouldn't have been the first reporter at the Aberfan pit disaster in 1966 – unless they happened to be presenting the programme from Ebbw Vale that week. Forensic, professional, ambitious, talented, but they're all too nice, too reasonable, to throttle anyone. Irascible John can sound angry and therefore mean, which is why politicians try to avoid him.
It goes without saying that the Today programme is “in crisis” as usual. It's “losing its grip” and listeners to a host of combative rival talk stations such as LBC, which poach BBC stars. Is Nick Ferrari better than Humphrys? Are Nigel Farage and Rees-Mogg still channeling the audience's inner demagogue on LBC? I keep meaning to tune in, but forget. Radio's such a matter of habit, the listener's relationship quite intimate. That's why we shout back at the set. So the No 4 button on my erratic Roberts digital stays on Radio 4, even though Today is not as good it was. It never has been, but not even John in a bad mood could be called a shock jock, only the vital grit in a conversational oyster which grown-ups still value in shouty and divisive times.
Chemistry matters. Listening to Jack de Manio (1958-71) was like watching Reggie Bosanquet reading ITV's News at Ten, an event in itself. Brian Redhead (1975-93) and genial Peter Hobday (1983-96) were a good team. And didn't the acerbic Robert Robinson (1971-74) once say “Thank you, minister, we wouldn't have expected you to say anything else”? I think he did. Before she decided they were all communists and that she'd switch off after Farming Today, Mrs Thatcher was a regular listener, occasionally an impromptu guest.
And, of course, the same complaints come around again. Too much politics, too much London. Presenters do go out of town much more now, to British cities and the wider world, which is progress, though I suspect the much-travelled JH pulls OAP rank to sleep in his own bed. Out-of-town trips are always progress. So are curbs on thoughtless sexism, still breathtaking on occasion.
Well before the former foreign correspondent and TV newsreader Humphrys was signed up in 1987, there had always been at least one woman presenter in the interest of what wasn't called gender balance. The great Gill Reynolds, Libby Purves, Jenni Murray, none of them seemed to have staying power until the redoubtable Sue MacGregor (1984-2002), whose 18-year tenure is matched (almost) only by Sarah Montague (2001-18). Montague fell out noisily over pay – one quarter of Humphrys’ overall package – and did a prisoner swop with Martha Kearney on The World at One, where she seems happier as a solo act.
It can't have been easy for any of them partnering John, who remains primus inter pares, even if he does not automatically bag the big setpiece clashes (did he ever? It felt like it). Will he eke out his meagre pension by going off to commercial radio? Let's hope not: quit while you're ahead. If by the time you read this, the new regime at Radio 4 has appointed young Andrew Neil to the vacancy, I shall be impressed but surprised and may have to turn down the volume. If the new presenter is under 30 and transitioning, I may have to spend more of breakfast with Radio 3. Keep your nerve, Auntie. The populists have other stations on which to hector.