Edwina Currie and I were walking from the green room into the studio for a live On The Record interview. I mentioned the name of the prime minister. She stopped dead, fixed me with her most scornful look, spat out ‘John Major is a c***’ and walked on. I can describe that brief exchange today … Read more
Easter was about hot cross buns for me and my teenage friends. We collected them from the baker at the crack of dawn on Good Friday and delivered them to the homes of customers to raise funds for our youth club. It was good fun — handing over paper bags we had stuffed with soft … Read more
One of the great comedy put-downs on British television came when Caroline Aherne was playing the wonderful Mrs Merton. Her victim was Debbie McGee, wife of Paul Daniels. ‘So Debbie … ’ asked Mrs Merton with that deceptively innocent expression on her face ‘…what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?’ Like all good … Read more
Confession time. I cannot sing like David Bowie nor write plays like Harold Pinter nor poems like Rudyard Kipling. Yet we do have something in common. We have all said no to the offer of a gong. Actually even that isn’t quite true. In my case it was suggested by Alastair Campbell when he was … Read more
Amol Rajan joins Radio 4’s Today show that John Humphrys left in 2019 after 30 years on the flagship current affairs programme BBC’s media editor Amol Rajan has joined Radio 4’s current affairs show Today He will begin presenting later this spring alongside Justin Webb, Mishal Husain Martha Kearney and Nick Robinson also present the flagship … Read more
Shakespeare might have been foretelling the events of this past week with these lines from Hamlet: ‘When troubles come they come not single spies but in battalions’. We have had a Budget the like of which we’ve never seen in living memory. We’ve had drama at Buckingham Palace that’s being compared to the abdication crisis … Read more
JOHN HUMPHRYS (pictured): War of the Astroturf that sums up Boris Johnson’s dilemma over lockdown The Battle of the Astroturf will not claim a prominent place in the history books. Unlike Hastings or Trafalgar, the fate of our nation did not hang in the balance. The casualties were limited, the heroes unsung. But it should … Read more
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Kensington Palace, 2017 There’s an old saying that the apple never falls far from the tree. Not true in my case. My father was a working-class Tory and I was a typical young Leftie. We argued about everything. Except the Royal Family. One of my earliest memories of my childhood … Read more
Boris Johnson needs a fool. Indeed, all prime ministers need one — and let’s have no cheap cracks from those who suspect his problem is not an absence of fools but a surplus of them. Nor, God forbid, should we heed the sharp-tongued friend of mine who observed: ‘All Johnson has to do if he’s … Read more
There was one particular stipulation when the BBC asked me to present Mastermind: I must not abandon the catchphrase made famous by my predecessor, Magnus Magnusson. Go on, altogether now: ‘I’ve started… so I’ll finish.’ I agreed. That was 18 years ago. Stepping down: John Humphrys When the present series comes to an end in … Read more