Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2024-11-08T06:43:23.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Eddie Mair pays tribute to Carry On's Fenella Fielding – and her inimitable radio voice
items: Eddie Mair: 'Was it the right decision to debut on LBC without a script?'
items: Fake news and real reporters: how Eddie Mair prepared for his first LBC show
items: Eddie Mair: 'Why my accidental exit at the BBC was the perfect ending'
items: Eddie Mair: What I will and won’t miss about the BBC
items: Eddie Mair: during my photoshoot for my new employer, two make-up artists resign
items: Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: "None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems"
items: Eddie Mair reveals how his mugging turned from bad to worse
items: Eddie Mair: How helicopters are ruining live news broadcasts
items: Eddie Mair: with Theresa May in sight "I was suddenly gripped by a desire to be naughty"
items: Eddie Mair celebrates 10 years of iPM
items: Eddie Mair on the Steve Hewlett interview that never took place
items: Ed Balls, people’s champion of Strictly Come Dancing 2016: ‘I never, ever knew I was so camp’
items: Eddie Mair: these are the questions people are really asking about Brexit - why aren't the campaigns answering them?
items: How the new BBC radio schedules could look thanks to John Whittingdale
items: Eddie Mair's Radio Review of 2015
items: Nick Park on Shaun the Sheep's big screen debut: "It’s like 24. With sheep."
items: Eddie Mair revisits the year's best bits that you may have missed
items: Look no further for a summer holiday treat, says Eddie Mair
items: Eddie Mair: My path towards death is becoming blurry
items: Eddie Mair: I'm being watched by the bosses at the Beeb
items: Eddie Mair: Radio is immediate, intimate, reliable and essential

Eddie Mair pays tribute to Carry On's Fenella Fielding – and her inimitable radio voice
type: item
date: 2018-10-01T08:47:38.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
subject: Comment
description: Broadcaster Mair had asked the actress to record a series of idents for his new LBC show
encoded: I’ve written here before about the joys of audiobooks read by people with distinctive voices. You can read the books by Sir Michael Caine and Sir Roger Moore but you’re only re-creating their voices in your head. Why not cut out the middleman and have them read for you? And so it was in sunny Corsica a few months ago when the delicious tones of Fenella Fielding OBE transported me to the London of the 1960s. Entitled Do You Mind if I Smoke? – after her most famous line in Carry On Screaming – it was the most exquisitely delivered memoir. Tender, sometimes bitchy, but as warm as the beach I was lying on. I almost fell off the lilo, when in a late chapter Fenella mentioned me and Paddy O’Connell, my old pal from Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. View oEmbed on the source website Paddy has used Fenella’s talents several times on his show, and my very loose association with her dates back to 1993. At the time, I was about to launch a phone-in show (does this sound familiar?) and someone had the splendid idea of asking Fenella to record some idents for us, announcing the phone number, etc. She graciously agreed and perfectly recorded everything we asked, including silliness such as the phrase: “Eddie… it’s time to get the bucket under the cow.” Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: “None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems” Stars and fans pay tribute as Carry On actress Fenella Fielding dies aged 90 Eddie Mair reveals his new Radio Times column collection A Good Face For Radio We knew that even if all else on the new show failed, at least we’d have the sheer class of Fenella to lift it. In my head I can still hear her saying, “Call Eddie now… 041 338…” Fast-forward to the summer of 2018. On the Corsican beach, I realised we simply had to have Fenella for my show on LBC. We were honoured when she agreed – at the age of 90 – to come into Global’s global headquarters in London a few days before our launch to record more words. “Call Eddie now… 0345 60…

mair-46ec093.jpg
width: 1000
height: 666

Eddie Mair: 'Was it the right decision to debut on LBC without a script?'
type: item
date: 2018-09-24T08:34:39.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
subject: Comment
description: "With twenty seconds to go before my first LBC radio show, I had second thoughts..."
encoded: Do you ever get those dreams where you’re in a public place without a stitch on? It happened to me when I was sitting at the LBC microphone for the very first time. Don’t worry, I wasn’t literally naked. There are cameras everywhere in the studio and in any event, I have a no-nudity clause in my contract: LBC insisted on it. But at 4.03pm on Monday 3rd September the sense of vulnerability and shock that accompanies those nudi-dreams coursed through what doctors agree can still legally be described as a body. More than a year after the possibility of doing this was first suggested, many months after 3rd September was pencilled into my diary, and after two weeks of test programmes, interviews, publicity photographs and preparation, it was about to come down to this moment. The 4pm news bulletin would finish. A jingle with my name in it would play, and then the microphone would go live. I would have to say actual words. Eddie Mair: While my accidental exit at the BBC was the perfect ending Eddie Mair: What I will and won't miss about the BBC BBC radio is no longer top dog in the digital age A sensible person would have written a script for this moment. Or perhaps, as is sometimes the norm at the nervy start of new broadcasting ventures, recorded something, just to be on the safe side. A scrap of clothing: a loincloth to prevent embarrassment. I opted for nudity. View oEmbed on the source website The day before, I had gone for a long walk in the countryside. A cloudless Sunday demanded I enjoy what could be the last hot day of summer. For ten miles I followed a route through forests and fields, soaking up the isolated beauty while considering what to say the next day at 16.03. Previously in this column I’ve discussed my unhappy relationship with maps. On this occasion I had an app with detailed photos and written descriptions of every stage of the route, as well as an Ordnance Survey app that clearly showed me at every stage where I was. To be on the safe side there wer…

