John Humphrys reveals ‘terrible thing’ he did as a young reporter
The experienced broadcaster appeared on Alan Titchmarsh‘s ‘Love Your Weekend’ today, along with actress Sarah Parish† Over the course of the programme, viewers will see Manor Farm’s first-ever Mounted Games featuring young riders from the Royal Windsor show† Horticulturist David Domoney showcases the very best in garden pollinators and the team takes a look at why British rose wine has never been more popular.
Humphrys will likely be full of stories given his long career at the BBC as a reporter and presenter.
He joined the BBC in 1966 as a reporter in Liverpool and became the Northern Industrial Correspondent a year later.
The Welshman later covered the troubles in Northern Ireland before becoming a foreign correspondent for the India-Pakistan was among his first assignments abroad.
He later moved to the US to open the BBC news agency in Washington and became the broadcaster’s first television correspondent in the US.
John Humphrys: The veteran announcer once admitted he felt ‘shame’ during his early career (Image: GETTY)
BBC: He first joined the BBC in 1966 (Image: GETTY)
In 1981 he became the main presenter of the BBC’s Nine O’Clock, and along with John Simpsonchanged the way the company reported its news as the presenters also got involved in the broadcast preparation process.
In 2008, well into his most famous stint with the broadcaster as the host of the Today programme, Humphrys appeared on an episode of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
There, he told then-host Kirsty Young about how his behavior during his Nine O’Clock News role left him “somewhat embarrassed”.
Young asked him if it was a “desire to keep your job or a desire to give the other guy a nosebleed” that had made him so ambitious and competitive throughout his career – he was once described as a “rottweiler”.
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Today Program: Humphrys and Sue MacGregor for Today in 1986 (Image: GETTY)
Laughing, he said: “It’s very hard to separate the two, but there’s definitely a bit of that in me.
“I remember once based in Salisbury, Rhodesia, as it was [now Harare, Zimbabwe] and while I was on vacation, they sent another reporter to take over for me.
“I can remember rushing for weeks, looking up every story I could find, so that when this poor fellow arrived, there were already seven Humphrys movies waiting to air on the Nine O’Clock news.
“It was a bad, terrible thing to do and I’m a little ashamed of it.”
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History: Humphrys, right, was the BBC’s first television reporter in the US (Image: GETTY)
Tenacity: Young said Humphrys clearly had the tenacity to become a journalist from an early age (Image: GETTY)
Young replied by saying that tenacity makes a good journalist, especially when he’s covering Foreign Affairs†
He said: “It’s very competitive and you can’t get second, that’s right. But if you’re not in the right place at the right time, that’s it – it’s happiness, especially happiness!”
Humphrys said he was often called away from a family holiday after having only a day and a half off.
He later hinted that he was still influenced by his childhood growing up in Wales, after saying that no one can process the things that happened in their early years.
End of an era: Humphrys left today in 2019 after 32 years at the helm (Image: GETTY)
Raised in a large family of seven in a working-class neighborhood of Cardiffhe said “we just didn’t have much money”.
He added: “The pinnacle of wealth was a bowl of fruit on someone’s table when no one was sick in the house. That was the mark of excessive wealth.”
His father was self-employed, so the family was often without money when there was no work.
Humphrys said, ‘My father didn’t like any kind of authority. I got that from him, I think.”
Poverty: He said growing up in ‘relative poverty’ had given him the determination to face life (Image: GETTY)
His parents helped him with his studies so that he could become a pupil at Cardiff High School, which was then a grammar school.
He complained that all the kids were middle class and told Young, “I hated it, I absolutely hated it. Partly the chip on the shoulder bit but also because I was mediocre, and I had no real social network there. I always felt like I didn’t quite fit in.”
He later agreed with Young that the “relative poverty‘ which he faced in his youth left him with the determination that ‘it would never be for me’.
This had stuck with him all his life, adding that he was still aware of money because wasting is a matter of “morality” and not practicality.
Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh airs at 10am on ITV One.
