Rod Liddle on his radio comeback: Somehow I'm still on air
Everyone thought it was going to be trouble and would end in tears. Right at the start I rang Trevor Phillips and said: Times Radio has given me a show, on a Saturday, between 10am and 1pm, would you like to be my guest? Trevor is about as close to a friend as I have in this desperate trade of perpetual scribbling and jabbering. There was a hoot of laughter down the line. 'They've given you a show? Has anyone told Ofcom? Yes, I'll be your guest. Put me on an early one before it's taken off air.'
I had not really imagined going back into radio at this stage of life. I endured a decade at the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, five of them as editor. There was always an agreement that radio would be absolutely brilliant if it wasn't for the presenters and the listeners. Both of these groups carped all the time and were impossible to deal with.
Becoming a presenter, then, was a kind of betrayal. But the prospect held such allure. I had grown very tired of the BBC's monocultural output, its perpetual and predictable consensus, even if I still respected a lot of the people who worked there. Here was a chance to make a programme which would be, I thought, 'refreshingly different', which would 'break the mould'. And as I was a convert to Times Radio already, it was very hard to resist.
I would be taking over the slot previously occupied by the brilliant Hugo Rifkind, and therefore a tricky act to follow. I was introduced to the producer, Danny Garlick. He appraised me with slightly narrowed eyes. How would you like to change the show, he asked. 'I'd like it to be refreshingly different, and to break the mould,' I replied. How exactly? 'I'd like it to be a little more, um … you know … fascisty.'
I was joking, largely. But I did see it as an opportunity to approach the daily round of news stories from different angles, left and right. That old divide has become almost meaningless today. Politics does not know where it is; it has become lost. Reform urging nationalisation and the Labour prime minister conjuring echoes of Enoch Powell? This isn't just a shifting of the Overton window, it's a screen door being flung open. And yet too often the broadcasters follow the same old patterns which simply don't hold any more.
The first couple of shows were terrifying, of course. Three hours to get through without losing the script, saying 'holy f***' or having a heart attack. I used to edit the Saturday edition of Today, a two-hour show which was put together by three or four producers the previous day plus an overnight team of three or four producers, not to mention input from a forward planning team.
Here I had the services of the aforementioned Danny for one and a half days each week. But God, he's good. The most flawless producer I have encountered and generous of spirit, too. When, two weeks ago, I inadvertently deleted the entire three hours of script from the computer so that it could not be retrieved, 15 minutes before we were due to start the show, he performed a kind of technological miracle and we made it to air. Nor did he, when I told him what I had done, call me an abject little tit, which is what I would have done. And then some.
What I really wanted from the programme was thought and depth from the political interviews, rather than the splenetic harrying of politicians you get elsewhere. We were the only broadcasters to secure an interview with the only British politician invited to Donald Trump's inauguration, the Labour peer Lord Glasman. We have had long-form political interviews with Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage and even longer interviews with the BBC chairman, Samir Shah, Richard Dawkins and the Labour recusant Rosie Duffield.
But alongside this stuff there's also been a chance to share a joke with the audience and to hear what they are making of it all. One of the highlights, for me, has been the constant stream of WhatAapp messages coming in from listeners, which we read out. It is a privilege to know that people are so engaged. Mind you, it is also an act of kindness on Danny's part that he does not forward to me the messages which say: 'Get this interminable arse off air this minute.' When I ask him how many say that sort of thing, he usually mumbles: 'Oh, you know, only one or two …'
The whole thing has rejuvenated my appetite for radio. And I hope, if you tune in, it may rejuvenate yours. It is a mix of highish culture, expert journalism from Times correspondents and humour — much like The Sunday Times itself. What's more, Trevor Phillips has been on the show loads more times. And I always remind him, as the second hand ticks round, that here we are, Trevor, still on air, still going strong.
Listen to Times Radio for free on DAB radio, online or via the free Times Radio app. Rod Liddle presents every Saturday from 10am to 1pm
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