There was a fair bit of effing and jeffing in John Humphrys’ on-stage conversation with fellow BBC radio presenter Nicky Campbell at the Radio Festival in Salford on Monday evening. It was also a bit like a scene from BBC2’s The Trip, except instead of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan doing impressions of Michael Caine they competed with passable imitations of Gordon Brown. Both suffered at Brown’s hands – “fucking BBC Tories” Campbell remembered hearing him saying after an interview on Radio 5 Live – while Humphrys recalled the phone call from another Campbell – Alastair – arranging a hastily convened interview with Tony Blair for his BBC1 show On The Record. “All right you cunt? You want to come here tomorrow?” Humphrys remembered Campbell telling him. “Chequers, Blair, one o’clock.” Humphrys also looked back on his controversial 2012 Today interview with Ed Miliband in which he appeared to imply that he was too ugly to lead the Labour party. The Today presenter said it was “mildly toe-curling” but added: “I think I would still defend it. He said, ‘Oh! You are saying I’m too ugly to be prime minister are you?’ No of course not. You can’t say yes even if you think it, which I don’t, obviously.” So... that’s cleared that up.
