Five o’clock just won’t be the same without Eddie
As if to confirm how much Radio 4’s PM will miss Eddie Mair, his stand-in, Jonny Dymond, crashed the pips at 6pm on Monday. Instead of Mair’s smooth gear-change, there was a startled “arff ” followed by a crunch. It was like replacing a purring Bentley with a kangarooing Trabant. The BBC could not have had a more embarrassing illustration of the talent they have lost.
For his fans – and we are legion – Mair is one of the few broadcasters who is irreplaceable. For 20 years, no matter how hard or frazzling the day, we have been able to tune in at 5pm and put ourselves in the capable hands of the Scotsman, whose mildly amused tone was guaranteed to place most of the world’s ills into perspective. You could just about hear his Dundee origins in the 52-year-old’s accent but, like everything else about him, it was understated. Never shouty, always courteous and curious, Mair drew listeners in with his rare gift for stop-what-you’re-doing radio. I often listened to him while driving home and, after arriving, would linger in the car, unwilling to tear myself away.
Mair’s bedside manner, both gentle and encouraging, was heard most memorably in his weekly interviews with the late Steve Hewlett. After the veteran journalist was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the two men discussed the treatment with bracing honesty. If death was the dark backdrop to their conversations, it never extinguished the questing light of their inquiry, nor its bone-dry wit.
The son of a lorry driver and a nurse, Mair is not your usual BBC type. His tenacity in respectfully, but firmly, challenging authority always had his audience cheering. Quite why he is leaving the BBC after 30 years to join LBC – far too small a canvas for such a big gift – is unclear. But it has the hallmark of a classic BBC cock-up. Having inflated the salaries of male presenters, the corporation found itself with an embarrassing gender pay gap. To correct that, it has had to go around with a begging bowl, asking the men to take pay cuts so the money can be redistributed to female presenters, some of whom deserve it, some of whom don’t. (The same is true of the men, by the way.)
Mair, who is on a salary of £300,000-£350,000, is said to have resisted pressure to take a drastic cut. He denies his departure is anything to do with money, but a jibe in his statement at “Tony Hall’s aftershave” (a joke about the corporation’s director-general) has the whiff of a grievance. For his listeners, Eddie is worth every penny. Is it too late for the BBC to reverse this self-inflicted wound and beg him to stay?
If this piece sounds like an obituary, perhaps that’s because PM fans will experience the loss of its presenter as a kind of bereavement. Five o’clock will never be the same. Eddie Mair always seemed kind, deeply kind. And kindness is far too rare in this world.