Today programme
Why does Jamie Oliver always get an easy ride?
There are many annoying things about the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, but none of them grates my gears as much…
Old Marr, new Marr
Andrew Marr got his voice back this week. That may come as a bit of a surprise to everybody who’s…
Diary
‘Aren’t you meant to be in quarantine?’ the man in the cloakroom queue asks. I sense that his enquiry is…
What’s the point of the Today programme?
What else is there to write about in the week that John Humphrys, that titan of the BBC airwaves, retires…
Another side of John Humphrys
‘What can you tell me just now,’ asks Audrey Gillan. She’s talking to Tara, who’s been sleeping rough on Fournier…
There are too many women on Radio 4 and they’re always moaning
We had a long drive back from the north-east last weekend. Six hours or so, including a stop halfway, just…
Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners
Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…
How hospices make you think differently about life
The timing of the Today programme’s series about hospices could not have been more apt, coming as it did so…
Justin Webb: the day I was forced to hide from John Humphrys
My friend John Humphrys has managed to get on to the front pages again. We first met in the 1980s…
Faulty connection
There’s no doubting her passion for the programme of which she is now chief of staff. Talking to Roger Bolton…
What if Murdoch owned the Beeb?
A new book published today by the Institute of Economic Affairs called In Focus: The Case for Privatising the BBC…
Chance encounters
Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the…
The Spectator’s Notes
Speaking on the Today programme on Monday, Sir David Attenborough, who wants a global agreement to control carbon emissions, pointed…
Diary
Scientists are experimenting with growing replacement vocal cords in the lab, as well as transplanting them from dogs. That was…
Diary
One of my constituents has been in an Indonesian prison since May. Journalist Rebecca Prosser was arrested with her colleague…
The questions you don’t ask at the BBC
There was a remarkable scene in one BBC Today programme morning meeting in about 1995, as all the producers gathered…
Easy virtue
Why do the right thing when you can simply say the right thing?
Recorded delivery
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’…
Remember the Negroni Index? At last I’ve found a market that never stops rising
This dispatch comes to you from Venice — where I arrived at sunset on the Orient Express. More of that…
With Paxman gone, there are even fewer reasons to like the BBC
In a double blow for the beleaguered BBC, the corporation has lost three of its most compelling attractions in little…
Ukip isn’t a national party. It’s a Tory sickness
It can happen that something ought to feel wrong yet somehow doesn’t; and you wonder whether this means that in…
It has to stop?
Upspeak can damage your career prospects
Diary
It’s amusing to see serious journalists and authors struggling to use Twitter under instruction from their newspapers and publishers. They…
Diary
I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but…
Long life
After a carefree month at my wife’s house in Tuscany — the longest summer holiday I have spent there for…
