Jeremy Vine hits out at BBC stars who express their views

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Jeremy Vine has suggested that fellow BBC presenters who break impartiality rules and express their views are 'less interesting'.
The 60-year-old, who presents on Radio 2 and Channel 5, said the 'price' he paid for his job was his inability to express his personal opinions.
Speaking to Radio Times, he said: 'It's the best job in the world … and the price of the ticket is that I don't express my views.
'There's a cadre of presenters and you know what their views are on everything. But once you start to put your views on the table, you become much less interesting as a presenter.'
'I'm there to facilitate,' he added.
His comments come after Gary Lineker, the former Match of the Day presenter, was recently forced to leave the BBC without a payoff following a row over anti-Semitism.
The BBC's highest-earning presenter, who had helmed the broadcaster's football coverage for more two decades, left the corporation after he used Instagram to promote a pro-Palestinian video featuring a rat emoji – an icon used by the Nazis as a slur against Jewish people.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lineker then went further than ever in his comments about Israel and also criticised his boss at the BBC.
Lineker apologised and said he would 'never consciously repost anything anti-Semitic – it goes against everything I stand for'. But bosses at the corporation had reportedly run out of patience with his outspoken political views.
Vine, meanwhile, has previously breached the corporation's impartiality rules by voicing his support for low-traffic neighbourhoods on X, formerly Twitter, in 2022.
However, the corporation stressed at the time that its finding had no bearing on any social media activity in which Vine expressed his 'personal enthusiasm for cycling'.
The keen cyclist and social media crusader for road safety has recently announced that he will stop sharing his 'near misses' cycling videos on social media because of online trolling.
Previously he would regularly post footage of his daily commute taken from his 360-degree helmet camera, which often triggered lively debate between cyclists and motorists.
He said: 'The trolling just got too bad. They have had well over 100 million views, but in the end the anger they generate has genuinely upset me.
'My aim was only to get all of us who drive to think about the dangers of trying to move around cities on a pushbike. I know I've sometimes got a little cross when a driver has, say, pulled out without looking, but I only ever uploaded the film to show the danger.'
Speaking to Radio Times about his 'heated debates' while presenting his Radio 2 and Channel 5 shows, he said the biggest divide in Britain to him seemed to be 'generational'.
Vine said: 'I have a listener who rings up – he's 80 years old – and he says that the reason young people can't buy a house is because they spend all their time in Paris.
'Then a young person rings up and says, 'We're having experiences because we can't afford a house'.'