Screen-Shot-2018-03-06-at-11.17.56-adc70d9.png
width: 3080
height: 1882

Fake news and real reporters: how Eddie Mair prepared for his first LBC show
type: item
date: 2018-09-18T10:29:39.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
subject: Comment
subject: LBC
description: In his latest Radio Times column, Eddie Mair explains why pilot radio is a lot like childbirth
encoded: Week two at LBC and it was our final preparation – a chance to practise “pilot” programmes before going on air. It’s hard to describe how simultaneously useful and useless this process is. It’s like comparing antenatal classes to actual birth. I’m not qualified to talk about either but hope you get the well-intentioned gist. Pilots, like antenatal classes, allow you to get in the right position (facing the microphone on a chair), understand which drugs will be used (caffeine) and get to grips with the technology that will surround you (in LBC’s case a space-age studio that makes the Starship Enterprise look like a Blue Peter sticky-back plastic effort). Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: “None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems” Eddie Mair on his encounter with two muggers in South America Eddie Mair moves to LBC after 30 years at the BBC At first, the technology is the most troubling thing. There are two computer screens at the presenter desk, just like at PM, but they function in an alien fashion. The right one is taken up with Phone Box, the system that alerts me to callers, tweets and emails and can be used to zap Klingons. The left screen (where I’m used to staring at the running order and writing makeshift scripts) is “read only”. There is no running order. It feels like my left hand has been removed. View oEmbed on the source website I log out of the studio computer – de rigueur at the Beeb – only to be told this is a no-no. Keith, the patient engineer, spends ten minutes correcting my mistake, but 24 hours later I do it again. How he doesn’t punch me, I do not know. At 2pm each day we start our pretend programmes. A few real people kindly oblige with contributions: Peter Lilley discusses some Brexit-related story. Theo Usherwood, LBC’s political editor, takes time from his busy day to pretend with us. Gentleman that he is, when I refer to him on air as Theo Underwood, he doesn’t mention it. I would have decked me. I learn a lo…

Eddie Mair: 'Why my accidental exit at the BBC was the perfect ending'
type: item
date: 2018-08-25T07:46:45.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: Comment
description: From a Jeremy Paxman interview to a Morecambe and Wise soundtrack, Eddie Mair kept a diary through his final days at Radio 4's PM
encoded: I promised you a diary from my last week at PM. Here it is… Eddie Mair: What I will and won’t miss about the BBC Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: “None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems” View oEmbed on the source website Monday 6th August While I’m sitting in Broadcasting House, an email arrives from Broadcasting House. The former is a building where I work, the latter is a programme I used to present on Radio 4. The email is from Scott – a fine producer who once toiled on Radio 4’s The Robert Peston Interview Show (with Eddie Mair). Scott was very adept at keeping the peace between Robert and me by constantly telling Robert that he was a much better broadcaster. This is how the email begins: “Hi Mr Mair, hope you are well. Would you be interested in reviewing the Sunday papers on Broadcasting House at some stage? With your broadcasting and journalism experience you would be a great addition to our line-up.” Sarcastic git. Because some undiscovered Morecambe and Wise has been rediscovered, we close PM with them singing Bring Me Sunshine. View oEmbed on the source website Tuesday 7th August Another email, this time from BBC Human Resources: “Good morning Eddie. We have received notification of your resignation and note that your last day of employment will be 10 August 2018.” It goes on to tell me where to find my P45 – in a recycling bin somewhere on the eighth floor – and further advises that I should follow the BBC tradition of handing back my security badge directly to Lord Hall, kissing him on both cheeks but being careful not to stare directly at the sun. Wednesday 8th August, 1pm Lunch with Jeremy Paxman for a Radio Times interview [read it in print next week] at a Viennese café, Fischer’s. I love a schnitzel. Jeremy arrives in shorts and with his dog – Derek. Ideally Derek would have been a schnitzel, but life’s never perfect. As the RT photographers snap away, I ask Jeremy where his tape recorder is. He gives me that look c…

eddie-mair-883b569.jpg
width: 4400
height: 6620

Eddie Mair: What I will and won’t miss about the BBC
type: item
date: 2018-08-19T08:30:57.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: Comment
description: After leaving Radio 4's PM, the broadcaster looks back at his time at the Corporation
encoded: I find myself in a strange limbo land. My time working on PM and iPM on Radio 4 is disappearing in the rear-view mirror. On the horizon, LBC is looming. But for now I have a week to relax, reflect and repaint the bathroom. Next week I will tell you all about my final days on PM. Who said what. Who cried buckets. And who swore blind that if I ever darkened the BBC’s doors again he would resign as director-general and go to live in Sweden as a moose. But for now I’d like to share with you something my agent could never achieve – a reflection. During this Gap Week I’ve had a lot of time to think, and not just about the difference between gloss and matt paint. After 31 years at the BBC I knew there would be things I would miss and things I’d be glad to see the back of. There are more things I love about the BBC than there are presenters on Today, but let’s start with the negative. Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: “None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems” Eddie Mair on his encounter with two muggers in South America Eddie Mair reveals his new Radio Times column collection A Good Face For Radio View oEmbed on the source website Things I won't miss about the BBC 1. The new open-plan Broadcasting House. Open-plan offices should remain as plans. There’s the racket, the lack of privacy and the lingering smell of everything that has ever smelled in there because it doesn’t benefit from a single open window. There are undiscovered deceased hoarders decomposing on top of mildewed newspapers in shacks in Montana who smell better than our office. Why the BH mice don’t die of asphyxiation I have no idea. 2. The back stairs of Broadcasting House. Until the recent construction of small privacy booths, the worship of the truly open-plan office meant that the back stairs were the only reliable place to risk a private conversation. The downside was they were bitterly cold in the winter and echoed a lot – any ghastly ground-floor gossip above a whisper w…

