The man is such an easy target that sometimes I wonder why I bother. This is, after all, someone who unselfconsciously assembled an article complaining about bad writing from a collage of clichés. Then I hear him on the radio and I have to take another swipe. This weekend Humphrys was slagging off television today, though he claims not to have watched it for five years. Commenters at Tom Watson’s place save me more light assault training:

“What about the hideous wasting away of good interviews? There’s one programme on early mornings on Radio 4 which often interviews people on serious and complex subjects but gives them a minuscule time so that they are over before any contributor can do the issue justice, and where the argument consists entirely of soundbites because the presenters haven’t the time to get beyond it.

Worse, the interviewees who are given long time-slots are subject to constant interruption so that they can barely say more than four words without the interviewer butting in, and the interview becomes a simple battle of put-down and wit with no intellectual content whatsoever.

I wonder if this John Humphrys has ever heard of “The Today Programme”? Ought that not to be next in his sights?

Posted by David Boothroyd at August 29, 2004 02:01 AM”

“If I were a cynic, I would wonder aloud whether the serialisation of Greg Dyke’s book in today’s Mail on Sunday and Observer, following on from John Humphry’s comments, were coordinated…

Posted by Richard Gibbs at August 29, 2004 04:46 PM”

I truncate the latter post before it starts to make almost-favourable noises about His John-ness. We won’t be having that sort of talk around here.