Man of the people
He’s not a “shouter”, but david dimbleby voices strong views on modern America – and cutbacks at the BBC
Getty
- Kate Battersby
Invisible Hands: the American Century is on Tuesday at 9am on Radio 4. Add it to your collection
Ad
The problem with interviewing David Dimbleby – and only having a limited time to do so – is that nearly everything he says is so interesting. Musing on the state of things has comprised his life’s work, and at 87 he’s far from done.
“My own age is very startling to me,” he says with a smile. “I’m amazed I’m alive and healthy and able to go on working. I’m kept alive by swallowing pills. It would be hard to bear if a health condition curtailed my ability to work.
“But I’m not a workaholic. I love my family, my children. We’re going to the beach today. I love going sailing and travelling – we’re going to South East Asia in the autumn. I love music, go to
a lot of concerts, the opera… and yes, I love working, but it’s never been a slog. I don’t think of it as work.”
At home in West Sussex, his Zoom camera is tilting (“Sorry – definitely the camera, not me”). On the hottest day of the year it is startling, if understandable, that this most suave of broadcasters seems to have left his linen shirt entirely unbuttoned.
After our call, he’ll be putting the finishing touches to Invisible Hands: the American Century. The six-parter, for Radio 4’s The History Podcast, is a follow-up to last year’s acclaimed Invisible Hands, on the origin of the free market revolution that transformed British politics in the last decades of the 20th century.
Dr Belinda Giles and David Dimbleby have been married since 2000. Shutterstock
“This one is about how America, since the Second World War, decided to become the leader of the free world,” he says. “America is the most powerful country, obviously, in both its economic force and military clout. But the prime aim is not to be benign.”
He warms to his theme: “America is a very parochial place. They have this slightly naive belief that everybody wants to be like America. Lots of countries don’t in the least want that.
“There is a kind of absolute ignorance about in the American electorate. If the world becomes an uncontrollably dangerous place, as long as it doesn’t threaten America, it’s a second-order issue. They don’t see themselves as dangerous at all. Yet this Iran war is clearly a total failure. Trump has achieved absolutely nothing.”
Dimbleby’s entire career has always been about reasoning, and what can be shown to be true. But now the world has entered the age of shouting, where many millions announce their entitlement to opinion, frequently ill thought through and poorly expressed. Does it drive him mad? “I’ve never been a shouter,” he says mildly. “I’ve been a listener, and an analyser. People shout because they feel no one’s hearing them.
This Iran war is clearly a total failure. Trump has achieved nothing
“In our politics in Britain, it’s quite frightening how ideas that are crackpot or half-baked can catch the attention. That’s quite disruptive of politics. You end up with democracy in great peril.”
He mentions that the youngest of his four children, Fred, is Westminster correspondent for Calendar, the regional ITV News programme for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. What has Dimbleby senior made of the Downing Street revolving door this summer?
“It’s not ideal, is it? But I live in hope that Britain becomes prosperous again, gets better for that half of the country weighed down with debt and financial worry.” Also, for “young people who, partly because of Covid and partly because of the economic situation, can’t find themselves in the world and become obsessed by their physical and mental health, as though that was life.”
Dimbleby’s pride in his son, and all his family, is evident. But it is an inevitable function of age that the shape of families is altered by loss. His younger brother, the renowned sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby, died in early 2024 aged 78 from motor neurone disease.
“Nicky is always present, and he can’t be replaced,” says Dimbleby. “We’re close – Jonathan [the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby] and me and our sister Sally, and our families. There are no rifts. Nicky was a towering presence in the family set-up. He very much did things his way, and was very funny.”
He starts laughing at a memory still clear in his mind’s eye. “Years ago Jonathan, Nicky and I were on television with Terry Wogan, talking about a fundraiser we were involved with. Jonathan and I were sort of smartly dressed, and Nicky was in a flamboyant zigzag suit.
ITV News’s Fred Dimbleby. Victoria Hall
“Wogan pointed at us and asked him, ‘Do you ever wish you’d been one of these two?’ And Nicky said, ‘No! What on earth would I want that for?’ He was an absolute one-off.”
The great broadcasting scion says frankly that he doesn’t watch much television himself, which may be why he failed with two applications to be BBC Chairman and one for the top job of director-general.
He prefers radio, specifically Radio 4’s 10pm news programme The World Tonight, which is being replaced by a domestic news bulletin followed by the World Service programme Newshour, being made by the same team as The World Tonight. The BBC said in a statement it has to make savings but has tried “to mitigate the impact on audiences as much as possible”.
Dimbleby is incensed that BBC budget cuts aimed at saving £500m by 2029 will mean the end for a programme that’s been on air for 50 years. “Why on earth have they done that?” he fumes. “The best analysis of politics, both national and international, with the wonderful James Coomarasamy, at just the time I want to hear it each night. I’m appalled. Very bad, bad, bad, bad, bad call.
“And my God, BBC Events being closed!” he says in reference to the cuts to the team that oversees coverage of national occasions like Remembrance Day and state funerals. The BBC say they remain fully committed to delivering events of national significance and the changes will have no impact on the viewer experience.
“It takes months of connections to make friends with the people at the Palace, with Westminster Abbey, with the police, to know what’s going on with Downing Street, so that when the day comes, everybody helps you,” he explains, adding: “It’s a BBC gold standard to cover big national events. It’s at the heart of the BBC, and I cannot understand what they’re up to. But I have no power in the BBC.”
Strange to think that can be possible for the broadcaster so much at the centre of national life for decades. But then he doesn’t have an honour either, although it is inconceivable that he has never been offered one.
“I just don’t think people like me should take honours,” he says. “When Robin Day got a knighthood [in 1981, at the age of 58], I said to him, ‘You shouldn’t take it, Robin – it’s quite wrong. You’re a man of the people, or you’re nothing.”
Ad
David Dimbleby – man of the people. It has a certain ring to it.
Authors
Kate Battersby
Ad
Ad
Subscribe for £1 per week
Too much to watch this autumn? Let Radio Times magazine and app do the choosing, with expert picks across TV, streaming and film.
Ad