Jeremy Vine: ‘People call me an idiot for riding a penny-farthing'

Telegraph

11 hours ago

How do famous names spend their precious downtime? In our weekly My Saturday column, celebrities reveal their weekend virtues and vices. This week: Jeremy Vine
Jeremy Vine, 60, has presented the mid-morning show on BBC Radio Two for the past 22 years. After graduating from Durham University, he joined the BBC in 1987, quickly becoming a regular voice on Radio Four's Today programme as a reporter. He has since presented Eggheads, the TV quiz show, which ran for 15 years, and hosts an eponymous morning talk show on Channel 5. He lives in Chiswick, West London, with his wife, Rachel Schofield, the career coach and former journalist.
6am
I get up at around 4.30am in the week for work so, for me, getting up at six feels like a real lie-in. I always thought I was a night owl, but I've realised recently that I've been misunderstanding my body clock for my entire life and I need an early night. Rachel will still be asleep, so this is the time when I make tea and feed Wally and Wilber, our cats. We've got a fancy coffee machine, but all it does is make an immense amount of noise – as well as an average coffee.
Then I settle down to do some writing. Murder on Line One, my first mystery novel, came out recently and I'm working on the follow-up right now. I like to have a bowl of All Bran with raw nuts – that sounds shockingly spartan doesn't it? Then I'll sit at the kitchen table with my laptop and get around 500 words done. I always have the patio door open so there's a bit of a breeze around me. I think you have to be slightly uncomfortable in order to write. If I'm too comfy then I just doze off.
8am
By this time, Rachel is up and she'll start work on her weekly newsletter (she's a business coach) and we'll talk about what we should do with the morning. Anna, our younger daughter, who has just finished her A-levels, will often be around, too. Martha, our eldest, is in her final year of university, but I suspect she'll be back home soon. I welcome the boomeranging of our children. Their bedrooms aren't going to be turned into a study any time soon. We don't all eat breakfast together but we might talk about which farmers' market we'll visit around Chiswick, and what meats and cheeses we should buy.
10am
Rachel might suggest we go up the high street – which I'll refuse, as that phrase makes me feel like I'm about 110 years old! So we might head to the London Wetland Centre in Barnes, which I think is one of the great beauty spots of London. It's a nature reserve created out of a series of reservoirs, and you can go there, sit in a hide and watch the birds. I usually have no idea what I'm looking at but it's just the most relaxed and peaceful place I know. It makes my heart sing.
12pm
By now my mind has turned entirely to football. I'm like a dolphin sniffing out a signal. I have a season ticket at Chelsea but, if they're playing away, I go and watch Sutton United at their fantastic Gander Green Lane ground. I love the intimacy of watching Sutton, and I really hope they get back into the league next season (the club were relegated two years ago), but my heart does still belong to Chelsea.
I'll have a pint before the game with my mates – Martha would come with me until she went to university. Rachel usually comes with me now and we both agree that the ritual of going to the match is so cleansing, a chance to free yourself from the outside world for a couple of hours. Some of the characters who sit near us around the halfway line are brilliant. There was one guy who used to go absolutely crazy if we were losing. He had a voice like a foghorn and would give the players so much abuse. It took ages for me to realise this guy is one of the leading barristers in London.
5pm
Once I'm home from the match, if it's still light, I might go out on my penny-farthing bicycle. It was made in China and there's a solid 8ft drop if you fall off. I don't wear luminous clothing when I'm on it, as it just doesn't look right. I've got a tweedy cycle helmet though, as I think you need to make a bit of period style effort. It has a 56in wheel and it does get quite a lot of attention.
I don't always lock it, as I think that if anyone is skilled enough to be able to get on it and pedal away, then they're welcome to it. Generally, people seem pleased to see anything on the road that isn't a car. Once in a while someone will shout 'idiot' at me, but they're usually big men in small cars who are angry about everything, not specifically me. If you're so locked into your own sadness that you don't see any joy in a 60-year-old man riding a penny-farthing, then you're probably in a depressive struggle of some kind.
8pm
I'm not a natural cook but I love to have a go, particularly at making big stews, which I'll cook even in the summer months. I'm always too meticulous with measuring herbs and milk and things absolutely exactly, whereas Rachel is far more intuitive. If we go out for the evening, we'll head to the Chiswick Cinema, which was opened in an old ballet school in 2021. We adore going there as it's such a great local asset just a few hundred yards from our door. I hired it out for my 60th birthday recently and they put on For a Few Dollars More at my request, as it's a film that was released in the year I was born.
9pm
If we're at home, this is about the time that the bickering will start about what box set we should watch. I'm a big true-crime fan and, at the moment, I'm loving This City Is Ours. Rachel is far more into period dramas or anything with bonnets in it. If we get a takeaway then my favourite is Vietnamese pho or a curry.
11pm
A bit of dark chocolate and a decaf coffee is my favourite way to round off the evening. I have to admit that I do often fall asleep with the radio on. I'll ask Alexa to put BBC News on quietly but there's a podcast I love listening to from MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, where she and her guests usually just lay into Donald Trump in a very entertaining way. I'm not sure how healthy that is as a soundtrack to get me to sleep, but it does the trick.