Long may King John reign over his court
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I like John Humphrys. There now, I’ve outed myself as a middle-aged, middle-class dinosaur and you know, that’s OK with me.
Humphrys, 75, the Today programme’s tenacious verging-on-pugnacious early-morning interlocutor, has once again come under fire for something. It’s usually to do with his age or his wage, his Welshness or his irascibility.
I happen to think most of those are crucial components of his USP – plus the fact that he has taken three substantial pay cuts in recent years to bring his salary below £300,000 which suggests his ego is of rather more modest dimensions than his tax liabilities.
There’s been talk once again of Humphrys retiring, which has required extensive refutation. My hunch? It’s a red herring sent to distract us while he brushes up his banter before revealing himself to be the new Radio 2 breakfast show host.
Now there’s a thought to get anyone leaping out of bed in the morning to turn off the wireless. Humphrys is the
Today programme, and if a million or so listeners have recently retuned their radios, then it’s not due to any shortcomings on his part.
He’s been skewering the powerful and the corrupt without fear or favour for more than four decades, and long may it continue, I say.
Even when a highly indiscreet exchange was caught on microphone featuring Humphrys and North America editor Jon Sopel joking about Carrie Gracie, who resigned from her post as China editor after finding out she made less than other foreign editors, Sopel included, I didn’t turn a hair.
Why? Because it would have been tragic if he had been brought to book for a spot of harmless joshing, even if Sopel witheringly described Today as being like “the court of King John”. On the contrary, insists the programme’s editor, Sarah Sands: Humphrys is “the listeners’ champion”.
Whatever the truth, it works. I look forward to him seeing me through my dotage. Long live the Curmudgeonly King.