In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg talks to Mishal Husain

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

To mark his 1000th episode of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg talks to Mishal Husain for Radio 4's Today programme.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. Hello, as you may have heard, in our time, has reached the 1,000th episode. To mark this milestone radio force today program, kindly asked me along for an interview with their presenter, Michelle Hussein. Our conversation here begins with me telling Michelle how I came to find myself presenting it in 1998. I'd been relieved my duties from start the week, which I enjoyed very much, and didn't quite know what to do, and then somebody announced there was this thing called the Death Slot. The BBC is full of things like that.

And when I want to do the death slot on Thursday morning, because it had never worked, and it'd give me three months. And one or two of the papers were kicking up about why I'd have been fired. What had I been fired? Anyway, I took it, and it takes quite a while for the programme to become the program that everybody knows. You have a go, it's not quite right. You have another go.

It's not quite right. And I wanted to do just one subject. And I wanted to deal with academics, because I like talking to them. They were very good on radio, I thought. They were underused, and we have some wonderful academics in this country. I wanted it to be teaching academics, people who went from the studio back to their universities and taught 18-year-olds who knew nothing like me about certain subjects.

And the three people became collegiate. They disagreed with each other, but usually politely. And it more or less stumbled into existence with two speakers and then ended up with three speakers and a three-part program. But it's found its niche of a sort of an encyclopedic attempt. to cover everything that we could, almost ridiculous, isn't it really, history, science and philosophy and religion and China and India and geography, we covered the lot.

I wanted to do that and so did the producers at the time. With no compromise, the programme always starts, hello, we're talking about Herodotus, hello, we're talking about physics, hello, and we get on with it. Do you love it? I absolutely love it. I couldn't think of a better way to spend life in work. I can't believe I've got the job.

I felt that from the first day I joined the BBC when I was 21. It was a complete fluke how I got in at all. And after a week or two, I thought, I can't believe this. You mean you can make a living? I'm not going to make any bones about this. I'm a huge fan of In Our Time, and I've got lots of episodes that are downloaded and sitting on my phone for when I have a quiet moment or in the garden,

and I just think, oh, I'd quite like to dig into nuclear fusion or Ovid or Muslim Spain or whatever it is. And I think you do something really extraordinary, which is that it can be new readers start here, but in the process of that you also get depth. I mean, there must be a huge amount of reading that you have to immerse yourself in all of this knowledge in order to be able to sift through

and get what you want out of it on air. I have to do a lot of homework, but I like homework. It's ruined my reading of nonfiction because this is the nonfiction. and then you're with people who help you along as well. When I'm with some of the leading physicists anywhere, I keep thinking of Tennessee Williams streetcar named Desire when Blanche Dubois said,

I rely on the generosity of strangers. And I really do. There are times when it gets quite testy, and I think listeners quite enjoy that. There are times when you're saying to the contributors, this is not what you've said in your notes, and I imagine your face. Well, I'd like to keep to align,

Because it isn't a very long time, three-quarters of an hour. So you've got to stick to the line that we've thought through because we spent a lot of time thinking it through. Although people want to drift off in areas, I hope I've got the sense to follow them. I hope I'm not testy. But actually, you see, you're talking to very, very intelligent people. And they can talk all day.

And if you're not careful, they're going to try to do it. So you've got to be able to say, politely, we're moving on now. And perhaps they don't always remember what it's like to know nothing about their subject. Yes, but they're good at that. That's why teaching academics matters, Michelle. They go back to teach 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds, as well as to write their authoritative books. So you have two levels with them all the time.

They know they're teaching people, i.e. me and the listeners, who know very little if anything, but they know they're talking out of their own authority and they're not going to let themselves down. So if you're lucky, it really works. But sometimes, Melvin, you know a lot about the subjects that you're talking about because you're a claimed author. You've got a huge cultural hinterland.

You've presented the South Bank Show for God knows how many years and many other programs besides. Are those programs harder or easier for you? They're a bit easier. Yes, if I know something, if I've read the book or studied the period or it's to do with history or to do with religion, but nothing like what these people know. But it gives me a sort of flying start.

