monitor all the programmes to ensure that they are ‘impartial’. I was a producer and editor on Today for 18 years, and in that period I covered five general elections. I’m not being biased, or boastful, when I say that Today was – and surely still is – the most important news and current affairs programme in the country as far as politicians were concerned. In my time they all listened to it, they all wanted to appear on it – ‘dropping a word in the nation’s ear at breakfast’ – and they all did their utmost to influence it.
So general elections, while exciting, were fretful affairs. Editing the actual election night programme wasn’t such a stressful task, because plenty of extra producers and senior editors would be on hand to help – and in any case, the sound and fury of the spin-doctors was all over. It was now all about figures and straight analysis. But the scrutiny that Today faced was intense in the build-up to that day. In some ways, it must be harder for my successors today, given the length of the campaign and also the number of parties vying for airtime – some of whom, like UKIP and the SNP, have realistic chances of winning seats and also, potentially, holding the balance of power.
In my day in the 1990s and early 2000s it was all about balancing the coverage we gave to basically just three parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats. We would be harried by the spin-doctors from all of them, down to lobbying over the precise number of minutes they were given on each programme vis-à-vis the others. The coveted interview slots of 7.50 and 8.10 would be fiercely disputed, often in the early hours of the morning, by Today’s overnight editor and the relevant party press officer.
Always lurking in the background was the BBC’s own Political Adviser, who was supposed to hold the ring between the broadcasters and the parties and deal with major complaints from the latter. He or she would be on the end of a phone 24 hours a day to solve the most intractable rows.
One of the good guys
My favourite politician was Ken Clarke, in particular the spell when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was a relaxed yet shrewd interviewee, who was rarely embarrassed by a presenter and gave the listener the impression he had just dropped in for a casual chat. Unlike many of his Westminster colleagues, he had a rich and varied hinterland, with bird watching, jazz and his beloved Nottingham Forest among his pursuits - not to mention an occasional cigar and pint of real ale.
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I worked in the era of some of the finest Labour exponents of the black arts of spin doctoring – no doubt one of the reasons for the party’s electoral dominance from 1997-2010. The ‘Prince of Darkness’ himself, Peter Mandelson, had moved on by then to become an MP, but he still kept his hand in when required.
Alistair Campbell famously become Today’s greatest foe at the time of the Gilligan Affair in 2003, and I recall many run-ins with him in Labour’s first five years in office. I have a letter from him, responding to one particular 8.10 interview with a Government minister, which was characteristic of his sharp style.
“For quarter of an hour you could almost see the steam coming out of the phone as he violently
questioned my editorial judgement and verbally abused me, while I tried to keep calm in front of my team – and about 50others in our
open-plan office!”
‘I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking yours is a less serious programme than it was, and that your coverage of government and politics has the consequence, and perhaps the intent, of fostering cynicism and reducing people’s faith in, and understanding of, politics’, he wrote in December 2001.
Strangely enough, I have no particular memory of Campbell’s interference at election time, nor do I recall huge confrontations with tough characters like Damien McBride and Ian Austin (both Gordon Brown’s spin-doctors). But I can’t believe there weren’t
Gordon Brown’s spin doctors, top, Damien McBride and Ian Austin
some election run-ins with Austin (now an MP), who was especially Rottweiler-like. On Budget Day in 2003, after I’d told him we would be leading the programme the next day with coverage of Iraq (Saddam’s statue had been
dramatically pulled down in the centre of Baghdad) and not with an interview with his master, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he exploded with fury. For a
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