Early morning radio matters. Chosen voices ease us into the day: DJ or news-jockey, ladette or lecturer, whimsical Wogan or hectoring Humphrys. For me it has always been Today, 50 years old this month and making a strong recovery from its midlife Hutton crisis. It has grown to be a great and muscular beast, and I am proud that for six years – midway through its evolution from pussycat amiability to feral news-tiger – I too served it. I was a producer, a reporter and for nearly four years a presenter. Most importantly, though, I am a listener. With millions of others, I can measure out my life by Todays.

So, call up the snapshot moments. The first is 1967, the scene a boarding-school bathroom at a convent in Tunbridge Wells. Back in Britain after a diplo-brat childhood abroad, I used the radio as a cultural handrail as I groped back into Britishness.

Listening to Today in the bathroom was not, however, popular with one especially anxious nun. She pronounced it “indecent” that the deep male voices of Robert Robinson and John Timpson should come from a room where a young girl stood nude. Ten years later I was able to inform John that he was regarded as an auditory sexual threat in convents; goodness, you never saw a man so thrilled.

Next snapshot: half-asleep in a university room, lonely in the dawn, I would prod the battered tranny and drift back mid-item into muddled dreams. I remember becoming convinced that the Duke of Windsor was on the Apollo mission. This still happens quite often. But however flaky the intellectual outcome, I was addicted. By the early 1970s Today had evolved away from the giggling jollity of Jack de Manio, into an embryo of the modern programme: the sound of curious intelligences waking up to examine the new day with polite interest. And, in Robert Robinson’s case, a certain astringency. Rags of the old Home Service show clung around it: Eileen Fowler’s exercise spot was gone, but Frank and Fred still talked gardening , and Thought for the Day managed to rise above the merciless parodies of “The Rev J. C. Flannel” in Private Eye.

One more early snapshot: it is New Year’s Eve 1973 , and I am a trainee studio manager at Broadcasting House. New to London, I have no invitations and shyly beg permission to watch the live midnight edition of Today. At the back of the cubicle I stand entranced, not so much by the presenters but by the nimbleness and derring-do of studio producers. What a job: fielding stories and sounds and tapes, slotting in GPO landlines and crackling world correspondents, making shapely sense of the great flow of events. When midnight struck, live from the bowels of Big Ben, the wardrobe-sized studio speakers were so clear that I could hear the scanty traffic far below. I crept off to my bedsit, happy.

A couple of years later, I spent six months as a trainee producer in the Today office. It was an interesting time: still no breakfast television to compete with, and a growing awareness of the programme’s influence. By the time Robinson left, it had glamour enough to try big names as presenters: James Burke, Malcolm Billings, Michael Aspel, Barry Norman, Des Lynam – even Melvyn Bragg had a go (Timpson described him as “Robert Robinson in paperback”). The job did not suit everyone, and still doesn’t. The weird hours finished off a few, the tension of fast news work daunted others. It is not easy to be both personably human and constantly alert, and many suave evening-style broadcasters simply sound wrong in the morning.

But frankly, the presenters were just a finishing touch as far as we producers were concerned: avatars hired to link the items that we had painstakingly assembled for them over the previous 20 hours. We gave them their cues, neatly typed out, briefed them in detail for live interviews, set the running order, timed it to the second and snapped instructions down the talkback – “wind up, ask the question again, go straight to John Sergeant in Paris then fill with a funny cutting, the sports reporter’s locked in the gents . . .”

The presenters were out there starring, but we in the backroom team ran them. Having been both sides of the glass I am aware that the relationship probably looked different to John, Barry and Des. They may even have deluded themselves into believing that we were somehow working for them, not working them. But network presenters, you may be shocked to hear, do not always enjoy the reverent admiration of their production teams. The machine of a sequence news programme is intricate, and the bit the presenter operates is – however impressive to the listener – actually not the most important. Sensible presenters understand this. Chippy ones do not.

