After I took the editor’s job at Today on Radio 4 nearly three years ago I had to answer to John Humphrys, in his kitchen, over monastic soup and cheese. He asked me if my hidden intention was to try for one of the top jobs at the BBC. I told him that editing the Today programme was the top job so far as I was concerned. To have no interest in any higher rung on the corporate ladder confers freedom, but federal powers tend inexorably to exercise control over member states. Over time I came to realise how much sovereignty means to me, and handed in my notice last week. I shall leave in September cherishing the programme even more than when I joined. The revelation, unseen by the outside world, is the intelligence and dedication of the modestly paid producers, who are the purest expression of BBC values. You hear some of their names read out just before the pips at the end of the programme. One of them keeps this small acknowledgement as his mobile ring tone. If the BBC has to go into a battle for survival, these are the people it will need in the trenches.
During our recording of Greta Thunberg’s guest edit, her father said something surprising about social media. He said that he worried about the vitriol posted about his daughter and that he only felt safe with public service broadcasting, but that Greta did not mind it at all. In fact she laughed about it. This may be to do with her different prism on the world, but I thought it was a useful lesson for everyone else to relax about social media. The Today programme takes a bit of heat, but conversations on social media never felt real to me because they lacked human engagement.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in