Jonathan Dimbleby charms Ilkley

HE really is such a professional.

Jokey, informed, opinionated and passionate, in the space of just half an hour, Jonathan Dimbleby demonstrates just why he has become one of the nation’s favourite and most admired broadcasters.

He also has a tiny hint of steel that has made him the perfect host of Radio Four’s Any Questions?, a live version of which will open the Ilkley Literature Festival tomorrow night, for 26 years.

“26 years! That just seems ridiculous,” says Dimbleby.

The veteran broadcaster is 70 next year, so it doesn’t actually seem that ridiculous at all that he has notched up more than a quarter of a century as the main host of the radio programme that puts the microscope on the week’s events. In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking that, now that he has served over 25 years, he might be considering taking a backseat.

“I can no more imagine putting my feet up than I can imagine flying to the moon,” he says.

He then laughs uproariously, but again, it is a laugh that hints you might not want to take on this titan of broadcasting. There is mettle behind the laughter.

“The very idea that you reach a certain maturity and then that’s it, you should stop working and just sit around waiting for death. I just don’t understand the logic of that.

“I play tennis – quite fiercely – and regularly, but I hate this word I sometimes hear – ‘sprightly’. It makes me sound like an old leprechaun. Sometimes I read about people who are my age and I think they sound like they are in the last stages of decrepitude.

“I think ‘am I really the same age?’.”

He has plenty to say. When there is a hint of a suggestion that, as he heads towards becoming a septuagenarian, his flesh might not be able to keep up with his spirit, you can almost hear him going for his tennis racquet.

“The body and soul are alive, fit and well,” he insists. Vigorously.

The body, I’ll take his word for, but there is no doubting the sharpness of his mind.

Dimbleby is the younger brother of David, son of legendary broadcaster Richard, so perhaps was always destined to follow the pair of them into broadcasting. He did, however, follow a different path – he started out at the BBC, but soon jumped ship to rival broadcaster ITV. Based at Yorkshire Television, he made programmes on a range of subjects that were broadcast nationally.

“It was a golden age of TV,” he says. “Doing my job, presenting programmes at peak time, sometimes programmes that were two hours long, about interesting subjects, at 8pm on ITV. I would look at international affairs and examine the subject, properly.

“We had the time and resources to do the research, the filming, the editing. And those programmes would regularly attract seven, eight million viewers.”

While he was with Yorkshire Television, which he joined in 1979, he wrote and presented three ITV network series – The Bomb (1979), The Eagle and The Bear, (1980) and The Cold War Game (1981).

He went on to present an ITV documentary series called First Tuesday and has presented for both the BBC and ITV, ever since covering subjects from politics to travel documentaries.

His stint as the man in charge of Any Questions on Radio Four, the live version of which an eager audience is waiting to experience in Ilkley tomorrow night, is longer than that of his older brother’s in charge of a similar programme. David, of course, takes charge for television’s Question Time.

“As a show it is a very simple format, and it is quite simply a case of, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he says.

“In fact it’s so good that the show’s offspring, the version that goes on television, has taken the format wholesale.”

Oh really? And what does he think of the host of this pilfered programme?

“Couldn’t say, I’ve never seen it.”

As well as presenting the live version of Any Questions?, which will feature panel members including Leeds-based screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth, Dimbleby will be talking about his own book at the festival. Destiny in the Desert explores the events that led to the battle of El Alamein in November 1942.

“The essence of journalism is having a curiosity and an urge to tell a story – that’s exactly what I am doing with my book. It’s won a couple of awards, which is always very nice for someone who fancies themselves, or deludes themselves, that they have some flair for writing.”

• Jonathan Dimbleby, Ilkley Literature Festival, Oct 4. Details www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.co.uk.