'My daughters control the remote'
Radio 3 presenter Tom McKinney is a "sucker for a quiz" – when he's allowed to watch them!
- Rebecca Franks
Breakfast hosted by Tom McKinney is on Monday-Friday at 6.30am on Radio 3. Add it to your collection
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What’s the view from your sofa?
I have a small TV in the corner of the living room on top of a cabinet. It’s positioned at an awkward angle, so I have a bad shoulder from twisting my neck to look at it. I probably need to reconfigure the room and get a bigger TV, as my daughters often moan about its size compared to the huge cinema screens at some friends’ houses.
What have you been craning your neck to watch?
I end up going back to old-school terrestrial channels because that’s where things catch you by surprise. The other night I put on BBC Two and Michael Portillo was on his Great Continental Railway Journeys. He was in Budapest, and suddenly there was a pianist playing Bartók. Recently, I’ve also enjoyed Amandaland, and Small Prophets was sublime. I’m also an absolute sucker for a quiz: Mastermind, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, The Chase, House of Games.
Who controls the remote?
It often goes wandering off, and it also gets kicked under the sofa a lot. It’s at the point that the batteries are going so you have to press the buttons hard to change the channel. But my daughters have total control of it.
You’re heading to the coast to broadcast live for Radio 3’s Breakfast. Where are you going?
We’re starting in north Norfolk, broadcasting live from a boat at Blakeney Point, and we end up in Aldeburgh [in Suffolk] for the festival. It’s an important part of the country for music, and there are rich traditions we can dip into while going to really nice places that are acoustically gorgeous. I love the sound of waves crashing against the shingle and the hiss as they recede. Straightaway you know you’re in Aldeburgh.
What are your childhood memories of the sea?
We used to go on holiday to the north Norfolk coast every year and now I take my own children there. I spent a lot of time on salt marshes or the beach at Holkham. You can almost get agoraphobic with the sense of open space and the flat sea. It’s bleak but beautiful. I find the sea at Aldeburgh is often this sheet of grey, and slightly intimidating. Benjamin Britten was drawn to the violence of the sea in his opera Peter Grimes.
Do you think we tend to over-romanticise the seaside?
Well, another key part of my childhood was going to the seaside in north Wales, spending a couple of hours in the car because it was raining so heavily, eating a bag of chips and driving home without getting out. It’s not all sandcastles and paddling in the sea! And now, some seaside towns that were once the jewels in the British tourism crown are economically deprived and run-down. It’s not all positive.
Do you think these places might be revived?
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Will somewhere like Blackpool get back to what it was in its heyday? Feels unlikely… Maybe, I think there’s a real surge of interest in what’s on your doorstep. I live just inside the Peak District and the way that’s changed since 2020 is off the scale. The visitors are mainly in their 20s and early 30s and a lot of that is from Instagram and TikTok. Someone posts a video standing by a nice waterfall and you can guarantee it’ll be packed within the next few weeks.
Authors
Rebecca Franks
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