John Humphrys

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2008

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the broadcaster and journalist John Humphrys. For 21 years he has been at the helm of Today, Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme. Millions of devoted listeners enjoy his tenacious interviewing style - and it's won him a healthy respect from politicians too. Not all are supporters though; Jonathan Aitken accused him of "poisoning the well of democratic debate" - an attack which he initially thought would cost him his career.

Now, his life is dominated not only by the alarm bell - which is set for 3.58am - but by his youngest son, Owen. When John Humphrys describes the joy and warmth the seven-year-old has brought him, he becomes, if only temporarily, lost for words.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Opening of Cello Concerto by Edward Elgar Book: Biggest poetry anthology possible Luxury: A cello.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2008. My castaway this week is the broadcaster John Humphreys. For 21 years the nation has
0:32.1	woken up to him on the today program, tea toast and a generous
0:35.8	helping of his tenacious style going down a treat with millions of his loyal listeners.
0:41.0	The politicians he regularly skewers are unsurprisingly less enthusiastic.
0:45.6	Jonathan Aitkin once accused him of poisoning the well of democratic debate.
0:50.4	His role as Grand Inquisitor is quite some way from his beginnings as one of five children brought up in the poverty-stricken back streets of Cardiff.
0:58.0	But it's a background that's informed and inspired him throughout his 50 years in journalism.
1:04.0	For a long time he has said,
1:06.0	I had chips on both shoulders,
1:08.0	they're still there under the surface.
1:10.0	You never quite get over things that happen in your childhood.
1:13.6	So is it a strong sense of social injustice?
1:16.5	Was it a strong sense of social injustice that propelled you into journalism in the first place?
1:20.9	A bit of that, a bit of jealousy, a bit of anger, a bit of
1:24.4	frustration, a whole combination of things you never quite know do you until much
1:28.0	later? Jealousy for those who had when you had not. I suppose so and there was real poverty in the post-war years and they
1:35.5	were very bleak those post-war years. It's easy to forget now because it is I say
1:40.8	only 60 years ago but it's not that long ago in historical terms, but this was a very different world indeed, this the country was a very different country indeed.
1:50.0	And you sort of began to get a feeling at that time that there was another place that you
1:59.0	weren't being admitted to, that there were other good things happening and that you weren't being allowed to share in them.
	...

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