I listened, this morning, to John Humphrys as he signed off after a 32-year stint as co-presenter of Today, on Radio 4. That’s a long time to be asking awkward questions of our elected representatives. In an unguarded moment he called Thought for the Day “deeply boring”, and I can’t take issue with that. In 2019 we still devote two minutes and forty-five seconds each morning, on the BBC’s flagship news programme, to a religious homily. We’ve had Muslims offering up their thoughts, but never atheists.
As a farewell to a long-serving presenter, the programme was a rather protracted lap of honour. As a contrast, John Arlott’s last words of cricket commentary, during the Centenary Test at Lord’s in 1980, were commendably brief. “End of the over, it’s 69 for two and after Trevor Bailey it will be Christopher Martin-Jenkins”. With that, the doyen of the commentary box laid down his microphone and headed home to Alderney.
Licensed today: Sewerby Hall, a Georgian mansion near Bridlington...
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