Justin, chuck those jeans in the dustbin
...and have a shave too, BBC viewers tell scruffy climate editor Rowlatt
DRESSED in scruffy jeans and sporting stubble, Justin Rowlatt has been accused by TV viewers of looking more like an eco campaigner than one of the BBC’s most senior journalists.
The unshaven climate editor’s casual outfits have prompted much discussion among his television audience, who complain that he is lowering the usual high standards of BBC presenters.
The latest and most virulent criticism arose after his reports from the COP27 climate change conference in Sharm El Sheikh.
Twitter is awash, with one user called Barney wondering: ‘How can
‘Lord Reith is currently spinning in his grave’
you be walking around a major international summit in your gardening jeans, you scruffy t***.’
Another commented on the BBC man’s ‘stonewashed jeans, dress shirt, belt tucked into jeans. Incredible scenes’.
And Dave Stevis tweeted: ‘Why is Justin so underdressed at COP27? He’s the only one wearing scruffy jeans in the conference hall.
‘Also, he’s waving his hands about like a windmill, almost hitting people as he meanders through the hall. Doesn’t look at all professional.’ Another pointed out that John Reith, the BBC executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the UK in the 1920s, would be ‘spinning in his grave’ if he saw the way Rowlatt, 56, was dressed.
They wrote: ‘Justin Rowlatt, BBC climate editor, has just appeared on the ten o’clock news, gesticulating like Magnus Pyke, wearing a pair of well-worn jeans. Lord Reith currently spinning in his grave.’
Rowlatt also came in for criticism of his clothing choices when he interviewed Viktor Yanukovych, the then-president of Ukraine, in 2011.
Mr Yanukovych appeared taken aback at Rowlatt’s casual clothes during an interview in the presidential palace. Rowlatt later confessed the foreign premier was ‘aghast at my decision to conduct the interview in blue jeans and a grey suit jacket over a blue shirt with a white T-shirt showing at the open neckline’.
Earlier this year the BBC upheld two complaints against Rowlatt of using an hour-long Panorama programme to claim that climate change was making the world’s weather much worse.
Meanwhile, his sister Cordelia Rowlatt was among the 113 Insulate Britain protesters named on a National Highways injunction that would allow courts to jail repeat offenders. She has been arrested twice for blocking roads, and previously campaigned with Extinction Rebellion.