Interview: John Humphrys, BBC Radio 4/BBC TV (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
John Humphrys refuses to stay on the fence any longer. The Conservative Party, he believes, has been spouting "complete tosh" simply to attract attention. This outburst, it should be stressed, is not a new BBC initiative designed to convince No 10 that Today is now safely onside. It was prompted by remarks by the shadow culture secretary, Julie Kirkbride, last week that Mastermind, under Humphrys, has dumbed down.
As the corporation's "rottweiler-in-chief", Humphrys naturally has his own views. "It's absolute rubbish," he declares. "I invite her to appear on either Celebrity Mastermind or the non-celebrity version, to choose her subject, and at the end to tell me whether she thinks it's been dumbed down." He grins mischievously: "How could she refuse?"
The value of a John Humphrys interview is his rare freedom, as a senior BBC freelance, to speak his mind openly - often to the corporation's own embarrassment. This morning, for instance, he is questioning its decision to drop his BBC1 political interview programme, On the Record, 20 months ago, in pursuit of " youth friendly" political shows. The BBC's arguments for cancelling the series have been shown to be "entirely spurious", he says. "[Greg] Dyke got it completely wrong with his idea that there was out there somewhere this great mass of young people desperate to watch political programmes, if only they were presented in a 'cool' way," he says. "Well, as history has shown us, there wasn't."
Jeremy Vine and Andrew Neil are "first-rate interviewers", but neither now conducts "the long, serious, sometimes boring, but nevertheless in-depth" political interview.
Nor is he entirely respectful of planned reforms following Ron Neil's review of BBC reporting, such as a journalists' training college. "My little boy [aged four] starts school in September, so I'm sure he'll lend me his pencil sharpener," he says in that cod-serious sceptical tone familiar from his Today links about No 10's latest terrorism warnings. "I'm sure he'll help introduce me to the culture again, because clearly I'm going to have to learn. And if that Paxman thinks he's going to sit in the front row, he's got another thing coming ..."
He misses his Sunday Times column, which the corporation compensated him handsomely for dropping, although he admits now that he was " struggling to cope" with print deadlines, 4am radio starts, television commitments, and a young son (he also has two adult children from an earlier marriage). Still, although he turns 61 next Tuesday, he has no intention of slowing down: he signed a new three-year Today contract last December, is completing a book about the English language, and is currently drafting his MacTaggart Lecture for delivery at the Edinburgh television festival later this month.
This has caused certain challenges for the festival's organisers, as Humphrys has not owned a working television for almost five years. He is now catching up, having been sent 10 tapes by each of 16 channel controllers and a TV set. "I had thought The Office was something quite different, but what struck me was how deeply sad it was," he remarks. He has even brought himself to watch Big Brother live, although traditional drama is more his thing.
"It's like a Martian landing on another planet," says Dawn Airey, the festival's chair. Humphrys insists that he has not been making "some great protest" about TV, simply that radio has met all his needs. He will not preview his lecture, although one might guess its tone from his earlier writings about t e lev i s ion's "toxic mix of sensationalism, conformity and fakery".
He insists that Today, which he has presented since 1987, has lost none of its bite since the Hutton Report. "I don't feel from where I sit that the programme's changed at all," he says. "Does a little red light come on in my head that says: 'This is the post-Hutton era, we have to go easy on this Cabinet minister'? The chances of that happening are about as likely as the minister resigning to become a nun."
IN Helen Boaden, the BBC now has a head of news "who's as tough as old boots and won't be cowed"; and although he has had his runins with Today's editor, Kevin Marsh - notably over cuts made to an interview with Rowan Williams last year - they now get on "terrifically". He still thinks Marsh was wrong to cut the Williams interview, which provoked threats of resignation from Humphrys, but he respects his editor's "real integrity". As for Andrew Gilligan, whom he interviewed on last May's notorious 6.07am two-way: "I thought then, and I think now, that he was a good reporter."
Today's loss of 300,000 listeners since last year was to be expected, "as the Iraq war pushed the audience past 6.5 million for the first time, which was never going to be sustainable". The format, he believes, still works well. " Sometimes it's bloody good, sometimes it's dire, but people like it," he says.
THERE is, though, one story that Humphrys seems unable to bring in: the Today interview with Tony Blair. "Maybe I'm entirely mistaken and this is not a deliberate policy by No 10 [to avoid me], and perhaps it's just a coincidence that it's nearly four years since I had an interview with him," he says.
"Though Alastair Campbell made it very clear after the last interview that he was not best pleased. Yes, it was pretty abrasive, but I can't see any reason why there shouldn't be abrasive interviews with prime ministers. He kept saying that [sleaze] was not what people wanted to talk about. And I take the view that the interviewer decides what the questions are."
His toughest political encounter was with Jonathan Aitken, who, as a Tory minister in 1995, accused him of "poisoning the well of democratic debate". "I was worried sick, for if he was speaking on behalf of the Cabinet, I was dead meat." He recalls the pressure vividly - and the week it took his BBC bosses to offer their backing.
As for today's allegations of bias, Humphrys is "baffled" that the BBC defends itself against accusations of being " outrageously liberal". "Do we want to return to capital punishment or to see homosexuals persecuted? No. That is a broadly liberal position. And that's what the nation is. I bloody well hope the BBC is broadly liberal."
