Mention John Humphrys, and most people will give you one of two replies: the Today programme, and tough interviewing.

Since he joined BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs breakfast programme in 1987, John Humphrys' name has become a byword for combative interviewing.

Born in Cardiff in 1943, he went to Cardiff High School and left, aged 15 to work on local papers, including The Western Mail.

He joined the BBC as a reporter in 1966, based in Liverpool. A year later, he became Northern Industrial Correspondent. He also covered Northern Ireland before becoming a Foreign Correspondent, with the India-Pakistan War among his first assignments abroad.

Humphrys was the first of the BBC’s journalists to present front-line news programmes on both television and radio. They have included Today, The Nine O’Clock News, On the Record, On the Ropes, and Panorama.

John Humphrys is also the host of the most rigorous and intellectual British quiz show Mastermind.

For ten years he was a foreign correspondent with the BBC and, over the years, has reported on most major international events, ranging from the Watergate crisis and resignation of Richard Nixon to the first free elections in South Africa, revolutions in Latin America, and assorted wars in all parts of the globe. He was based in Washington for six years (the youngest journalist ever to be appointed as a foreign correspondent in BBC Television) and in Southern Africa for three years. He began his career in newspapers.

He’s won many national awards, including his most prized: The Special Award of the Plain English Campaign. In 2000 he was voted Political Journalist of the Year by MP’s in the Channel Four Parliamentary Awards. In February 2001 he was voted Radio Personality of the Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain and in March he was honoured as Journalist of the Year by the Media Society for his “distinguished contribution to journalism.”

As an author, his first book, Devil’s Advocate, was published in September, 1999 and went straight into the best-seller lists to critical acclaim. The Observer said it was “peerless reporting”; The Times said he “touched a raw nerve”; The Sunday Telegraph compared his writing with “that great publicist and arch-dissenter William Cobbett” and The Sunday Times called him a “national institution”. His other books include: The Great Food Gamble which explodes the myth of “cheap” food and Lost for Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language in which John writes a witty, potent call-to-arms to stop the widespread abuse of the English language.
 
John Humphrys has always attracted controversy for his forthright style. He was attacked publicly by a Conservative Cabinet minister in the nineties for his interviewing and the BBC was swamped with letters and phone calls, more than ninety per cent. of which supported him. Many other politicians and public figures rose to his defence, as did newspapers of all persuasions. The Daily Mail has described him as “the foremost broadcaster of his generation” and The Express ran a column demanding “Humphrys for prime minister”. It concluded: “Politics would be richer, but the BBC would probably close down through lack of interest”. Within six months of the Labour government taking over, Humphrys was being attacked by them. Downing Street demanded that the BBC do something about what it called “the John Humphrys problem”. Again the Press and public rose to his defence. Several newspapers claimed that John Humphrys wasn’t the problem; he was the solution.

John Humphrys has worked for most of the major corporations and trade and industry bodies in Britain and in many overseas countries over the years. His regular clients include telecoms companies, the IT industry, banks, financial service providers and manufacturing industry.

He chairs conferences and seminars, delivers keynote addresses and makes after-dinner speeches. He is particularly at ease taking unscripted questions from audiences. He believes that it is more interactive, more informative and more entertaining than pronouncing from behind a lectern. He was one of the first presenters to do away with the lectern and auto-cue at conferences, in the belief that audiences are more likely to be impressed by what they regard as spontaneous discussion than by heavily scripted and pre-digested material.

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