Justin Webb says listeners

Even when Justin Webb is angry and trying to speak above the hub of a misfiring coffee machine, his measured, nuanced tone of voice doesn’t desert him.

“It’s been noticed by all of us who present Today that listeners can’t stand junior ministers coming on and not engaging with the questions I’m asking.”

It’s barely 10am and Justin has already been awake for seven hours.

Now 62, his style is far from confrontational. Yet even he admits to frustration.

“Politicians have moved on from trying to find a way around a difficult question.

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“The stage we’re at now – politicians, or those in authority, just don’t take any notice of the question at all.

“The good news is that everyone is on to it and that style of politics is not necessarily one we have to live with long term.

“It’s a form of populism. It boils politics down to something that only appeals to those who already love you and where it’s helpful to your cause to make your enemies angry.

“It’s the opposite of the politics of persuasion.

“I don’t think it will last though.

“We will evolve – there are too many people who don’t like it.”

Since joining the BBC in 1984 Justin has presented most of Radio 4’s news programmes as well as a brief and unhappy stint in the 1990s on TV, presenting BBC One’s breakfast news.

Over a coffee near his home in Camberwell, which he shares with his wife Sarah and, occasionally, one or more of his three grown-up children, he is talking about his new memoir, The Gift Of A Radio.

In it, he discusses his unhappy education in a Quaker boarding school and the revelation that his biological father was the late BBC newsreader Peter Woods.

Even when Justin joined the BBC in 1984 he felt no desire to make contact with him. “There was a slight tinge of regret when I wrote the book, when I had to write the words ‘we never met’, but really I’m so glad we didn’t.

“He decided he didn’t want anything to do with me. It would have been a psychological distraction while I was trying to make my own way in the world.

“I didn’t let him off the hook I don’t think. It was quite selfish of me really.

“I just stopped myself getting involved in a psychodrama I didn’t want. As soon as you enter a narrative of resentment, you end up damaging yourself.”

Justin also examines his own upbringing in Bath.

“I write quite disparagingly of Sidcot and other schools in the 1970s.

“But, in the same vein, I do wonder if we’ve gone too far, endlessly mollycoddling children or undermining their confidence by telling them how many genders there are and making them choose while sexualising their world.

“We seem to have found new ways of treating children badly.

“There was a hardening effect my education had. That didn’t work on some children of my era. They went downhill and it damaged them. But I was moulded into a character that was a lot more adventurous than I might otherwise have been.” This adventurous spirit, however, hasn’t yet manifested in a move away from the BBC.

I ask him what makes him so loyal to an organisation not always known for repaying those who stick with them: “I have had offers but the big thing that’s stopped me isn’t so much the size of the Today audience, but its reach and breadth. Today is always described as the show ‘movers and shakers’ listen to. But there’s over six million listeners. They’re not all movers and shakers!

“They’re ordinary people. Times Radio has been a great success and I listen to it.

“But the attraction of the BBC is that this is the nation’s meeting place. Why would I not want to be there?’

While the legendary John Humphrys presented Today until he was in his mid-70s, Justin cheerfully admits he doubts he will last that long.

His strategies for those painfully early morning starts feel like a throwback to his boarding school days. “My main survival tip is not to eat or drink the night before. I just have lunch the day before I present the show. It’s a tip I got from John Humphrys who always used to do that.

“I also have an eco-pod in my garden, to sleep in when I do the programme.

“I didn’t want to be the ogre father who demanded the rest of the house had to be silent after 8pm as ‘Dad is sleeping’.

“So I took myself down to the pod to sleep – and I still do.”

With Justin now having to do battle with his ninth prime minister since he joined the BBC, I ask if there is anybody out there he would still like to interview.

“I’m a fan of ageing rockers because there’s a lot to be learnt from people who have lived life to the full and survived it.

“So I’d love to interview Mick Jagger – but I also love thinkers. There’s a philosopher called Matthew Crawford who has written a book called Why We Drive.

“He’s really opposed to the automation of cars. That’s fascinating to me so having him and Mick on the same show would be a good episode of Today.

“But also I’d be more than happy if I never had to interview another actor or celeb chef about anything ever again!”

• The Gift Of A Radio by Justin Webb is out now, published by Penguin (£10.99)