(Evening Standard, August 11 2004)
John Humphrys refuses to stay on the fence any longer. The Conservative Party, he believes, has been spouting "complete tosh" simply to attract attention. This outburst, it should be stressed, is not a new BBC initiative designed to convince No 10 that Today is now safely onside. It was prompted by remarks by the shadow culture secretary, Julie Kirkbride, last week that Mastermind, under Humphrys, has dumbed down.
As the corporation's "rottweiler-in-chief", Humphrys naturally has his own views. "It's absolute rubbish," he declares. "I invite her to appear on either Celebrity Mastermind or the non-celebrity version, to choose her subject, and at the end to tell me whether she thinks it's been dumbed down." He grins mischievously: "How could she refuse?"
The value of a John Humphrys interview is his rare freedom, as a senior BBC freelance, to speak his mind openly - often to the corporation's own embarrassment. This morning, for instance, he is questioning its decision to drop his BBC1 political interview programme, On the Record, 20 months ago, in pursuit of " youth friendly" political shows. The BBC's arguments for cancelling the series have been shown to be "entirely spurious", he says. "[Greg] Dyke got it completely wrong with his idea that there was out there somewhere this great mass of young people desperate to watch political programmes, if only they were presented in a 'cool' way," he says. "Well, as history has shown us, there wasn't."
Jeremy Vine and Andrew Neil are "first-rate interviewers", but neither now conducts "the long, serious, sometimes boring, but nevertheless in-depth" political interview.
Nor is he entirely respectful of planned reforms following Ron Neil's review of BBC reporting, such as a journalists' training college. "My little boy [aged four] starts school in September, so I'm sure he'll lend me his pencil sharpener," he says in that cod-serious sceptical tone familiar from his Today links about No 10's latest terrorism warnings. "I'm sure he'll help introduce me to the culture again, because clearly I'm going to have to learn. And if that Paxman thinks he's going to sit in the front row, he's got another thing coming ..."
He misses his Sunday Times column, which the corporation compensated him handsomely for dropping, although he admits now that he was " struggling to cope" with print deadlines, 4am radio starts, television commitments, and a young son (he also has two adult children from an earlier marriage). Still, although he turns 61 next Tuesday, he has no intention of slowing down: he signed a new three-year Today contract last December, is completing a book about the English language, and is currently drafting his MacTaggart Lecture for delivery at the Edinburgh television festival later this month.
This has caused certain challenges for the festival's organisers, as Humphrys has not owned a working television for almost five years. He is now catching up, having been sent 10 tapes by each of 16 channel controllers and a TV set. "I had thought The Office was something quite different, but what struck me was how deeply sad it was," he remarks. He has even brought himself to watch Big Brother live, although traditional drama is more his thing.
"It's like a Martian landing on another planet," says Dawn Airey, the festival's chair. Humphrys insists that he has not been making "some great protest" about TV, simply that radio has met all his needs. He will not preview his lecture, although one might guess its tone from his earlier writings about t e lev i s ion's "toxic mix of sensationalism, conformity and fakery".
He insists that Today, which he has presented since 1987, has lost none of its bite since the Hutton Report. "I don't feel from where I sit that the programme's changed at all," he says. "Does a little red light come on in my head that says: 'This is the post-Hutton era, we have to go easy on this Cabinet minister'? The chances of that happening are about as likely as the minister resigning to become a nun."
IN Helen Boaden, the BBC now has a head of news "who's as tough as old boots and won't be cowed"; and although he has had his runins with Today's editor, Kevin Marsh - notably over cuts made to an interview with Rowan Williams last year - they now get on "terrifically". He still thinks Marsh was wrong to cut the Williams interview, which provoked threats of resignation from Humphrys, but he respects his editor's "real integrity". As for Andrew Gilligan, whom he interviewed on last May's notorious 6.07am two-way: "I thought then, and I think now, that he was a good reporter."
Today's loss of 300,000 listeners since last year was to be expected, "as the Iraq war pushed the audience past 6.5 million for the first time, which was never going to be sustainable". The format, he believes, still works well. " Sometimes it's bloody good, sometimes it's dire, but people like it," he says.
THERE is, though, one story that Humphrys seems unable to bring in: the Today interview with Tony Blair. "Maybe I'm entirely mistaken and this is not a deliberate policy by No 10 [to avoid me], and perhaps it's just a coincidence that it's nearly four years since I had an interview with him," he says.
"Though Alastair Campbell made it very clear after the last interview that he was not best pleased. Yes, it was pretty abrasive, but I can't see any reason why there shouldn't be abrasive interviews with prime ministers. He kept saying that [sleaze] was not what people wanted to talk about. And I take the view that the interviewer decides what the questions are."
His toughest political encounter was with Jonathan Aitken, who, as a Tory minister in 1995, accused him of "poisoning the well of democratic debate". "I was worried sick, for if he was speaking on behalf of the Cabinet, I was dead meat." He recalls the pressure vividly - and the week it took his BBC bosses to offer their backing.
As for today's allegations of bias, Humphrys is "baffled" that the BBC defends itself against accusations of being " outrageously liberal". "Do we want to return to capital punishment or to see homosexuals persecuted? No. That is a broadly liberal position. And that's what the nation is. I bloody well hope the BBC is broadly liberal."
(Evening Standard, August 11 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, August 11, 2004
<< Home