Jamie Angus · @grvlx001
7th Jul 2015 from TwitLonger
James Naughtie
James Naughtie to stand down as Today presenter in January 2016, begins a new role as Special Correspondent for Radio 4 News and BBC News' Books Editor:
It feels so strange to contemplate a time when Jim won’t be presenting Today; first as a listener, then as a producer on the programme and finally as Editor, I’ve known nothing else.
Usually arriving at around 4.00am in a burst of newspapers, weapons-grade gossip - possibly involving the previous evening spent at the theatre or the opera – and always a slew of ideas of how to take that morning’s programme forward, Jim was always a Today night-editor’s dream. Out of the office and on the road, Jim was in his element. Insatiably curious and always charming, Jim has a knack of grabbing interviews in a corridor or lift you never thought you’d ever get. And all of it anchored by his ability as a writer for radio, second to none, always able to conjure up for the audience a sense of place – a US convention, a party conference, moving into Kosovo in a Land Rover, all of it rendered vividly for a generation of Today listeners.
I’m delighted we will still have plenty of Jim in years to come – reporting and writing, his first love, and on the stories that really matter in the coming year. For him, fewer 3 am alarm calls, racing round the UK and beyond to meet a deadline, more time to think and read and report as he does better than everyone else. For the listener – a hole, perhaps his chronic reluctance to read the correct time, find the weather forecast, stop a gale of suppressed laughter once he gets going, or more likely his immense knowledge, skill and range as a live interviewer. The rest of 2015 is going to go too quickly, but Today goes on, and so does Jim, a man I’m very proud to call my friend.