Nobody wants to wake up to politicians lying to them

Too early: Mishal Husain and John Humphrys, presenters of the BBC’S Today programme, which has lost 800,000 listeners

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has shed almost a million listeners in the past year – of course it has. This has nothing to do with the occasional forays into fashion that have occurred under the editorial guidance of Sarah Sands (which are, if anything, a sweet relief), and everything to do with the fact that nobody wants to wake up and be hit with a wall of politicians lying to them.

Now that we are saturated in news, I find it hard to justify having the Today programme on. I wake up, check my phone and there, in my hands, are all of

life’s greatest miseries. They’re in my inbox and clog up my social media feeds. They clog up my husband’s, too, so that our first conversations of the day centre on how awful Donald Trump is. Why would I also want to hear it on the airwaves? No wonder people are switching to Radio 2 and 3 – for music.

Healthy, sane-minded people who meditate and look after themselves talk about setting their intentions at the beginning of each day. Perhaps this is all that radio listeners are doing – and it may also explain why the World at One has held steady in the battle for listeners. By lunchtime, we’re all more prepared to stomach the guff coming out of politicians’ mouths.