If you are fascinated by the doings of media folk, you will probably have been recently reading about the retirement of the Today programme’s resident silverback, John Humphrys. After 33 years in the job (a record) the 76-year-old has decided it’s time to hang up his microphone and get a good night’s sleep for a change.
But he didn’t go quietly. The very day after his leaving party — held in the oak-panelled gloom of the old governor’s boardroom in the original part of Broadcasting House — the Daily Mail‘s front-page headline trumpeted: “BBC Icon savages bias … at the Beeb” and devoted many of the inside pages to extracts from his autobiography A Day Like Today. And I must admit, as someone who has spent many years trying to explain why bias at the BBC is so insidious and so important, my spirits rose; at last, I thought, a powerful endorsement from an unexpected source.
I enjoyed that small but gratifying spasm of affirmation particularly as Mr Humphrys was good enough to name check me and my work in the Mail extracts. But it turns out the paper’s take was somewhat misleading; a close reading of the book shows that yes, Humphrys does have his criticisms, but they are quite limited in scope. What actually emerges is just how much of a BBC man he is, whether he recognises it or not. Which might come as some consolation to the BBC’s director-general, Lord Hall, who, over the bad wine and foul canapes, had heaped praise on his star presenter only to wake the following morning to find that Humphrys had written disobliging things about the Corporation in the paper that is a sworn enemy.
The criticisms of the BBC that Humphrys makes in the book, to my mind come nowhere near the heart of the matter; they stem, rather from his own life story and prejudices. And Humphrys’ life has certainly been a fascinating one. As often is the case it is the early years which come across most vividly and in his case it is the stark poverty of his family background that grips the reader.
One of five children — one of whom died tragically young — Humphrys was born in Cardiff during the war to a father who scraped a meagre living as a freelance french-polisher. His memories of those years underline the distance we have travelled as a nation during his lifetime; we have become immeasurably richer and it is impossible to imagine any family today enduring the privations his did. But Humphrys enjoyed one inestimable blessing: he was raised in a loving and stable family that cherished its children and put the greatest store on education. Working-class families today enjoy a standard of living undreamt of by his parents; but for so many children, of all classes, what is missing today is that emotional security he enjoyed.
There is one anecdote that struck me forcibly; the young John had to go to hospital for treatment on a cyst at the base of his spine. As he was lying, face down and butt naked, the consultant arrived with his ‘firm’ of juniors. The great man eyed the patient and declaimed: “the trouble with this boy is that he doesn’t bathe regularly” leaving the boy in question “cringing with shame and embarrassment”. The crass lack of empathy is breath-taking; did that man not understand that there was no proper bathroom in the Humphrys’ home? That ‘regular bathing’ was a luxury denied to many poor folk?
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