NO reporter wants to become the story. So John Humphrys flicked over his own news when he reviewed Wednesday’s newspaper headlines.
The veteran broadcaster, said one front page, was to step down after more than three decades presenting the BBC’s flagship radio news programme, Radio 4’s Today.
Mr Humphrys, surely aware his show had been scooped on its own star, did eventually crack a joke. “I can’t believe you are leaving!” a guest told him on air.
“All these stories got up by the press,” he replied. “Can’t believe a word you read!”
"Our listeners will miss him and so will I." Gwyneth Williams, Controller of @BBCRadio4 on the news that John Humphrys is to leave #R4Today. pic.twitter.com/8vZc8iuRqf
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) February 6, 2019
Mr Humphrys, 75, told the Daily Mail he had not yet handed in his notice but planned to do so.
“I’m assuming it’ll be this year. That’s what I’m assuming, but I haven’t fixed a date,” he said of leaving.
“It’s not easy to leave a job you’ve been doing for 32 years. It’s more than half my professional life.
“It’s not like I’m an ambitious youngster with many, many more challenges ahead of me or something like that.
“I’ve always taken the view - and this is the problem in a way - that I would carry on doing it either until they threw me out or had enough of me, or that I’d got bored of it or stopped enjoying it.
“None of those things has happened.”
The BBC, caught on the hop, had no instant response to the story of Mr Humphrys’ departure appeared in the press.
Only at lunchtime, on Today’s rival, the World at One, did the presenter tell all to his own employers. And he did so to Sarah Montague, his onetime morning co-host.
“I genuinely worry about what it is going to be like not doing the Today programme - 32 years is a very long time,” he told her. “I have always enjoyed it, always loved it. And I still do, that’s the problem; I should have gone years ago, obviously I should have gone years ago, but I love doing the programme.”
Gently goaded, he added that he felt he had a relationship with a “huge number of people ...with millions of listeners. That is a huge privilege.”.
Some, however, he admitted, hated his guts. Criticism of Mr Humprhys has mounted over recent years. Many Remainers felt the 75-year-old did not do enough to interrogate those behind Brexit.
The presenter himself - whose decades in the studio came after a meteoric rise from cub reporter, the first on the scene of the Aberfan disaster, to BBC Washington correspondent - has reflected on institutional bias at the Corporation.
“We weren’t sufficiently sceptical – that’s the most accurate phrase – of the pro-European case. We bought into the European ideal,” the Today programme interviewer told the Radio Times in 2014
“We didn’t look at the potential negatives with sufficient rigour … I think we’re out of that now. I think we have changed.”
Changed too much, thinks Glasgow-based journalist Peter Geoghegan. “Mr Humphrys will rightly be remembered for his pugnacious interviewing of political leaders but recent months have shown the limit of this approach when it comes to tackling complex issues, such as Brexit, “ he said.
“Too often in recent months, the Today programme has been found wanting on detail and rigour, and Humphrys in particular has repeated erroneous tropes with delving into the detail. Hopefully the time has come for a little less heat and a little more light.”
Niggles over Brexit did not, however, colour his entire career. “Our listeners will miss him and so will I.” Gwyneth Williams, the controller of Radio 4, said.
Mr Humphrys joined Today in 1987 and his departure could trigger a shake-up on the show.
Recently Martha Kearney joined the programme, swapping jobs with Sarah Montague, who moved to World At One. Mr Humphrys has railed against the absence of older women on TV. But he is more than aware that his replacement is likely to be female, given the mail dominance of Today.
“We should have another woman on Today,” he said back in 2014. “But then your next question has got to be, so who has to leave?
“I have no doubt that when I finally keel over or they decide I should be keeled over, a woman will take over from me.”
In 2017, Mr Humphrys was at the centre of the debate surrounding the gender pay gap at the BBC. His pay was slashed from around £600,000-£650,000 to around £250,000-£300,000.
He said it was his decision to take the cut, telling the Press Association he would “like to think” he has given the BBC “reasonable value for money over the years” and “I’m not exactly on the breadline”.
Despite his famous grillings and - his critics say - arrogance, Mr Humphrys, who left school at 15, has suffered from imposter syndrome. Remembering his career, he once said: “I always felt like a bit of a fraud.”
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