He has been known as the “Rottweiler of Radio 4” for almost three decades, but John Humphrys has revealed that his days behind the Today programme microphone are nearing an end.
Perhaps Britain’s most feared political interviewer, the 73-year-old said his departure from the agenda-setting show could come next week, next month or next year.
Taken to task in the Times magazine for giving the sort of vague answer that would enrage him on air, Humphrys said he would not cover another general election: “That’s another three and a half years away, and it’s unlikely I’ll be there in three years. Extremely unlikely.”
Next year will mark his 30th anniversary as a Today presenter, and he is writing a book to be published when he finally hangs up the headphones.
“Will I be there in a year? I don’t know,” he said. “Today does make – even though I only do it a maximum four days a week – huge demands on you. Increasingly I think: ‘Yeah, there really are things I want to do.’ So I suppose one has to, you know…”
Humphrys also revealed that he recently wrote a resignation email in a “fit of anger” – thought to be about the Today presenting schedule around the time of the EU referendum vote.
“The absolute truth – but I am not going into any details, which will be frustrating for you – [is that I did] pen something, and didn’t in the end [resign] because it was pre-empted,” he told the Times. “It was something about which there was a certain amount of tension and I felt fairly strongly. And that was that. But that is as much as you’ll get from me.”
While Humphrys declined to reveal how much he earned from the BBC – “I have as much as I need” – he confessed a reluctance to throw away spoiled food. “If there is a little bit of mould, how long does it take to scrape it off?”
It may not come as a surprise to learn that Humphrys declared to the Radio Times earlier this year: “I do not do Facebook or Twitter. I am anti the sort of idiocies that Twitter frequently produces and baffled by people who feel they’ve got to be telling everybody what they’re doing all the time.”
Yet his preferred way to read is on an iPad – and at a stand-up desk. He also tried out a virtual reality headset on air in February, which left him feeling “a little seasick”.
Humphrys’s question: “Would virtual reality be able to replicate the experience of having sex?” helped him trend on Twitter for the first time. Unfortunately, the Twitterati got his name slightly wrong:
John Humphrys will be FURIOUS that he is trending on Twitter for the first time -- with his name spelled wrong #JohnHumphries @BBCr4today
— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) February 23, 2016
