John Humphrys still lives among us – not that you'd know from listening to Radio 4 this morning

I watched this broadcasting great master the art of the political interview. Who will succeed him as the nation’s most skilled and fearsome interrogator?

Sean O'Grady
Thursday 19 September 2019 16:55 BST
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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pays tribute to John Humphrys for presenter's final Today programme

Listening to the Today programme on his last day, you would think that some national treasure was no longer with us. It was, to say the least, a little premature.

John Humphrys – who has not died, aged 76 – is a man who I worked with a little, liked and even admired. He’s still going, and in wiry good health.

Many years ago, when Humphrys was about the same age I am now (that’s your Today-style “puzzle of the day”, right there), we used to chat during the prepping for the political interviews on the BBC’s On The Record. He told me once what drove him. It sure as hell wasn’t Jesus, or fame, or even the money, as such.

Instead, he told me that he had a fear that, to use the phrase, “the phone might not ring in the morning”. In other words, although he was doing pretty well for himself (and always has), there was this anxiety that it might not last. And then what?

It derived, at least in part, from the experiences of his father, who was a cabinet maker, I think, working on the ships in Cardiff Bay (Humphrys was always “the boy from Splott”). His dad had to endure periods of worklessness, even in the good years, and sometimes these were uncomfortable for the family.

That, to me, was the right approach to life – never take anything for granted, remember that you are dispensable, and never say “no” to work, whatever it is and whoever’s offering it. And with that, he nipped off to host some conference for Pedigree Petfoods. I kid you not. (Anyway, I still identify with that mindset, and am also available for any gigs going).

As is well attested, Humphrys is a fine broadcast journalist with a track record as a presenter and reporter going back, well, since before the moon landings. When he got into the political interviewing game, he always went after his subjects with that Rottweiler-like tenacity for which he was renowned. Sometimes he got results, sometimes not, as with all political interviewees.

He was not, to be fair, one of the few truly innovative practitioners, of which there have been very few indeed. His style very much echoed that of Robin Day, who abolished the previous deferential style of approaching our rulers that has prevailed before this bow-tied iconoclast arrived on the scene in the 1960s. A certain rude frankness, the art of the interruption, the sheer persistence – these were all pioneered by Day, a barrister by training, and adopted and adapted by many since.

Humphrys’ style was much closer to that of David Frost, another enfant terrible of the past, which is to say that there is a list of news lines to be extracted from the man or woman sitting opposite you, and off you go and get them. David Dimbleby had a softer, more courteous manner, but was in much the same game. James Naughtie, who I always perceived as something of a rival to Humphrys as well as his fellow presenter, added a certain amount of political nous and background to the questioning, however long it might take. They all got results.

A more elaborate intellectual style was adopted by Brian Walden, who did pass away earlier this year, on the groundbreaking Weekend World in the 1970s. His was another wholly new style of interviewing, developed by then-producer John Birt; it pushed the politico through a series of logical conclusions until he or she arrived at some spot they either did or did not wish to be, but which would enlighten the viewer.

Over a prolonged period – 45 minutes or an hour mano a mano would not be so unusual – the cerebral combat would unfold. Yet at the end, the news editors of the Monday morning papers didn’t get much out of some of the encounters. The style was the same at On the Record, where Dimbleby and Humphrys manoeuvred politicians into agonising dilemmas, though also taking care to make sure the newslines did in fact emerge.

Jeremy Paxman, too, deserves recognition for bringing the same kind of “common man asking plain questions” quality to the art of the interview as Humphrys did. Paxman shaped the political interview into something a bit more showbiz, and all the better for it – never more so than in his famous rout of Michael Howard.

The likes of Andrew Marr, Sophie Ridge and Robert Peston are all sharp and insightful, and impressive at thinking on their feet, reacting to what their interlocutor is saying rather than going through some script. But they are not changing the game sufficiently. Neither are the excellent presenters remaining on Today – Justin Webb, Mishal Husain, Martha Kearney and Nick Robinson, apparently, all now equals with no “lead presenter”, which might stop any futile squabbles about who gets to interview the prime minister (who it seems isn’t going to appear anyway).

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With Humphrys departing Today and Paxman long gone from Newsnight, I think we should be looking for the next new wave interviewer. There are plenty of fine ones around, but the most promising seems to me to be Emma “come off it” Barnett.

Barnett is somehow able to disconcert politicians who have long since inoculated themselves against the various other interviewing techniques. They have learned how to deal with interruptions; how to discount “false” (that is, real) choices put to them; how to simply argue that the interviewer is asking the wrong question, or to insist that the viewers/listeners are more interested in their new policy on, say, business rates. Barnett, in turn, is undeterred by their tricks.

But we live in a post-truth world, and our broadcasters have not yet devised the post-truth political interview method to counter it. Nor will we so long as Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn for that matter, dodge the invites to appear for 10 minutes, and certainly not for the whole hour that the classic and gripping Margaret Thatcher-Walden bouts once filled.

Maybe they should start a new show called The Humphrys Interview, in which John is given a full hour to grill a public figure, not necessarily even a politician. I think I’d watch that – but which of our current crop of leaders would actually turn up?

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