'I had to ask that question'
BBC Radio Leeds’s rima ahmed put Liz Truss under pressure in 2022. But politics isn’t her only passion
- Bill Borrows
Rima Ahmed presents the Breakfast show on BBC Radio Leeds, Monday to Friday from at 6.00am.
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You know Rima Ahmed. You might not think so, but cast your mind back to late September 2022. Boris Johnson had resigned, we were in a period of national mourning for the Queen, the economy was in freefall and Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, had gone Awol. The nation was, if the pundits were to be believed, “broken”. Then, a rare and welcome voice of reason cut through to talk truth to power. It had a West Yorkshire accent and belonged to 29-year-old BBC Radio Leeds breakfast show host Rima Ahmed.
Ahmed was the first journalist to interview Liz Truss when the latter eventually turned up to face the media. She began with a surface-polite three-sentence takedown of chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent mini-budget, paused and then demanded to know, in a tone that suggested that at least one expletive had been removed from the question, “Where have you been?”
In the three-and-a-half seconds of radio silence that followed, Rina Ahmed had arrived as a broadcaster of national standing. She had only been on the breakfast show for three weeks.
Prime Minister Liz Truss delivering her resignation speech at Downing Street. Rob Pinney/Getty Images
“People ask me about it all the time,” she says from the studios where she still hosts the breakfast show on weekdays (before the World Cup, she co-hosted the same slot on Radio 5 Live on Fridays). “I knew from 7pm the night before that I was going to be the first journalist to talk to her in days and I didn’t underestimate that, but I wasn’t worried. The Queen died as I started my first show so I was already in the swing of things, plus I’m Yorkshire through and through.” As if on cue, she leans back in her chair and takes a sip of tea.
“I was a lawyer in a past life,” she continues. “I’d done all the research and knew I would be on par with any network journalist at the top of their game, but I also knew that regional radio stands for something, and that I would never be able to show my face at the supermarket, or walk down my street, or look at my own family if I didn’t ask the question that had been on everyone’s lips around here.”
I wasn't worried – I'm Yorkshire through and through
Ahmed was suddenly very big news, and since 2022 has made documentaries for Radio 4, presented flagship programmes You and Yours and Saturday PM and is relishing the return of her award-winning podcast Strange but True Crime for a third series on BBC Sounds.
In a parallel universe, Rima Ahmed the lawyer is still providing legal consultation for IT firms. “If I’m really honest, it was all really boring stuff that I was just making money from,” she reflects. “I was in my mid-20s, burnt out and asking myself, ‘Actually, who am I? What do I want to do?’”
She gave herself a year to find out. “I’d always been really interested in investigative journalism as it pertained to young people, and worked at this place called The Overtake with Robyn Vinter, who is now at The Guardian. It was an online news platform by millennials for millennials, and I worked with some really talented young journalists. I became inspired by their idealism.”
When the BBC held auditions for new radio voices, Vinter turned up at Ahmed’s door and dragged her along with the promise of a free lunch. “There were over a thousand people at the Bradford Alhambra, so it was a bit like an X Factor audition – you get up and do a 30-second story,” she remembers. “It was afternoon by the time I got in front of them and I was a bit annoyed that I’d missed my lunch, but somehow I got all the way through [the rounds]. They kept asking, ‘Why do you want to work at the BBC?’ and I kept replying, ‘I don’t want to work at the BBC, you keep asking me back.’” Now, we all know why.
A missed lunch is a small price to pay for a developing career in the media and the freedom to indulge a fascination for true crime with her podcast. “Most of the true crime stories on Netflix feature women being murdered,” she points out. “But I have always been interested in the funny, brazen ‘wild caper’ type stories and the people who, whether out of arrogance or stupidity, commit these crimes and why. That’s what gets me. That and the chance to do something different with a genre like true crime.”
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Don’t worry if you don’t yet know Rima Ahmed well, you soon will.
Authors
Bill Borrows
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