Westminster is synonymous with the word ‘Dimbleby’, the surname of Britain’s premier broadcasting family. It was here that patriarch Richard cemented his reputation commenting on George VI’s lying-in-state in 1952 and where his two sons Jonathan and David both made their careers on countless BBC and ITV political programmes and all night election specials.
But since the brothers retired from their long running programmes Any Questions and Question Time in 2019 SW1 has been sadly bereft of a Dimbleby – unless you include David’s eldest son and Leon co-founder Henry who leads the National Food Strategy. All that however is about to change as David’s youngest son Fred is set to move to Westminster for ITV as a multimedia producer, having been on the broadcaster’s trainee scheme since 2019.
A former editor of Cherwell at Oxford, Dimbleby Jr first won plaudits in 2016 when he chaired a student Question Time at his £30,000-a year school, Brighton College, eliciting praise from guest speakers Matthew Parris and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Four years later he was the subject of a left-wing pile on after doorstepping former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to ask about Russian involvement in the 2019 general election. It prompted Corbyn’s wife Laura Alvarez to film the unfortunate trainee reporter, accusing him of ‘harassing us’ for daring to ask if her husband had any comment on claims that he had helped those attacking the UK election.
At the time, Labour’s deputy leader and future collector of titles Angela Rayner criticised the ‘state our politics is in’ when ‘we have Jeremy Corbyn door stepped as he enters his own house with bogus/fake journalism.’ Mr S hopes Dimbleby is looking forward to the chance to put the questions to Rayner himself in future.
Comments