Eddie Mair: during my photoshoot for my new employer, two make-up artists resign
type: item
date: 2018-07-24T10:28:55.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
subject: Comment
description: After leaving BBC Radio 4's PM, Eddie Mair discusses his move to LBC – and why he'll be wearing make up
encoded: For the first time in my life, I’ve requested make-up. Well, for the first time in my professional life, to be sure. The BBC has announced my departure from PM and my new employer, LBC, wants to get me in for a Monday-morning photoshoot to accompany their own announcement. Their studios are always busy, what with being a 24-hour station, so I’m required to be at LBC Towers (as I’m sure no one calls it) for 6:15am before Nick Ferrari needs it at 7am. They send a huge car to collect me from home. I ask if this is to be the new daily arrangement, and they’re very clear it’s a one-off. I’ve to get a rickshaw home. I’m dropped outside Global Radio HQ in Leicester Square in London. Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: “None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems" Eddie Mair on his encounter with two muggers in South America Eddie Mair reveals his new Radio Times column collection A Good Face For Radio View oEmbed on the source website It is 5:45am. There are several people in Leicester Square and I’m confident I’m the only one who’s been to bed in the last six hours. I’m confident I’m the only one who’s had a shower in the past 48 hours. The make-up, you ask? I’m just back from holiday and despite the best efforts of the world’s finest sun-screen scientists in their laboratoires, my face is Central Line red. As I step out of the cab, passers-by clock my crumbling countenance and break into a chorus of The Singing Detective. I’ve been talking to LBC for a year but have never set foot inside the building until this moment. It’s an unassuming front door in the corner of the famous square. There is a TGI Friday’s next door and just along the way the biggest Odeon you’ve ever seen. The Global front door by comparison looks tiny, like the kind of entrance you might have found in old Soho… no frills, but the promise of something stimulating upstairs. I press the buzzer and announce myself. Upon entering I take selfies in a slightly overexcited new-boy w…

Eddie Mair explains his decision to leave the BBC: "None of my thinking has been influenced by pay problems"
type: item
date: 2018-07-07T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
subject: Comment
description: The presenter of BBC Radio 4's PM explains why after over 30 years with the broadcaster he has chosen to move on
encoded: The day in 1987 when the BBC first called to offer me a job, they had already sent me a rejection letter. I should have taken the hint. I’d travelled from Dundee to Glasgow to get the last interview slot of the day – around 5pm – for the job of Sub-Editor, BBC Radio Scotland. I thought I’d clinched it when Robin Wylie, who would go on to become my first BBC boss, looked at my application form during the interview. “It says here that you like a good argument,” he intoned. “No, it doesn’t,” I replied and we all laughed. I got the train back to Dundee, happy that I’d done my best. Eddie Mair reveals how BBC Radio 4 weathered a storm on PM Eddie Mair on his encounter with two muggers in South America Eddie Mair: as a journalist, the flood of post-Brexit breaking news is fun When the first post arrived the next morning around 7am (that kind of thing happened back then) it included a letter in a BBC envelope. I thought that was a bit fast but upon opening there was a letter from BBC Scotland Personnel (that’s what HR was called back then). They were terribly sorry but I hadn’t got the job. Crikey, I thought, they were quick off the mark to catch the last post last night. They must have really hated me. I put the letter away and decided that maybe I should carry on where I was: there might be a future in commercial radio for me. A few hours later the phone rang. It was BBC Scotland telling me I had got the job. I told them I’d already had a letter of rejection but they assured me that was a mistake. “Happens all the time”. Between that day and this, I’ve been fortunate to call the BBC home. BBC Scotland, Radio 4 for Breakaway and the odd PM. Radio 5 Live. BBC World Service in association with Public Radio International on a show called The World. We’d rejoice in picking up the phone and saying: “Hello? The World”. More Radio 4 – Broadcasting House, PM and iPM. Along the way various documentaries, Time Commanders (Google it), general elections and now podcasts. Filling in o…

Eddie Mair reveals how his mugging turned from bad to worse
type: item
date: 2018-03-06T12:37:45.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The story of the BBC Radio 4 presenter’s hospitalisation continues…
encoded: At the end of last week’s column, we found our hero – me – in his South American hotel room, somewhat thankful that his experience of being mugged had not turned out worse. Yes the theft of backpack, credit cards and cash was not postcard material, but he found some relief in not being stabbed, shot or otherwise murdered. He had got away with a grazed knee and a slightly painful piece of skin on his sunburnt left neck where the muggers had sought to wrench the backpack. Horrified friends back home advised that I should not let the muggers also steal my holiday. I kept calm and carried on, like a T-shirt, or is it a mug? Warier than before, and with some antiseptic cream on my neck, but still exploring. Eddie Mair on his encounter with two muggers in South America Eddie Mair reveals his new Radio Times column collection A Good Face For Radio A week later, and with another South American country under my belt, I noticed the thing on my neck had turned into a tiny lump, making shoulder movement a little uncomfortable. A pharmacist offered a cream containing antibiotics. After five days, and nearing the end of the holiday, the cream appeared to be having little effect. The lump, while not yet being dowager-sized, was big, purple, and filling with hardened pus. Sorry, but it was. I mentioned last week the look of horror PM guests sometimes have at my questions. I saw the same look when I went to a different pharmacy to show them my weird wound. They both gasped and contorted as if I’d asked them one of my questions. This was the first real sign that my little mugging might not be so easy to consign to unpleasant history. When a pharmacist gasps at what ails you, you begin to suspect a paracetamol is not going to do the trick. It was two more days until I returned home and got an 8am appointment to see a GP. There was little sleep to be had. The thing on my neck was spreading and growing. It had its own postcode. Nausea swept over me in ways I usually only experience list…

