Naughty Naughtie! The formidable BBC pinko who turned the airwaves blue quits as Today presenter after 21 years 

  • Presenter is to leave as a host of the Today programme in Januaray 
  • He will become BBC Radio 4's special correspondent in politics and EU 
  • Says he is thrilled to be able to turn off his 3am alarm to go to another dream job  

By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:22 EST, 7 July 2015 | Updated: 01:50 EST, 8 July 2015

BBC Today programme presenter James Naughtie, who is leaving the Radio 4 show after 21 years 

BBC Today programme presenter James Naughtie, who is leaving the Radio 4 show after 21 years 

A famous old clip of James Naughtie declaring that he’s about to interview the Culture Secretary did the rounds of cyberspace yesterday.

Recorded in 2010, and broadcast a few seconds before the BBC Today Programme’s 8am news bulletin, it begins with the Scotsman uttering the immortal words: ‘First up, after the news, we’re going to be talking to Jeremy C**t.’

In an effort to correct himself, Naughtie then spluttered out his political guest’s real name, Jeremy Hunt, before being overcome by a fit of either giggles or coughs (or both) that rendered him unable to speak properly.

Minutes later, after a colleague had read the news, Naughtie delivered an off-the-cuff apology to Radio 4 listeners. ‘All I can say is that occasionally in live broadcasting these things happen,’ it went. ‘And, er, I’m very sorry to anyone who, er, thought it wasn’t what they wanted to hear over breakfast. Neither did I, needless to say.’

The clip was vintage Naughtie: charming, but somewhat chaotic; amusing to some, but amateurish and perhaps a touch offensive to others.

It was delivered in the 63-year-old Scotsman’s trademark brogue: a light, Caledonian accent (softened, perhaps, by an occasional Highland malt) which has been a staple of British breakfast-tables for more than 20 years.

That familiar sound is soon to become a lot rarer. For the reason Naughtie’s famous ‘spoonerism’ was being dusted down from the archives yesterday was the news of his imminent retirement from the Today host’s chair.

The BBC announced that he’ll be quitting in January to become Radio 4’s ‘special correspondent’. In BBC management-speak, the new job will see him ‘have a responsibility for charting the course of the constitutional changes at the heart of the UK political debate’.

Those changes are, apparently, ‘devolution and independence, parliamentary reform, and the changes in the UK’s relations with Europe’.

In addition, Naughtie will become a ‘roving reporter’ who will cover stories ‘at home and around the world’, including next year’s Scottish elections and the forthcoming U.S. presidential election. He’ll also take the title BBC News Books Editor, which will require him to present a regular Saturday morning book show.

‘I’m thrilled to be moving from one dream job to another,’ he said yesterday. ‘And after 21 years, I can turn off that 3am alarm at last.’

Tributes were, of course, widely aired, with BBC newsreader Corrie Corfield declaring that she will ‘miss Jim in the studio’, adding: ‘He’s chaotically charming. A lovely man and brilliant at those election special “all-nighters”.’

Naughtie, pictured with co-host John Humphrys will become a ‘roving reporter’ who will cover stories ‘at home and around the world’

Naughtie, pictured with co-host John Humphrys will become a ‘roving reporter’ who will cover stories ‘at home and around the world’

Jamie Angus, one of Naughtie’s editors, added: ‘Arriving at 4am in a burst of newspapers, gossip — possibly involving the evening spent at the theatre or the opera — and a slew of ideas of how to take that morning’s programme forward, Jim was always a Today night-editor’s dream.’

Others shared rose-tinted anecdotes: the time he mistakenly took home BBC executive Alan Yentob’s jacket after a boozy dinner; the day he stunned co-host Sue MacGregor by turning up to work in black tie, because his clothes had been locked in St Paul’s Cathedral after a classical music event; or the morning he interviewed rapper Afroman, who ended every sentence with “knowwhaddimean?” to which Naughtie kept answering: ‘Yes, I do know what you mean.’

A famous old clip of James Naughtie declaring that he’s about to interview the then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt did the rounds of cyberspace yesterday

A famous old clip of James Naughtie declaring that he’s about to interview the then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt did the rounds of cyberspace yesterday

Yet behind the scenes, another — perhaps less flattering — reaction greeted the news.

