Humphrys: Don’t invite me to dinner
As a special edition of the Today show celebrates its 60 years, Rosa Silverman talks to co-host John Humphrys
Brian Redhead, a former presenter of Today on BBC Radio 4, once said: “If you want to drop a word in the ear of the nation, then this is the programme on which to do it.” Well, politicians and others from every sphere of public life have now been doing just that for 60 years, a landmark anniversary being celebrated tomorrow with a special edition of the current affairs show broadcast from London’s Wigmore Hall. John Humphrys will be there – of course he will – co-presenting with Sarah Montague, and his hopes for the event are as ambitious as you might expect. “I want to try and get at what we have, if anything, achieved in the last 60 years,” he says. “And by that – and I know it sounds a bit grandiose – [I mean] have we served democracy? It’s a highfalutin notion but nonetheless in the amount of airtime we’ve had and the number of people we’ve broadcast to, we must have had some influence on somebody in some way.”
This, self-evidently, is something of an understatement. The breakfast news programme pulls in an audience of more than seven million listeners a week, with numbers continuing to grow despite relentless competition from the current proliferation of news outlets.
“If you’d asked me, when the tech revolution started 10 or 15 years ago, how can the Today programme possibly survive, I’d have said, ‘yeah, we’re going to have real trouble; a fight to hold on to the audience, and getting new listeners,’” says Humphrys.
Yet in the event, there was little need to worry, which the 74-year-old presenter attributes to the trust the public has in the BBC: “All the fake news stuff plays to our strengths, and we don’t have an axe to grind. I genuinely believe I’m impartial when I’m doing interviews. I have views, of course I do. I’d be a moron if I didn’t.”
However, these healthy audience figures can’t hide the fact that the programme has attracted some criticism of late. Sarah Sands, its new editor, this month was forced to defend the flagship show against accusations of dumbing down after some listeners argued it was becoming too lightweight and lifestyle orientated. Even former editor, Roger Mosey, blamed her for making it more “magazine, than news”, following programmes dedicated to London Fashion Week and Silicon Valley.
However, it’s not a notion that Humphrys is ready to entertain from across his kitchen table at his home in west London. “It’s absolutely rubbish. She’s not going to do anything of the sort. She believes in news just as much; she wouldn’t have got the job if she didn’t and she wouldn’t have survived five minutes if she showed she wasn’t interested. But she will change things. She already has. [There’s] a bit more emphasis on, I don’t know, fashion for instance – an area in which I’m an acknowledged expert,” he jokes. “But the core of the programme will go on. [Italian writer] Giuseppe Lampedusa in The Leopard [wrote] ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ I completely agree with that.”
Humphrys, co-host of the show for almost 31 years, has not escaped opprobrium himself. His grilling of Alexandra Shulman, former Vogue editor, about the fashion industry went down badly with some, while others accused him of xenophobia when he questioned the British citizenship of Johanna Konta in July. He caused further uproar when he told Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, that “the scales have been tipped a little too far” in favour of victims in sexual assault cases.
Humphrys, who sees his job as being that of devil’s advocate, takes such things in his stride. “I don’t care,” he says. “And that’s not bravado. I don’t use Twitter. If someone tells me there’s something on Twitter affecting me I’ll check on it just in case there’s a vanishingly slim possibility it will be true and I’ll need to respond. But for the most part it seems to me to be a whole series of bully pulpits for people to express opinions.
“They’re doing it to draw attention to themselves, that’s fine, we all do it; and they like the sound of their own voice, and that’s fine too, we all do that; but why does that mean I should listen? While I’m doing an interview, I haven’t thought, ‘I wonder what the Twitterati will make of this.’ I don’t care.”
If this makes him sound callous, he is not. He is warm, engaging, full of humour and infinitely friendlier in person than his on-air interviewing style – he has been referred to as the rottweiler of Radio 4 – suggests. Before sitting down, he makes tea, talks about his garden, and Wales, where he’s from, and how lovely the park near his house is. Not that his devil’s advocate persona is dropped the moment the 9am pips sound.
“It does sort of seep through into your private life,” he admits wryly. “I’d be the last person I’d invite to a dinner party because whatever somebody says – and I don’t always control this terribly well – you feel yourself about to take issue with it, even though you might agree.”
Even when the “somebody” is a politician, he acknowledges there’s a risk that a combative interview style can have an adverse effect on the level of public debate. “There’s the danger that if you’re seen to be permanently trying to score points and make them look silly, you’re not serving democracy,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with making a politician look silly if they are silly,
‘If we’ve added to the cynicism of politics, that’s a bad thing’
that’s the job, but if we’ve added to the cynicism of politics, that’s a bad thing. I don’t think we have.”
In his view, the interviewer has crossed the line if they are rude or dismissive. I suggest too that when an interviewee feels attacked there is the risk that they become defensive and so the ability to explore issues in depth becomes limited?
“I completely agree and there is a danger of that and we’ve all done it,” he says. “I certainly have.”
But the “grown-up” politicians will always engage in debate, he adds, citing John Prescott and Margaret Thatcher. “You couldn’t always understand [Prescott] but he was prepared to engage. Thatcher enjoyed the argument. One of the problems now [is if ] the politician is schooled about what they must and must not say and then that becomes tedious.”
As for the future, he’s fed up with being asked when he will retire, but makes it crystal clear it’s not on his agenda. “I’m not saying I’ll be there for the next 60 years,” he smiles, “Possibly for another 30.”