Eddie Mair: How helicopters are ruining live news broadcasts
type: item
date: 2017-10-12T10:47:29.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The overhead menace drowns out audio for virtually no benefit, says the PM presenter
encoded: And now, let’s re-live, for a moment, some of the speeches hailed as being pivotal moments in the 20th century. Let’s start with 20 January 1961, and the inauguration of President John F Kennedy: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you; ask what chugga chugga chugga.” Next, Martin Luther King Jr, 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC: “I have a dream, that one day this nation will chugga chugga chugga its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are chugga chugga.” Now let’s flit to the steps of Downing Street, 4 May 1979: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is chugga chugga chugga. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring chugga.” Yes, that’s what those moments would have sounded like if we’d had 24-hour TV news back then. Because as you know it’s impossible to cover news events any more without there being a helicopter several hundred feet up, affording us unrivalled coverage of the distant bald patches of newsmakers. In recent years it’s been modish for British prime ministers, incoming and outgoing, to make announcements from a podium set up outside 10 Downing Street. This affords the snappers and TV cameras a statesman/womanlike shot of the politician with the famous door behind them. Fair enough. But the demands of 24-hour TV news dictate that we must also see what it would all look like to a passing gull. And so, at considerable expense, a helicopter is dispatched to hover above the scene. It looks fantastic on the telly but unfortunately the racket drowns out what the politician is trying to say and it can cause terrible confusion. Only when we got the official transcript of David Cameron’s remarks after winning in 2015 did we realise he did not say: “Ed Miliband sang to me this morning to wish me ducky with the poo government.” Similarly, Theresa May in April of this year did not say: “I have just paired a meeting of the Cab…

hellelc-ba8a859.jpg
width: 3127
height: 1886

Eddie Mair: with Theresa May in sight "I was suddenly gripped by a desire to be naughty"
type: item
date: 2017-07-02T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: TV
description: What would you do if you could give the Prime Minister a piece of your mind? Eddie Mair had just that opportunity...and blew it
encoded: Theresa May is walking towards me and she looks bloody annoyed. It’s a Friday night at New Broadcasting House, just after six o’clock. You may be familiar with parts of our workplace from the TV show W1A, or from the time some pranksters got into the building and wandered round videoing it for a Facebook giggle. There are two banks of lifts flanking the middle of the building. Each bank has four lifts, and each lift relays the output of a different radio station. It’s pot luck which one you get. Radio 3 perhaps, or the Asian Network. I slightly dread getting in the 1Xtra lift because, well, they didn’t have someone of my vintage in mind when they drew up their playlist. I’ve been up and down in the 1Xtra lift more times than I care to recall and on no occasion has there been a peep from Tony Bennett. If you’re very unlucky and find yourself in the BBC Radio 4 lift between 5 and 6pm on a weekday, you’ll have me for company. There’s no mute button! Someday one of these lifts will get stuck between floors when I am on the air – I can only apologise in advance to the poor souls inside when that happens. So here I am, footling down in one of the lifts just after the programme. I get out and walk towards the central security doors. As always, there are people doing the same thing from the opposite direction, having emerged from the right-hand lifts. And who do I clock? Well, the clue is at the start of this column. I’m used to seeing famous people in BH. The other day I passed Fiona Bruce (ouch!) and I almost said hello, before remembering that I knew her only from the telly and she wouldn’t know me if I stood up in her soup and sang the national anthem. The person Fiona glanced at had his mouth half-open in readiness for a greeting that never came and a confused expression on his face. I think she assumed I was an eejit and, candidly, no jury would demur. The Prime Minister is flanked by her security heavies, and James Harding, the BBC’s director of news and current affa…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2017/07/141863.88e36666-1673-4206-80b9-3efe084cbee8.jpg
width: 620
height: 374