Anyhow, the presenters of the Seventies were far softer in news terms than the hard-nosed combative types we now know. It was a couple of years later that Brian Redhead broke the mould, and the rest of us caught it off him. There were always plenty of politically keen and intellectual reporters, but the older presenters came from a different stable. Barry Norman was a film-and-feature man and Des Lynam’s heart was at the sportsdesk. Nor was John Timpson a political animal. He had been a local newspaperman, but his favourite job at the BBC before Today was Court Correspondent, back in the dear dead days of deference when a sprightly aside about the Duchess of Kent’s decolleté was as daring as you got. On Today John was a confident, jovial ringmaster who conducted interviews with aplomb and reasonable gravitas, but he had none of the farouche aggression that Redhead was to bring.

I watched all this from below: a trainee producer, confined to a big and fairly filthy room full of telephones, pursuing stories till my ear hurt, looking things up, cajoling expert speakers, briefing reporters and editing their tapes (the fun came, with the snottier ones, in deliberately cutting out the bits where the minister said “that’s a very good question”). As for the presenters, I liked writing amusing or dramatic cues in the distinctive “voice” of each, and seeing whether in the morning they would fall for the trick and use my witty words unchanged, or whether professional pride would make them rewrite. Redhead nearly always did; he liked précis, and said his ideal cue would be simply “Hark!”

Above all, I liked my colleagues. The team which gathered round that vast cluttered table in the Today office had a certain ramshackle tribal ensemble quality which I have rarely seen outside Drop the Dead Donkey. Because of the odd working hours our inhibitions were loosened, and character flowered freely and comically. There was a definite Today Type, and it had little to do with being a political anorak. Some people gravitated towards the early-morning show because they simply felt freer working through the small hours, with management out of the building.

When senior management did drop in at 1am it was generally after a very good dinner, so they were nice and mellow. On one occasion, the dinner was so good that the night-duty editor, Martin Cox, got a phone call at 2am summoning him to Paddington Green Police Station to bail out an executive who had swung a punch at the guard after missing his last train home. “He borrowed my tie for his court appearance in the morning, too,” Martin says plaintively. “I never got it back.”

Some came to Today just because they liked the buzz of ushering in the nation’s morning, breaking world stories to Britain. I think this is still very much so. It is fun to have both a big audience and a vast time to fill, with space for quirky inessential items about pumas in Sussex or people who play tunes by hitting themselves on the head with spanners. Some just liked the shifts, which, though bizarre, opened up the opportunity to live as far away as Wales. Jolyon Monson, a duty editor, ran a smallholding and used to sell new-laid eggs speckled with chicken-shit in the office. One short-lived experiment saw the day-editor and producer working only two shifts a week, each of 22 hours. You came in at noon and worked till ten next morning.

It drove us all a bit nuts but I can’t regret it: everyone should spend some of their youth on tough shifts. It is cheaper than a mind-altering drug or an expedition to the South Pole, and you learn much the same lessons about your limits.

I went back to local radio, did early-morning news there for a while and came back as a casual reporter. Reporters in the Seventies had the lion’s share of fun: there were enough of us to do things properly, and only five or six presenter-interviews each day, none more than six minutes long (it is only lately that the dreaded 8.10am interview has been allowed to inflict 20 droning ministerial minutes on the bleary public). Today then treasured the “built” feature, almost a miniature documentary. The worst bit of the job was lying in bed listening for your previous day’s work, resigning yourself to being dropped, and then realising with horror as the cue began that the unutterable bastards on the night team had started your four-minute masterpiece with two minutes to go – and cut it to ribbons. There were more serious things to worry about: 1977 turned into the nastiest year in the programme’s history. Not only were we still doing pointless two-centre presentations, with Brian Redhead introducing world stories down a line from Manchester as if somehow that made it more regional, but the new controller, Ian McIntyre, became dementedly convinced that news needed diluting to make it feel more serious. He chopped Today into two parts, of 25 and 35 minutes, separated by a desperate, twee nonprogramme called plonkingly Up to the Hour. A typical edition consisted of programme trails, Thought for the Day, a piece of irrelevant music, and something coyly described as “our little treat”, generally an oldVictor Borge comedy record. Aarggh! We had good material coming out of our ears, a whole world to report on, stories to tell, questions to ask, stories about real life in the real Britain. We hungered and thirsted for our stolen hour; it was almost a physical pain to have Today stop dead each day for the 7.35 filler. Through that awful winter there were acts of heroism. Mike Chaney, the editor, was outspoken in his protests, although he knew it might cost him his job (it did). And in a famous act of defiance, the announcer Peter Donaldson said it for us all. One morning, opening the network in his beautiful, deep-brown announcerly tones, he announced himself as “Donald Peterson”, ran slowly and deliberately through a list of what the other three networks were doing, and concluded, “But if you’re listening to Radio 4 – I’m afraid you’re stuck with Up to the Hour”.

