’I don’t trust him’: Ex-Today presenter John Humphrys says he is not a ‘fan’ of Boris Johnson

PM is ‘great at the bluster but he’s not too good when it comes to delivering’, veteran broadcaster says

John Humphrys has said he is “not a fan” of Boris Johnson and cannot understand what the PM gained from his elite education.

Mr Humphrys was obliged to keep his personal views to himself for his more than 30 years at the BBC, including presenting Radio 4’s Today programme, due to the broadcaster’s rules on impartiality.

However, in his new role as a presenter for Classical FM and columnist, the 76-year-old is now free to pontificate on any number of subjects.

Speaking in an interview with Times Radio due to be broadcast on Sunday, Mr Humphrys admitted he had not voted for the current resident of Number 10.

“I’ve not been a fan of Johnson,” he said, adding: “I can say that now, I couldn’t say that a year ago, could I?”

“I don’t trust him. Apart from anything else, I don’t trust him and you have to be able to trust politicians,” Mr Humphrys added.

The veteran newscaster went on to say Mr Johnson was “great at the bluster but he’s not too good when it comes to delivering”.

Mr Humphrys said that he could not see what benefit the PM had been afforded by his elite education – having attended the renowned Eton private school and Oxford University’s Balliol College.

The former Today host himself decided not to go to university after attending Cardiff High School, instead working at a local newspaper. “[Mr Johnson’s] background is, for somebody like me... a working class boy and all that, anathema,” he told Times Radio.

“You know, he had all the benefits, all the advantages of going to the finest school in the world, if that’s what Eton really is... and a wonderful university, all the rest of it.

“I can’t quite see what he gained from all that. He’s not a man I hugely admire, let’s put it like that.”

However Mr Humphrys dismissed assertions he simply disliked all politicians.

He added: “I mean, they are people and some of them are jolly good people who go into politics to try to make the world a better place.

“And some of them are t*****s, just like the rest of the human race.”

Towards the end of his time on the programme the broadcaster was repeatedly accused of showing pro-Brexit bias – but he said that he had “voted Remain and felt fairly strongly about it”.

“But obviously I hope it didn’t show. I did my job, I hope, which is to question both sides with equal vim and vigour and all the rest of it.

Additional reporting by Press Association