Eddie Mair celebrates 10 years of iPM
type: item
date: 2017-04-08T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: The Your News bulletin provides a unique snapshot of listeners’ lives
encoded: The BBC loves an anniversary. Whether it’s 400 years since Shakespeare put down his quill or 50 years of the continental quilt, there is nothing that the corporation is not prepared to celebrate with a series/season/Mary Berry pie recipe. In that fine tradition, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that ten years ago this year, iPM began. It’s a BBC anniversary! Hooray! Let’s have cake! As your eyes begin to droop, let me try to hold your interest with a startling confession. We’re not sure what the “i” stands for. I’m not joking. Since PMbegan in 1970, listeners have always been notably involved (note to self: make sure my successor has plans to celebrate its 50th birthday in 2020). The reading out of listeners’ letters (then in addition, emails, tweets and tea-leaf analysis) has been part of the broadcast for as long as anyone can remember. Our audience is smart, sophisticated and immune to flattery. More importantly, our listeners know stuff. We wondered whether we could make a programme in which their knowledge and experience could be the start of the editorial process, rather than the end of it. Instead of simply reacting to what we chose to broadcast, maybe individual listeners could – for want of a better cliché – set the agenda. A lot has changed in our time. The programme’s blog has gone the way of many blogs. Twitter is, for the moment, as popular a contact method as email. But one feature has endured the technological change. It’s called “Your News”. Listeners send us a single sentence about their week and we compile it into a bulletin – and we ask various well-known voices to read it for us. It was all the idea of Paddy O’Connell from Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. I asked him the other day how he came up with it and he said it was over dinner with me. I have no recollection of this and put it down to being over-medicated at the time, probably by Dr Jim Beam. The Your News bulletin provides a unique snapshot of our listeners’ lives. Sometimes the s…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2017/04/134471.71fd38e2-51e8-4f0c-82c5-96bb5146d52b.jpg
width: 480
height: 270

Eddie Mair on the Steve Hewlett interview that never took place
type: item
date: 2017-03-22T10:00:00.000Z
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: “I wish when he was of firmer voice and more robust health we could have captured his thoughts on a notable career”
encoded: There are many things to admire about the late Sir Robin Day, but there are two in particular I’d like to draw your attention to. First, he’d know not to end a sentence with a preposition like what I just done. And second, he once gave a piece of advice that has stayed with me. Before I offer it to you, please bear in mind my bare mind. While it honestly believes this to be a true memory, it’s old, it misremembers and despite extensive research (the first ten Google search results), I have found no online reference to Sir Robin’s wise words. Maybe it never happened, like those two meetings with the Russian ambassador I forgot I didn’t have. But let’s work on the assumption that my memory might be accurate. Someone years ago had the bright idea of asking the great and the good for the best advice they could give the rest of us – and compiled all the wise words into a book. Sir Robin’s advice was direct and brilliant – like his interviewing style. It was simply this: “Do it now.” It’s beguiling, isn’t it? An encouragement to pursue our goals and dreams. An admonition to stop faffing about. Or just enough to persuade you to make that cup of tea you’ve been thinking about. The words have been rattling around in my mind with greater resonance of late. A few weeks after Steve Hewlett began his weekly appearances on PM, talking about his health, I had a quick word with him outside the studio once we were off the air. I was conscious that while he was candidly sharing with the world his experience of cancer – and as discussed here previously it was something that connected with listeners in ways we couldn’t imagine – Steve’s professional life was never discussed. I didn’t doubt he had amazing stories to tell about his time as a producer/editor/documentary-maker/media commentator and a ridiculous number of other activities. View oEmbed on the source website My pitch was this: that one day we sneak off, just the two of us, to secretly record an interview about Steve’s working…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2017/03/133056.9515bcb2-fe17-4d48-a915-8b2f7c3e28fd.jpg
width: 620
height: 374

Ed Balls, people’s champion of Strictly Come Dancing 2016: ‘I never, ever knew I was so camp’
type: item
date: 2016-12-17T08:00:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Talent Shows
subject: TV
description: The celebrity we most wanted to see in the final reckons he's found the key to being sexy: don't try
encoded: “Who would have thought you and I would be doing this!” says the former shadow Chancellor. Almost all of our previous encounters, which were usually not face-to-face, had been live on a news and current affairs programme: me verbally dissecting the minutiae of Labour Party economic policy; him vigorously attacking any perceived slight. Now, thanks to his eye-popping run on Strictly Come Dancing, we’ve gone from “Can you pass a law?” to “Can you paso doble?” One of his sons had opened the family front door to me: through the back in the kitchen, Ed and his wife, the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, were brewing coffee. It was here – between the washing machine and the ironing board – that he practised his last dance: a rumba that the nation never got to see after he was booted off Strictly. “We were going to do a rumba to Shirley Bassey’s This Is My Life – it’s probably best left to the imagination!” he tweeted. Instead, we have a unique interpretation of Gangnam Style, a blazing piano and Great Balls of Fire by which to remember the unlikely star of Strictly 2016. Only once before had I actually met Ed Balls and he was precisely the kind of friendly, smiley person he didn’t appear to be as a politician on-air. It was at an edition of Radio 4’s Any Questions and I remarked in my introduction how he must have been teased at school about his surname. Quick as a flash he butted in to say it hadn’t been easy for him, but it was much worse for his sister, Ophelia. It got a big laugh. Now, thanks to Strictly, he has been making everyone laugh for the past three months. Changed days. When he was just a politician, members of the public would talk to him in the street, “but you just never knew which way it was going to go”. A week after he lost his seat in the 2015 general election, on one of his first forays outdoors, he was with one of his sons when a man approached him, his face contorted with anger, pointing and snarling: “You’re unemployed. Haaaaaaaaa!” And now everyone’s nice …