You could see it being expressed on Twitter, where the former Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom said he sums up ‘everything that’s wrong at the BBC’, claiming he ‘never questions the EU, climate scams [or] government debt’, and summed up his career as ‘21 years [and] not a single original thought’.

You could also see it being expressed on The Guardian newspaper’s website, where readers declared their sadness that ‘they’ve finally cleared out their last Left-winger from the Today programme’.

There’s a widely held thesis that for all his bumbling eccentricities, and despite the BBC’s supposed commitment to political impartiality, Naughtie is in fact an unreconstructed Leftie, who (consciously or otherwise) helps the Corporation’s flagship news programme advance a liberal agenda.

Proponents of this view would doubtless argue that a light was most famously shone on his real political leanings in the run-up to the 2005 general election, when he referred to the Labour government as ‘we’ in an interview with then Treasury minister Ed Balls.

‘If we win the election, does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor?’ he asked. Though Naughtie immediately corrected himself (asking ‘if you win the election’) Tories seized on the remark as evidence of pro-Labour sympathies.

Among them was Lord Tebbit, who told reporters: ‘We could all see the shape of the cat in the bag, but Mr Naughtie has now let it out.’

Indeed, it was, some might argue, hardly difficult to catch sight of. The son of two teachers, who grew up in Rothiemay, near Aberdeen, Naughtie spent four years in the Eighties as a political reporter for The Guardian, before joining the BBC in 1988.

With this in mind, he’s always boasted impeccable Labour contacts. As well as a biography of the former Labour leader John Smith, which he co-authored with Gordon Brown, Naughtie used such contacts to write The Rivals, an account of tensions between Brown and Tony Blair, plus The Accidental American, an account of Blair’s ill-fated relationship with President George W. Bush.

Living in a metropolitan corner of South-West London with novelist Eleanor Updale, his wife of three decades (their three children are believed to have attended a £17,000-a-year private school), he’s also repeatedly faced criticism about alleged Labour bias since the mid-Nineties, when he joined Today.

In 1996, for example, the Tory chairman Brian Mawhinney wrote to John Birt, then director-general of the BBC, to complain that Naughtie had treated Tony Blair ‘with kid gloves’ in an interview, while co-host Anna Ford had ‘repeatedly interrupted’ Ken Clarke, the Tory Chancellor.

The son of two teachers, who grew up in Rothiemay, near Aberdeen, Naughtie spent four years in the Eighties as a political reporter for The Guardian, before joining the BBC in 1988

The son of two teachers, who grew up in Rothiemay, near Aberdeen, Naughtie spent four years in the Eighties as a political reporter for The Guardian, before joining the BBC in 1988

His treatment of the Labour leader appeared to be admired by Alastair Campbell, Blair’s press secretary. Indeed, for almost four years, from 2001 onwards, Campbell would allow Blair to go on Today only if he were interviewed by Naughtie rather than his colleague, John Humphrys.

In 2006, Naughtie faced ridicule when Labour’s then Home Secretary, John Reid, concluded a bizarrely friendly on-air encounter with the matey: ‘Cheers, Jim!’ Robin Cook, for his part, was once called ‘Cookie’ by the Today host.

Tories, on the other hand, often found themselves getting shorter shrift when they crossed swords with him. In 2000, for example, the Tories’ William Hague announced that he was boycotting Today to ‘teach them a lesson’ after he was interrupted no fewer than 32 times.

Though Naughtie has never disputed suggestions that he supports Labour, he has always taken great exception to allegations of bias, saying: ‘Our job is to leave any politics we may have outside the studio door.’

To illustrate this, he’s entitled to argue that occasional controversies about bias must be seen in the context of a 21-year career where he has often acquitted himself admirably.

He may also remind critics that he has upset Labour as well as Conservative interviewees, including Neil Kinnock, who in 1989 pulled out of an interview with Naughtie, complaining that he was going to be ‘kebabbed’.

Impressions can be hard to shift, though.

Take the aforementioned Jeremy Hunt. In an interview just a few days after Naughtie ‘mis-spoke’ his name, he remarked: ‘If you were to discover how people vote at the BBC, there are probably more who vote Labour and Liberal Democrat than vote for the Conservatives.’

Like many a Tory, he is doubtless now celebrating the departure of the man whose ‘spoonerism’ will go down in the annals of broadcasting history.

 

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