He could have been sacked. If so, a lot of us would have walked out. His gesture mattered all the more because he was a Radio 4 announcer, the very quintessence of Reithian gravitas. Announcers on this network are a remarkable breed: at their classic best they are clear, authoritative, not unfriendly but not chummy either. They have the humility to act as living signposts, never drawing attention to themselves or showing off, yet with enough humanity to indicate by the slightest twitch of their voice that they too have been moved, or amused, or surprised by the programme they are signing off. They are trusted. So it mattered intensely that one of these domestic gods, the quiet icons of the network, had openly declared that McIntyre’s Up to the Hour was a disgrace. Fortunately, Peter was saved for the nation and went on to become chief announcer. The madness passed. Aubrey Singer took over as Managing Director Radio, shunted the controller off to Radio 3 and returned Today to its proper length, and a relaunch.

John Timpson came back from a miserable interlude on television (his hair was wrong, apparently) and Brian Redhead was persuaded to move down from Manchester three days a week. There was a gap for a third presenter, and I found myself recalled from interviewing Druids at Stonehenge and invited to do the job four days a week – two alongside Brian, two with John. Only on Wednesday would the two men work together. They were not bosom friends, frankly; barely even members of the same species. It is a delicious irony that only three-and-a-half years later, after I jumped ship, they both increased their days and their differences made them a sensationally popular double-act. But for three years I was the bolster between them.

And I had fun. On a good day, being a Today presenter is like being a small child waking up first on a winter morning and running round the house telling everyone it has snowed: you are first up in the morning with a story to tell. Lennon has been shot! The embassy siege is over! The Pope is dead! Mt St Helens has erupted! With talkback in your headphones, snags, changes, fixed points and pips to hit, it is technically fun too. Although as presenter you are not – ahem! – quite as important as you think, there is a genuine minor skill involved in keeping a complex programme sounding relaxed, a thin one sounding interesting and the whole machine rolling smoothly along. It is a bit like being a juggler in the kind of novelty act where audience members hurl unpredictable objects at you – a ball, a banana, a pencil, a paperback – and you adapt to keep them all flowing evenly through the air. You sit next to your co-presenter – clever chippy leftish Brian or grumpy conservative John – and grow fond of them, developing private jokes, cooperating, and putting rivalries aside because, frankly, it is too damn early in the morning to bother sulking. Sometimes you get the outside broadcast – I anchored the first-ever programme live from Beijing, another from HMS Invincible at sea, and a number of deeply tiresome European summits at which nothing happened of interest except for Mrs Thatcher saying Non, non, non! and Bernard Ingham conducting allnight briefings in rooms full of smoke.

Years later, Sue MacGregor was writing her autobiography and rang to ask whether it was true that I – like her – felt bullied as a woman. I was amazed. I never was. Today was not the testosterone flash-flood of legend; many editors and producers were women, and I had worked with them in the office. Timpson used to say, “Your trouble, young lady, is that you have peaked 20 years too early” and I would reply, “Your trouble is you’re a fossil”, and all was serene. The point is not that I was the first regular woman and the youngest presenter, but that I remain the only one to rise through the ranks. In Drop-the-Dead-Donkey world, that helps.

Listening now, the essential spirit seems not so different. Today’s Today perhaps speaks more deliberately to the political anoraks and not quite enough to the weary general listener; it may sometimes be rougher than necessary, even allowing for the terrible new sliminess of the political class. But it remains a treasure, with presenters of fine wit and stamina – Humphrys, James Naughtie and Sarah Montague in particular. The latter wins my special respect for her procreative powers: I tried to get pregnant while I was on the 4am starts, and failed. I ended up resigning to get my system working again. The other reason was that it is bad for anybody of 31 to turn into a sort of auditory Albert Memorial, and Today presenters do risk that.

