I wanted to get rid of ‘irritating’ Thought for the Day, says Sands
THE former editor of BBC Radio 4’s
Today programme wanted to get rid of
Thought for the Day and move it to
Newsnight, she has admitted.
Sarah Sands, who stepped down last year, said she was talked out of the idea by Sir Richard Eyre, the theatre director and BBC governor, who told her it would cause a scandal and be debated in Parliament.
“Thought for the Day is a very peculiar moment in a news programme and when I first arrived at the Today programme, I said, ‘Give it to Newsnight, put it somewhere else.’
“But it’s absolutely, constitutionally there. You don’t touch it,” she said.
“When I started, I spoke to Richard Eyre and said, ‘Thought for the Day should go, probably, now?’ And he said, ‘Please, I beg you, no… there will be questions asked in Parliament.”
Sands had two problems with the daily slot, she told an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
“My main irritation is that I didn’t control it and I hate things I can’t control,” she said. The slot is governed by the BBC’S religion department. Her other complaint was that Thought for the Day “has no relation to the rest of the programme. So no one says, ‘Oh, that was interesting,’ in the way they would with anything else.”
Today’s presenters are instructed to make no reference to the content of Thought for the Day, Sands said.
“Presenters are told to show an interest and a curiosity [in everything] except for that blank. That’s what they’re told to do. It’s odd. So you see absolutely visibly the total [separation of ] church and state.”
Sands was in conversation with Elizabeth Adekunle, Archbishop of Hackney and Thought for the Day contributor, who said she had noticed the oddity.
When invited to speak in the slot, the Archbishop said: “You’re walked in, you get introduced and say your bit, you think there’ll be a natural link on to the next news item… and then nothing. Thank you and goodbye.”
She added: “How do I feel about that? I feel that it’s better than nothing.”
Sands appeared at the festival to promote her book, The Interior Silence, which recounts her journeys to 10 monasteries around the world.
She said that her experiences had made her feel warmer towards Thought for the Day.
Asked if spending time with monks had encouraged her to downsize, she replied: “Well, I gave up the job.”