The Today programme is already ‘diverse’ – despite what Lenny Henry thinks

Did you enjoy the BBC Today programme this morning, guest edited by the, uh, comedian Lenny Henry and featuring interviewees and journos who were exclusively from ethnic minority backgrounds? I meant to, but some weird narcosis kept me in bed and stopped me turning the radio on. So I can’t judge the content. There have been the usual and predictable complaints that choosing presenters and guests exclusively for their skin colour is itself racist.

Well, yes. But that battle was lost a long time ago. The irony of course is that Today – certainly when I was editor and probably even more so now, I would guess – had a complement of staff from ethnic minority backgrounds which was close to double the national average. I know this because we had to do diversity audits every year and I clearly remember hounding poor Gordon Carrera and asking him if he was black or not. I think we concluded that he was, up to a point.