I'm about a tenth of the way down the track. I've got another 90 yards to go. I think many Radio 4 listeners probably don't realize what a big international following it's got because people do listen to it all over the world and some of them write in, don't they? Oh yes, from everywhere, Canada, Australia, Europe of course. Ships at sea. I like the ships at sea. It's their companionable listening when they're far away. Do you think it would be commissioned today with the focus the BBC has today, particularly

on younger and hard-to-reach audiences and the way listening habits are changing? I hope it would. And actually, we get a big listening audience of young people. I think the BBC is still commissions, high-level programs. I mean, I think the BBC is

one of the marvels of this country. And I've said that in print, in speech, in Parliament, and it's under threat the entire time now. Lots of people want a part of it. Lots of people want it to be gone so they can make money out of the audiences that the BBC attracts. I don't think the BBC is holding back.

There are good talk programmes. What I do isn't a talk programme. It's an investigation. That's what it is. We treat it like an investigation. We have this subject, Einstein or some of the sea or whatever, and we investigate it. How did it get to be made?

How did it get to be done? Why is it like that and not that? And so on. And that's the strategy. That's a structure that we use. You've seen the BBC through a lot of difficult times over the years. And I wonder whether you think that this phase,

whether through the political climate or funding or audience habits, is a greater danger than before? Yes, it is. There's no doubt it's the greatest danger in my time at the BBC, which has been a long time. I don't think it's a great danger, but I think it's beset by a lot of people

who do not wish it to be as powerful or in some cases do not wish it to be there. And that's constant from certain quarters. It is constantly being attacked. And if you're constantly attacked, you get battered, you sometimes get weaker, you sometimes give you. And yet we're in a free society. Why shouldn't there be many different radio programs?

Why shouldn't there be many television programs? The BBC can't be a monopoly in that way. So it's tough. So what's the answer to it? The answer is to do good programs. I'm sorry to sound so powerful. It isn't pious. Do good programs on many levels, like, and look at the channel you're on.

Many different programs, very complicated channel. Many minorities will be drawn to it. And the minorities make up the sort of fiber of the listening audience. If they will come to you, then you've got a good chance of getting through. The people who get in the way, well, look at them. The thing about the BBC, people know if they say in the Parliament, they say the BBC is they'll get a line in the newspapers. It's terrific for them.

They don't have to say anything sensible, and they very rarely do. But they use the BBC's, it's not in trouble, but it has to be looked after. And we have to do good programmes, which you do, I try to do. That's the only real solution. How much longer do you think you'll do in our time? You've got, today's the thousandth episode. How many more do you think you've got in you? Well, this is the first of the next thousand steps, isn't it?

That's the next 25 years then. like that. But you're not in any mood to stop. You've got the energy and the passion for it. The Fond of BBC wants me to keep doing it and I want to keep doing it. Why stop? And the audience is still there. And the audience seems to be growing.

So there you go. And how much of a debate do you have about what you're going to pick as a topic? Because you've got the whole sum of human knowledge out there. I mean, we live in the greatest age of expanding knowledge that's ever been in any history that we can get hold on. to be nothing like it. It's a tumult of erupting knowledge. You can't read a newspaper or a magazine any day without something else happening,

something else new, something discovered. It's a wonderful time to be alive in that sense. There's no possibility of running out of subjects. The way Simon Tillotson, the producer, works out a scheme. He and others add to the categories. We have categories. We do political.

We do religion. We do science. We do physics chemistry. We do biology, we do geography, we do religion. It's all very neat. Is there anything that you've just thought this is too tricky or too controversial and we'll leave that to other people? There are things which I thought were too tricky and too controversial.

Now, please believe this. I love it. It means I have to work really hard and it means that the people we get will explain it clearly and they do. I stopped doing physics when I was 14. It wasn't a Grams school, wasn't big enough to take it on. And it doesn't matter. And so when you get people like that on,

they're invariably, invariably careful and generous in how they take you through it. And at the end, I've understood it on the Thursday. If you asked me about it on Sunday, I could have a patchy recollection. I mean more if there's anything that you've decided not to do because it felt too tricky or too controversial. Don't do politics.

We are never known. and relevant. It's a different kind of relevance. Different kind of relevance. You see, I can say that. You could easily, and you probably have said it already in this conversation. But you know your core mission, essentially. Yes, is to bring three academics together

to speak to the top of their considerable ability about subjects which are of enormous importance to people that they don't get much chance to think about, to dwell on. This is the chance. This is the window. This is the place they can come to. And I'm very pleased to be part of that. Long may it go on. Wellven Bragg, thank you. Thank you. And thank you. And in our time, listeners. And if you're fairly new to this, remember that there are 1,000 episodes on BBC Sounds,

back catalogs for you to catch up on and hope you continue to enjoy the program and the podcast.