125173.jpg
width: 620
height: 374

Eddie Mair: these are the questions people are really asking about Brexit - why aren't the campaigns answering them?
type: item
date: 2016-06-14T15:01:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: TV
description: With a week left until the EU referendum vote, why are people still asking questions?
encoded: As you know, I try to keep this column light. It has more air in it than a Delia meringue and less substance than one of Charlie Sheen’s dinner parties these days. If it’s serious content you crave, there are scores of well-informed columnists out there. If it’s well-informed commentary you’re after, I think you can do no better than Dan Maskell, though perhaps that dates me. In this very publication you’ll find a more serious tone in the listings for Comedy Central than you will here. So it’s with a heavy heart that I talk this week about something heavy. The EU referendum is coming. We’re told it’s the most important decision we’ll have to make since deciding whether to watch something tonight on Comedy Central. The campaigns seem to have been running for ever, and there’s now just a week to go. So why are PM listeners still writing to us in droves asking questions that don’t appear to get answered by the campaigns? A while back, as a public service, we devoted a few minutes of PM each night for a week to answering our listeners’ EU-related questions. Our assistant political editor Norman Smith and our Europe correspondent Chris Morris kindly agreed to answer the questions. We get a lot of emails at PM. Usually if we talk about something on air our inbox pings delightfully for a few minutes, and then quietens down. On this topic, however, the emails have never stopped arriving. Day and night they come. Over the weekend, unprompted, earnest enquiries arrive from real people who want real answers to their real questions. We had so many unanswered questions after the original weeklong run ended, we brought Norman and Chris back for a second week. And then a third. Then a fourth... The questions seem a world away from what the campaigns are talking about. Here’s just a tiny sample: Have any countries, trading blocs or other such entities publicly stated they’re in favour of Britain leaving the EU and that they have specific plans to increase their trade with Britain i…

110416.jpg
width: 620
height: 374

How the new BBC radio schedules could look thanks to John Whittingdale
type: item
date: 2016-05-12T06:45:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
description: As the Government publishes its White Paper on the corporation's future, Eddie Mair reveals a secret draft schedule for Radio 4
encoded: Amid what I understand are heated charter renewal negotiations between the BBC and the Government, there are suggestions that Culture Secretary John Whittingdale might like a say in the scheduling of BBC output. Of course, I didn’t believe a word of that until I was passed this document – it appears to be a draft schedule for Radio 4... Eddie Mair presents PM, Sat, Mon—Fri 5pm, and iPM, Sat 5.45am, 5.30pm, both Radio 4

107937.jpg
width: 620
height: 374

Eddie Mair's Radio Review of 2015
type: item
date: 2015-12-30T07:21:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: Christmas
description: Hello, stranger. What a year you've missed!
encoded: Merry Christmas and welcome to my annual Review of the Year. We tried doing it bi-annually but it just wasn’t the same. I’m Eddie. I can be heard presenting PM and co-presenting iPM on BBC Radio 4 but I’ve been writing on this page for several years: a forfeit after losing at arm wrestling to Vanessa Feltz. I write in Radio Times weekly – or weakly, if the increasingly vociferous “improvement notes” from the Editor are any guide. But what does he know? The fact is, this is the page many RT readers turn to first if: A. all the other pages are stuck together....B. they need something for the budgie cage or...C. they have an aversion to listings. The existence of this column may be news to you. It’s possible that for you, RT is like me at the office Christmas party: something that gets picked up and taken home only once a year. I hope that, unlike my Christmas party experiences, you at least don’t chuck out Radio Times after ten minutes without so much as a cab fare home. But leaving aside the cause of my feud with Martha Kearney, let me tempt you to buy RT a little more often in 2016 by revisiting some of the amazing insights that regular readers have enjoyed throughout the past 12 months. JANUARY Radio 4 airs War and Peace for ten hours on New Year’s Day. It’s the longest continuous broadcast since the infamous “James Naughtie and Robert Peston in Conversation”. FEBRUARY David Tennant makes the most impressive debut in Just a Minute history, speaking without interruption for 60 seconds on his first attempt. Efforts to repeat the achievement on Radio 4’s Today are less successful. MARCH A TV host carries out a physical assault on another man, landing blows on him for at least 30 seconds, shouting obscenities before, during and after. He is later punished with a multi-million-pound contract and a series on Amazon Prime. APRIL General election fever grips the United Kingdom. I have a strong sense that the Liberal Democrats are going to do extremely well. MAY Inflation f…

Radio-Times-placeholder-0db4bf6.png
width: 620
height: 413

Nick Park on Shaun the Sheep's big screen debut: "It’s like 24. With sheep."
type: item
date: 2015-02-06T06:01:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Movies
subject: Wallace and Gromit (franchise)
description: Radio Times readers voted Shaun the Sheep their children’s TV favourite. Eddie Mair rounds up creator Nick Park and his flock to find out how Shaun became a silver screen star...
encoded: Feature films without dialogue haven’t been in vogue since cinema pianists retired. Mind you, The Artist silently stormed the Oscars in 2012, so maybe there’s a purpose in chucking out the chat. Step forward Shaun the Sheep, a silent star for the modern era. Already a children’s hero of the small screen, tablets and phones, here he comes with a full-length feature (in cinemas from 6 February). His agent must be brilliant: his name is in the title. Shaun first appeared, fully formed, in the third Wallace & Gromit film, A Close Shave (1995). On screen for less time than it takes to cook a lamb chop, Shaun somehow became at least as famous as his more established co-stars. At the Bristol studios of Aardman Features, where Shaun’s movie debut is being created, I’m being treated to a behind the scenes tour, to see for myself how a six-minute cameo role is being spun into an all-new all-wool film. When I arrive, the film is about half finished, which in animation terms means it’s already taken ages and there’s loads more to go. Tails are up this particular day at Aardman – and not just the woolly ones. The film-makers have just learned that Shaun has been voted by Radio Times readers as the most popular BBC children’s character of the past seven decades. Shaun is so thrilled he can’t talk, and Nick Park, the man who created Wallace & Gromit, is equally pleased: “Bob Baker and I worked together on The Wrong Trousers and we decided to write another one. We thought of this story about sheep rustling and the wool trade, and came up with Shaun the Sheep. He was like an innocent victim, really, that became a hero.” Nick says it happened at a time when studio work was scarce. “One film had fallen through and we were having a bit of a difficult patch and it was: how can we come up with some ideas to keep people working? I put a couple of ideas on the table and one was: what if Shaun had his own series? It was very sketchy but Golly really took the sheep and created all the charac…

