He’s always been civil to me. But I won’t shed a tear over ocean-going windbag Naughtie quitting Today

CALL me an old curmudgeon, but I’m finding it very hard to join in the general national mourning over the tearful departure from the Today programme of my old mate Jim Naughtie. Yes, I know this is a terrible thing to say about a long- standing acquaintance, particularly in the season of goodwill — an acquaintance, moreover, who is impeccably civil and friendly on the rare occasions when we still meet.

Nor am I planning to moan about his offthe-shelf Left-wing views, though I know I’m not alone in thinking he never fully succeeded in concealing where his heart lay. (What a wonderfully revealing moment it was, during the 2005 election, when he began asking Labour’s Ed Balls ‘If we win the election . . . ’ before hastily correcting himself to: ‘If you win . . . ’)

But then it’s never a cause for rejoicing when one BBC Leftie moves on since there’s always another one right behind to fill the vacancy.

No, the main reason I’m not sobbing my heart out over Jim’s departure on Wednesday is that, in his professional life at least, I’ve long thought him. . . oh dear, there’s no kind way of saying this. . . I’ve long thought him an ocean-going, Olympian, five-star crasher of a pompous bore.

Pomposity

Please don’t get me wrong. I have a very soft spot for bores, among whom I hasten to say I count myself. In my book, there are many worse sins than a tendency to strain other people’s patience. Nothing much wrong with a spot of pomposity, either.

Indeed, I’m delighted to be a member of a select little circle of saloon bar crashers. We congregate at the pub every lunchtime, discussing such matters as how much better TV was when there were only two channels, how new technology terrifies us and how disconcertingly warm it is in London for the time of year. I just pity our poor wives, who have to put up with such sparkling conversation at home.

But there are certain conventions governing the conduct of pub bores, of which Rule Number One is that we’re allowed to take turns in boring each other.

Rule Two is that when one of us goes on beyond endurance about, say, some golfer whose name has escaped him, the rest of us can tell him to shut up.

The trouble is that in his 21 years on BBC Radio 4’s Today, dear old Jim never quite seemed to grasp the First Rule, clinging on for dear life to the talking stick and snatching it away from his interviewees if they ever had the effrontery to reach for it and try to put in a word.

As for Rule Two, you may tell me I could easily have silenced Jim just by switching off the radio. But there you would be wrong. For the awful truth is that the Today programme is compulsory listening in my trade — and when Naughtie momentarily paused for breath, there was always just a chance that someone might say something newsworthy.

Missing it would have been a serious offence. So for 21 excruciating years until Wednesday, I woke up to Jim ‘Round-theClocktie’ Naughtie’s dulcet Moray burr burbling on interminably as he tried to frame a question — his voice sometimes thickened, I fancied, by too little sleep possibly after revels the night before.

As a treat for those who are missing him, here he is in prime form in 2006, attempting to ask the then U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, if UK ministers were always informed about extraordinary rendition torture flights through British airspace. Deep breath:

‘But the question is not whether liberal democracy — you talked about this in your lecture on the eve of this programme — is a good thing or a bad thing, as most people in this country, as in yours, think it is a desirable state; the question is how you go about bringing it.

‘Now let me remind you and I’m sure you know these words from President Bush himself in the presidential debate just before he was elected October 2000, he said if we’re an arrogant nation, they will resent us, speaking about the United States . . .’

But I’ll be merciful and spare readers the remaining 83 words of his question.

To be fair, many of us are not at our brightest first thing in the morning, and presenting the Today programme is my idea of one of the most hellish jobs on earth.

Mangled

But I can’t help wondering how many licence-fee payers managed to stay with Jim from the first word of that mangled question to the 179th, without falling back to sleep.

All credit to Ms Rice, who saw it through right to the end before answering in 23 words. I just hope her experience of the Naughtie treatment didn’t give her ideas for a new form of torture at Guantanamo Bay.

As it happens, I spotted Jim’s potential as an opening batsman for the Great Bores of Britain XI way back in the early Eighties, when for the first time in my life I accepted an invitation to speak in a debate.

This was at the Cambridge Union Society, and Naughtie — then a political correspondent for, you guessed it, the Guardian — was on the opposing team.

I will draw a discreet veil over my own performance in the debate. Enough to say I was struck dumb with a self-fulfilling fear of making a fool of myself, and my first attempt at public speaking was also my last.

But as you would expect, young Roundthe-Clocktie had no such problem, speaking eloquently and amusingly and, if I remember rightly, carrying the debate (though what the motion was, I can’t for the life of me recall).

It was only after the debate, when we went off with a group of Union members for a digestif or three in an undergraduate’s college room, that Naughtie revealed his full, astonishing power to sap his listeners’ will to live.

My failing memory may embellish, but I could almost swear that for fully two hours Jim held court, delivering an uninterrupted monologue about life at the Commons and the Guardian, while allowing no one else to get in a word.

Dullest

After the first 20 minutes or so, even the politest among his young listeners had abandoned any pretence of being interested. But Jim just droned on and on, blissfully incognisant of the glazed eyes and inner howls of the rest of us, with the true bore’s unshakeable self-esteem and absolute confidence that every word he was saying held his listeners spellbound.

It was as I sat there, gulping down whisky and mulling over alternative means of suicide, that I saw a future for Jim on one of those local radio phone-ins whose hosts have to maintain an endless flow of tripe to fill the long and embarrassing gaps between calls.

Little did I think that he’d end up as presenter of BBC radio’s flagship news programme — or that for 21 years, morning after morning, I’d suffer a repeat of my grim experience in Cambridge.

So what a sublime relief it was on Wednesday to hear Jim’s voice cracking with emotion as he said goodbye to Today, blubbing that he felt ‘woven into the fabric’ of the programme and behaving as if his departure was a momentous national event, akin to a monarch’s funeral.

Wasn’t it splendidly appropriate, by the way, that he was sent off with a fulsome tribute from his fellow opening batsman for the Bores XI, Britain’s dullest former prime minister, Sir John Major? There was ‘not a dry eye in the house,’ said the programme’s Twitter account.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, chaps, blow your noses and dry your eyes. It’s not even as if we’ve heard the last from Jim, who’s staying with the BBC as a special correspondent and promises to go on boring us to tears about Scottish politics.

What’s more, I’ll lay a small bet that he won’t be taking a cut in salary. Auntie looks after her own.

But I mustn’t end on a sour note. To all my readers, I wish the very happiest of Christmases. And to my fellow bore Jim, I say enjoy your lie-ins — and whatever you do, don’t hurry back to the airwaves on my account.