I remember the resignation moment as fondly as all the rest. I went to see Peter Woon, the boss, and gave three months’ notice. He sniffed and said, “Well, we can refresh the voices, then”, a typical BBC rudeness. He added as I left: “We’ll let you know when we’re making the announcement.” From the door, poised for flight, I told him that I already had done, in my own words. The article came out next day. There is always a risk with corporate press offices that they’ll hint that you were pushed. Me, I jumped, perhaps rashly. HMS Today sailed on, leaving me bobbing in the leaky lifeboat of freelancing. I am glad it sails on still, and hope that it will accept this as a long, respectful, loving hoot of salutation.

— Radio: A True Love Story, by Libby Purves, published by Hodder for £7.99. Available for £7.59 from Times BooksFirst (P&P incl), 0870 1608080

A dinosaur that’s had its day

At 8.10 this morning, a senior politician will kneel before the court of John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie and stutter through an inquisition. Quite why there should be such fear and respect for the Today programme is hard to say. Fifty years ago it was the only show in town; now the world is full of radio and TV shows, not to mention web chat. There is no reason why Humphrys et al should continue virtually to monopolise the big political interviews.

It was easy to mock Tony Blair when he eschewed Today for Richard and Judy’s sofa. But he knew what he was doing. Like it or loathe it, Richard and Judy’s audience is more representative of the British public than is that of Today. Better still are the phone-ins and web chats to which Blair occasionally submitted himself. That is how we want our media today: interactive, with a chance for us all to speak.

The idea that Today rises above all other forms of media because of its seriousness and impartiality is just a conceit. Of course, its producers are meticulous in observing their duty to be nonpartisan. I am sure the programme has someone with a stopwatch to ensure that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories all get their allotted time, to the second. Yet the show cannot fail to reflect the prejudices of BBC culture, in which noble public servants are seen as inherently superior to grubby men in trade.

In the early 1990s I was given the job of listening to every minute of Today for a week and totting up how much public expenditure would have to rise to satisfy the demands of its presenters. I forget how many billions my final tally came to, but at a time when the public deficit was already £51 billion, it would have driven the country to bankruptcy in no time.

Today’s producers want us to see it as a national treasure, but really the show is just a product of its time: postwar Britain, when economic power lay in the hands of the State, governments lavished millions on Keynesian job-creation schemes, and public services meant no choice at all. Fortunately, with a 24-hour media broadcasting from every orifice, Today no longer matters much – though many of our political leaders haven’t realised it yet. (Ross Clark)

All our yesterdays

— Today was launched on the Home Service on October 28, 1957, from an idea by Sir Robin Day. It was initially going to be called Morning Miscellany.

— The first edition contained items from Douglas Bader on air travel and Eamonn Andrews on boxing. It was presented by Alan Skempton and Raymond Baxter.

— One of the first presenters, Jack de Manio, always had trouble telling the time.

— The review of the day’s papers was introduced in 1959. Thought for the Day began in 1970 – mainly consisting of Christian speakers. The first Muslim to appear was in 1992.

— The tradition of co-presenting began in 1970, when John Timpson joined de Manio.

— Robert Robinson then took over from de Manio in July 1971.

— The average audience between 7.30am and 8am is 2.4 million.

— The programme now has five regular presenters: John Humphrys, Sarah Montague, James Naughtie, Carolyn Quinn and Edward Stourton.

— Libby Purves was the youngest presenter, aged 28.

— Humphrys is the show’s longest serving presenter, joining in 1987.

— The presenters over the years include Des Lynam, Barry Norman, Michael Aspel, Jenni Murray and Melvyn Bragg. Sue MacGregor joined in 1984.

— The Prince of Wales’s first broadcast interview was with de Manio on St David’s Day 1969 from Buckingham Palace. He wrote and broadcast a Thought for The Day on May 8, 1995.

— Since its inception, every Prime Minister has appeared on the programme – from Harold Macmillan to Gordon Brown.

— Margaret Thatcher phoned Today from Downing Street on December 8, 1988 when she learnt that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had cancelled his trip to Britain because of the Armenian earthquake. She had difficulty getting through because they thought her call was a hoax.

— Former minister Jonathan Aitken accused Humphrys of interrupting the then Chancellor Kenneth Clarke 32 times in one interview.

— Source: BBC

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