John Humphrys: He's started...

... and he's not going to finish. Not with the radio shows, the newspaper columns, the videos, cruises and conferences and, despite taking over the vacant 'Mastermind' chair, certainly not with his starring role as the impatient, aggressive and downright rude interrogator on the 'Today' programme

There was a time when the idea of John Humphrys getting a new job was the stuff of politicians' dreams. Margaret Thatcher was woken regularly by the sound of her husband shouting "bastard!" at the disembodied Humphrys in the bathroom. Jonathan Aitken grandly proclaimed that the Today programme presenter was "poisoning the well of democratic debate". Tony Blair has given him the passive-aggressive silent treatment for years now and Alan Milburn thinks he's "scandalous and rude". So was last week's announcement that John Humphrys is to host a new series of Mastermind suggestive of a gentle exit into a quiz-show sunset?

"Far from it. He's not going, he's staying at Today for the foreseeable future," said a BBC spokesman. "This won't have any impact on his work for Today."

The fact is, Humphrys hating is out of fashion. All the old insults – whingeing, impatient, aggressive, male, white, middle class, professional Welshman – which were slung about with abandon a decade ago, are hardly heard now. Far from suggesting that he's past it, this change of mood suggests that Humphrys' job at Today is more secure than ever. The need for his kind of questioning – tenacious, aggressive and direct – is acknowledged on all sides as politicians become increasingly bland and dismissive of dissent.

"A few years ago there was perhaps a feeling that Humphrys had gone on too long at Today – people started to talk about him leaving – but currently I'd say he is very secure," a former colleague on the programme concurs. "He has a good relationship with the new editor Kevin Marsh. He's considered to have had a good war. He had the right tone and asked questions at the right time. He was sceptical without being head-banging."

True, the kind of Humphrys spats that enlivened the Conservative years are rarer now. In an era of smoother, on-message politicians, newspaper journalists do not listen to the radio waiting for a ministerial slip-up, though Humphrys is still capable of goading the New Labour machine into knee-jerk boycott threats, such as when he harried Harriet Harman over her policy on benefits for single parents – not letting her "develop her answers" according to the Government – or when he asked health minister Jacqui Smith whether her child had been vaccinated.

But the fact remains that Humphrys' exasperated, indignant tone remains the star turn on the chattering classes' flagship show, and is still part of the fabric of 6 million listeners' lives.

If you were a soon-to-be 60-year-old who has been getting up at 4am four mornings a week for the past 16 years, and has a two-year-old toddler to contend with – not to mention a newspaper column and a book or two to write – you might be thinking about taking it a bit easier. Such an idea is plainly anathema to Humphrys, who quite apart from Today, has hosted On the Record, and the radio interview show On the Ropes. In his spare time he is one of the most energetic and highly paid contributors to corporate seminars and events. He does videos, cruises, conferences – virtually everything apart from bar mitzvahs and weddings – and can be booked over the internet for his ruminations on a variety of topics, ranging from communication, Europe, international affairs, politics, the food industry and the media. He even trains executives to answer questions from people like himself, a habit that the BBC insists is not a conflict of interest.

Perhaps the most contentious of his proliferating interests is his Sunday newspaper column, in which he projects the persona of an irritable uncle from the provinces, dwelling on a series of predictable targets including the European Union, the NHS and – his personal bugbear – intensive farming. The partiality of these columns has, according to some, dented the credibility of his BBC role, but the corporation maintains that there is no conflict with his freelance contract and besides, all his columns are cleared with the BBC before publication.

Yet the question remains: just why does he need to work so hard? His career suggests he has always been impatient and ambitious. As the son of a French polisher from Cardiff, with whom he "argued endlessly", he left school at 15 to become a cub reporter on the Penarth Times and after a stint on the Western Mail joined the BBC and became its youngest ever foreign correspondent.

Part of what drives him is financial anxiety. He claims an ingrained thrift since childhood, when, as one of five children, money was tight. In the past, some of his more colourful money-saving measures have included switching off the fridge in winter and boiling only one cup of water at a time. But given that he is paid well over £150,000 a year by the BBC, and can make up to £5,000 for hosting a corporate event, observers are bemused over what he does with his wealth. It used to be poured into his organic dairy farm in Wales until he sold it, admitting failure, describing himself as a "lousy farmer" and deciding he hated cows.

Now the revival of Mastermind, axed in 1997 after its ratings dipped to 6 million from a peak of 23 million, brings Humphrys back into the television spotlight. The job was a natural for him, given the BBC's penchant for spreading favoured presenters thinly among all available slots. Paxman, the Newsnight anchor, took on the plum jobs of University Challenge and Radio 4's Start the Week, a job which later passed to Andrew Marr, on top of his position as political editor. Mark Lawson, presenter of BBC2's Late Review, also anchors Radio 4's Front Row, while the Dimblebys hoover up elsewhere. "It was obviously right for John and it was also compensation for having had On The Record taken from him," explains a colleague who says Humphrys was "furious" when his television interview show was axed last year.

While there's no doubt Humphrys will segue seamlessly into his new role, the job of quiz show host has changed a bit since the staid days of Magnus Magnusson. Celebrities like Anne Robinson, Chris Tarrant and Angus Deayton go to premieres and shop at Armani. John Humphrys, whose only suit was 15 years old when he started presenting the Nine O'Clock News, is not an obvious candidate for the pages of Hello!. Off-air he is not given to prima donna behaviour. "He doesn't suffer fools gladly," says a colleague. "If a junior researcher gets a name or title wrong and makes him look a plonker on air, he will bawl them out, but he's not overweening or arrogant." The cello-playing Humphrys is the first to admit his life has been "hardly racy". His first marriage to Edna, a nurse, produced a son and a daughter, but ended in 1991. Although he caused a ripple of surprise a few years ago when he became a couple with Valerie Sanderson, a News 24 presenter considerably younger than him, and had his vasectomy reversed, producing a son, Owen, in 2000, his profile is hardly the stuff of celebrity legend.

"You must remember these things are cyclical," a BBC political journalist points out. "Last month's announcement from the BBC that dumbing-down is out – that it's all documentaries rather than make-over shows now – is part of a big swing towards the serious. Seriousness is the new truth. Yoof is out. We want people who are grey, knowledgeable and have been around a long time. That's why John Humphrys – who's older and serious and unglamorous – is really very popular now."