shaun-the-sheep-adventures-from-mossy-bottom-36ade79.jpg
width: 1280
height: 720

Eddie Mair revisits the year's best bits that you may have missed
type: item
date: 2014-12-23T07:55:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
description: The PM presenter reflects on dinner with Putin and Bob Geldof's lesser known appeal to save Michael Buerk
encoded: Happy Christmas! Or if you’re not reading this until New Year’s morning – boy, you look terrible, what did you DO last night? Still, isn’t 2015 fabulous? It’s possible you pick up a copy of Radio Times only once a year, when it’s this enormous double-issue size. (Why they don’t get more claims for severe back injuries I don’t know. It should be the new whiplash. Even the digital iPad edition is heavier.) Can I politely suggest you consider buying Radio Times all year round? You’re missing a year of listings lovingly edited by people who care about radio and TV and know what they’re on about. There are all those interviews and articles you only read snippets of in the papers. And, astonishingly, there’s me: a man you’ve probably never heard of, so let me introduce myself. I’m Eddie Mair, suave international man of mystery. Friend to the stars, catnip to all the ladies and gentlemen who matter and the best-looking man in the whole magazine, apart from Barry Norman. I’m a playboy, business guru, philanthropist and spiritual healer. Really. There’s no need to Google me. I’m tasked each week to bring searing insights into the world around us. I’m sort of a cross between Henry Kissinger, AC Grayling and Mystic Meg. I don’t want to brag, but this is a particularly well-thumbed page in a certain well-known palace in London – and I don’t mean Crystal. So, could I tempt you to perhaps consider taking out a subscription to RT by reliving some of the highlights from this column from the past year? JANUARY Ukip suspends a local councillor who said this month’s floods were caused by God, angry at same-sex marriage. I confidently predict this party will disappear into oblivion in 2014. FEBRUARY Smooth Radio announces Simon Bates will no longer host the breakfast show. His final Our Tune is Kill the Director by the Wombats. MARCH Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw forced off air to visit hospital after swallowing glass in his coffee. Police fingerprint Chris Evans. APRIL Jeremy Paxman announc…

Look no further for a summer holiday treat, says Eddie Mair
type: item
date: 2013-07-16T15:26:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Podcasts
subject: Radio
subject: Technology
description: "Last summer I recommended to you the joys of the audiobook. Well, this summer I have something new for your listening pleasure..."
encoded: Last summer I recommended to you the joys of the audiobook. I discovered that when sunning yourself on a distant shore, you could have Sir Michael Caine telling you his life story in his actual Sir Michael Caine voice. Well, this summer I have something new for your listening pleasure. I was staying at the secret resort where many BBC stars gather for their hols. It’s a perk of being a member of the 1922 Committee of BBC presenters (so called because after 7.22 in the evening, no one at the meetings is still sober). In return for our monthly dues, we can spend two weeks a year lazing around, bullying the staff and complaining about how standards have slipped – such a pleasant change from being in the office. It was a regular lunchtime scene. Delia was raving about Simon Rimmer’s Pulled Pork with Spicy Coleslaw, Sir David Attenborough was whispering to himself in the foliage and Crimewatch’s Rav Wilding was accusing the Rev Richard Coles from Saturday Live of stealing his sun lounger. To drown out the cries of “sinner!” and “citizen’s arrest!” I put on my headphones to listen to a little podcast recommended to me by a PM colleague. It’s called Here’s the Thing: an interview programme hosted by Alec Baldwin. Yes, the man who got involved in an angry Twitter rant against a reporter, who once got kicked off a plane and who has been involved in an altercation with a photographer. The original title of the show was to have been Here’s My Fist, You Worthless Little Git, but calmer heads prevailed. The ranting notwithstanding, I’ve got a lot of time for Mr Baldwin, whose turn on 30 Rock was one of the show’s many highlights, and whose willingness to send himself up (he appeared on The Larry Sanders Show and was asked to speak up) is endearing. So what’s Here’s the Thing like? Every two weeks, Alec interviews someone interesting. It’s an impressive list. I caught his chats with Lena Dunham (creator and star of Sky Atlantic’s Girls), Rosie O’Donnell, Elaine Stritch and Billy …

