I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got time for!
Dimbleby quits Question Time ... at age of 79
AFTER 25 years in the Question Time hot seat, David Dimbleby announced yesterday he was leaving the BBC’s flagship political debating programme.
The 79-year-old broadcaster said he was leaving at the end of the year to become a reporter again.
Dimbleby said it had been ‘exhilarating following the twists and turns of British politics’, and a privilege to bring ‘voters face to face with those in power’.
BBC bosses last night described him as a ‘titan in British broadcasting’ who had been a ‘brilliant champion of the public’.
However, the corporation remained tight-lipped over who might replace him. Kirsty Young, the presenter of Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, is widely considered to be the favourite.
Other candidates are said to include Victoria Derbyshire, whose eponymous current affairs programme is on BBC2, and Newsnight presenter Evan Davis.
Dimbleby, who took over from Peter Sissons in January 1994, will sit in the chair for the final time on December 13. The programme was originally hosted by Robin Day, who died in 2000.
The veteran, who is paid about £450,000 a year by the BBC, has presided over every BBC election night broadcast since 1979, as well as Budget Days and local, European and American elections.
He also presents the BBC’s coverage of the annual Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph and other state occasions. Corporation chiefs refused to say whether he would continue in these roles.
The 2015 election was set to be his last, with BBC News presenter Huw Edwards due to take over. But when Theresa May announced the snap election last year, a behind-the- scenes tussle resulted in a BBC announcement that Dimbleby would present it.
In 2014 he told how hard it would be to hand over the reins of the election coverage, saying: ‘I don’t have any instinct to make way gracefully. I shall be dragged kicking and screaming from my chair.’
Last night, he said: ‘At the end of the year I will have been chairing Question Time for a quarter of a century, and I have decided that this is the right moment to leave.
‘I am not giving up broadcasting. Instead, after years in the studio, I now plan to return to my first love: Reporting.’
Dimbleby, who at 75 had a scorpion tattooed on his back, began at the BBC 57 years ago as a news reporter in Bristol after leaving Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics.
He led the BBC’s coverage of the Common Market referendum in 1975, a role he repeated in 2016 when the UK voted for Brexit.
Although best known now for election nights and Question Time, he led coverage of the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother. His name has also been mentioned as a possible director-general of the BBC.
Last night, BBC director-general Tony Hall described him as ‘a brilliant champion of the public and the audiences’ friend – getting the answers they want on the big and difficult issues of the day’.