John Humphrys slams ‘profoundly irritating’ BBC Radio 4 presenters 7 years after quitting

John Humphrys has shared some choice words for the presenters who have taken over his old stomping ground on BBC Radio 4.

The legendary broadcaster penned a scathing column on the Today show, after he left the breakfast current affairs programme in 2019.

The 82-year-old had been in the job for three decades, with a notoriously forthright interview style that is said to have made booking guests sometimes challenging.

Humphrys has now taken that silver tongue and turned it on the Today show presenters of now, in a new Guardian column.

‘Having been the one on the radio informing (and possibly sometimes annoying) the listeners for 33 years, I’m now the man shouting at his radio about how irritating the programme has become,’ he wrote over the weekend. 

The presenter acknowledges that the show’s chief presenters, Justin Webb, Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan, are ‘as good as they come’ but that their communication style leaves him ‘harrumphing’ at the radio. 

He wrote: ‘A prime example would be Amol Rajan’s insistence on emphasising, without fail, the definite and indefinite articles in any given sentence. In his world, “A” bomb has exploded in “THE” palace of Westminster.’

Rajan earlier this year announced he will be leaving the Today programme to build his own production company, with his replacement yet to be confirmed.

Humphrys also shared his aversion to airtime being clogged up with ‘gushing’ thanks before the meat of the interview, adding: ‘Some presenters are more guilty than others.’

That wasn’t the end of it; filler words such as ‘y’know’ and ‘I mean’ on the airwaves also grind his gears.

Concluding the diatribe, he explained: ‘Otiose? Almost always. Irritating? Profoundly. But would I really die on this hill? Possibly not. Then again … y’know?’

Humphrys joined the BBC in 1966 and went on to climb the ranks of the corporation to become one of the presenters of the current affairs flagship show, as well as of quiz show Mastermind.

He came under intense scrutiny in 2017, when it was revealed he was one of the BBC’s highest-paid earners, on a far higher salary than his BBC Radio 4 colleagues.

The BBC confirmed he took home nearly £1million for both his radio work and Mastermind, while his Radio 4 colleague Mishal Husain was on £250,000 and Sarah Montague was on less than £150,000.