rt-comp-thanks-placeholder-8fd64dd.jpg
width: 800
height: 600

Eddie Mair: My path towards death is becoming blurry
type: item
date: 2013-06-14T10:44:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: Current Affairs
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: "As you’ll know yourself if you’re a varifocal person, you should never look at your feet when going downstairs... Certainly never wear varifocals, get drunk and look at your feet going downstairs"
encoded: As I walk slowly towards death, the path is becoming more blurry. Regular readers will recall that a few years ago I had my first eye test since the Wilson administration. I was told I had a slight need for glasses to help me see long distances, and a desperate requirement for reading glasses. Strong ones. I seem to recall the Spanish-born optician ordering something for me from the “microscopico” range. This was my first foray into face furniture and it worked out better than I had anticipated. Before I got my specs I had three fears: (1) that I would break them; (2) lose them; (3) get confused between the distance and reading glasses and have a dreadful accident on the road or on air. To my surprise, I behaved like a grown up and did not have a catastrophe. But it was on the set of Newsnight one evening that I first realised one set of varifocals might be a better alternative. The thing about Newsnight is that you are sometimes required as a presenter to walk and talk at the same time. Late at night. On television. There’s always a lot of faffing around sitting in one bit of the set, then striding awkwardly to a different set of seats. (It’s all down to the BBC bean-counters, by the way. If you’re not seen using all the studio floorspace provided, they can legally take it away. Ask Phillip Schofield about his broom-cupboard story.) I didn’t need glasses for the autocue, but I did need my readers to look at my interview notes. On air one evening, having sashayed successfully from one end of the set to the other, I realised to my horror that my all-important reading glasses were at the other desk. We were about to go live with a big discussion, but I was unable to read anything. I looked down at my notes and they were blurrier than the edges of Roobarb. Only a quick-thinking floor manager – every home should have one – saved me from resorting to my absolute fall-back in an on-air emergency: pretending to faint, Fawlty-style. Now I have several pairs of varifocals. W…

Eddie Mair: I'm being watched by the bosses at the Beeb
type: item
date: 2013-04-24T13:32:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: BBC
description: "Presenting the first PM from New Broadcasting House, I looked up from my tear-stained desk to see a veritable Who’s That of BBC execs"
encoded: The weather people were among the last refugees from BBC Television Centre to arrive at New Broadcasting House. I could make out, traipsing in a side door, the familiar figures of Peter Gibbs, Nina Ridge and Thomas Shafan…Tomaz Schafarn… Tomazs Schafirn… John Hammond. Like the PM production team on our first day, they had the task of doing their job in unfamiliar surroundings coupled with the double-edged sword of being watched by senior execs. I have some sympathy for those seniors. People complain if they’re not visible enough (“The last director-general I saw in person was John Reith”) and they complain if they are around too often (“Don’t they have their own work to do? Why aren’t they out catching real criminals?”). In all my time at the BBC I’ve only encountered one or two who you wouldn’t trust with scissors. Production teams still groan inwardly when these big bosses show up on big occasions. Presenting the first PM from New Broadcasting House, I looked up from my tear-stained desk to see a veritable Who’s That of BBC execs, who’d taken time out from busy schedules of back-to-back meetings to watch and listen to an actual radio programme. I’m joking of course – the support is appreciated. But it’s easier for me sitting the other side of the glass. In the production cubicle, crowded with producers, editors, technical staff and now senior execs, producers feel under extra pressure to perform well. This involves saying all the things people expect producers to say (“Cut the next item by one minute/make sure the discussion guest is in the radio car”) while not saying all the things producers actually say when senior execs are not watching (“Those b******s at (name of another programme) stole our guest/My God this guest is tedious, but we’ve nothing else to go to/Why are the senior execs in this place so useless?”). In news, execs will suddenly appear at your side, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, to lay a reassuring hand on your shoulder and tell you not to screw…

Eddie Mair: Radio is immediate, intimate, reliable and essential
type: item
date: 2012-11-14T09:20:00.000Z
creator: Eddie Mair
subject: audio
subject: News
subject: Radio
description: On BBC Radio's 50th anniversary, the broadcaster asks why radio is still thriving in our digital age...
encoded: Print, they say, is dying: no one wants to get their news from ink squirted onto dead trees. Television’s top-rated programmes are watched by a fraction of the numbers who used to tune in despite the fact there are more ways to watch, record and absorb TV than ever before. Mobile devices armed with internet access place a world of information in our hands any time, anywhere. Everything tailored to your personal tastes. Your music. Your news. When you want it. It’s breathtaking. So why, in the name of Marconi, is British radio in such rude health, 90 years after the BBC’s mics first went live? It broadcasts what it wants, when it wants. Music stations play their playlists, not ours. Speech networks tell us the news when it suits them. Radio broadcasts at us in 2012, as it did to our parents and grandparents on transmitters that are almost as old as Nicholas Parsons. I can’t speak for you, but for me, perhaps it’s about intimacy. There are voices I grew up with still broadcasting. I hear them more than I hear the voices of family and friends. When they disappear on holiday, my life’s rhythm is mangled. I trust these voices to tell me what’s going on or to twinkle reliably between records. Steve Wright is as good today as he’s ever been, and when I hear him I am with him in the moment, and also back in the sixth-year common room where I first tuned in. He’s merely moved from Radio 1 to 2, but half a lifetime has passed for me and he’s been part of it. We’ve never met and we never will. Terry Wogan was handing over at 9.30am to Jimmy Young the moment my exam results were handed to me by the postie. I had of course been turning the radio down a bit during the music, and back up to hear Terry talk. The voices of Radio 4 continuity and newsreading have been keeping me right for as long as I can remember. I can call on a million different information sources, but it doesn’t make sense until I’ve heard it from Peter, Harriet, Charlotte and the rest. If I catch old Jimmy Clit…