I first knew Jeremy Vine as a very young, charming, earnest and totally driven political correspondent for the BBC in the 1980s. So when I started reading It’s All News to Me, I was dreading a rather worthy read. I was delightfully disappointed. This is a wonderful bitchfest of not quite malicious gossip and the power struggles at the BBC. In politics it is dog eat dog. At the beeb it is the other way round. Any aspiring broadcaster should use this book as a survival manual.
There are some wonderful quotes. From former political editor Robin Oakley:
‘The people at the top of the BBC don’t have very much power, so when they act, it tends to be very violent.’
The legendary John Sergeant has some crackers. When Vine was very pleased to be one of the youngest stand-ins on the Today programme he warned the young pup:
‘You don’t want to be the youngest, Jeremy.
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