Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Evan Davis

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

This week Emily went with a socially distanced stroll with Evan Davis and his Whippet, Mr Whippy. They discuss his childhood in Surrey, his love of radio, his experience of coming out and meeting his partner, Guillaume.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bye, bye Whippy. I have to do bye, that's the thing that makes him come. Bye, bye Whippy. It's not working. He's like, you know what, I'll take my chances, Dad. I don't really, he's going anywhere. This week on Walking the Dog, I went for a socially distanced two-person stroll with broadcaster and TV presenter Evan Davis.

We were also joined by his fabulously named Whippet, Mr Whippy. Evan and I met up in South London's Kennington Park, just around the corner from where he lives, and we had the best time. Evan currently presents the hugely popular PM programme on BBC Radio 4 and obviously Front's Dragons Den, but I was really keen to find out a little bit more about off-duty Evan. We chatted about his childhood in Surrey and how his dad's academic career and his mum's job as a psychoanalyst had kind of blended in him to create someone rigorous about facts and detail, but also really curious about people.

He also told me about his experience coming out as a gay man and meeting his partner, Guillem, who he clearly adores almost as much as Mr. Whippy. Evan was also really honest about why he prefers radio to TV, and having met him, I can see why, as he's really quite a sensitive gentleman, who obviously likes connecting with people in a more intimate and formal environment. Evan really struck me as very compassionate and kind and also a massive dog lover. In fact, I'm not going to lie, I was a little jealous of Mr Whippy,

getting to go back to that nice house with Evan and Guillaume being doted on by these two cultured fabulous men. So I'm just saying, if there's room for a spare one in that dog bed, do bear me in mind. I clean up all my own bathroom breaks too. I really hope you enjoy my chat with Evan, and do please listen to his show PM on BBC's Radio 4 every day at 5 o'clock, because it's honestly brilliant. I'll hand over to the man himself now.

Here's Evan and Mr Whippy. We have to be careful of bikes here. Hello Whip, we're going to go in a minute, babes. Just wait a moment. Wippy. Wait, Wippy. We're coming, Wibbs. Don't worry, Wibbs.

We're not going to forget you. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Look at Mr. Whippy go. Well, he's a slightly shy dog, if I'm honest, Emily. He, I'd say slightly, I'd say slightly prefers human company to canine company. And often at situations like this, he reminds me of the kid in the class who can't quite join in with the other kids who are playing.

He sort of, he runs up and he sort of barks, well, the others are jostling or wrestling. And then they sort of ignore him sometimes. And that's partly because he prefers to play with the small dogs. and then the small dogs often prefer to be with each other. He's a bit big for a small dog. He's a bit nervous among the bigger dogs. I want you to introduce your dog properly,

but I should introduce you first. So let's get Whippy. There you go, Whippy. Do I call him Whippy or Mr. Whippy? Well, we call him Whippy most of the time. Okay. I'm very excited because I've been wanting to get this man on for so long. I'm with, correct me if I get any of your billing wrong.

I will. Economist, journalist, presenter, presenter of Dragon's Den and Radio 4's hugely successful PM show. Yeah. Oh, just one to say, WIPP doesn't like this. He doesn't like this, uh, this particular husky. Hi, morning. Sorry, just, Rupi has a particular thing about this husky. Hello.

And sometimes... Tell me about that, Evan. What happened there? No, well, Whippy has a particular thing about that husky. In fact, that husky is a blind husky. Whippy's not very... Oh, Whippy! I don't know what it is, but he hates that husky and often runs up and barks at him.

I don't think he would actually attack him, but he barks at him, and the poor blind husky, you know, only has his nose to go on as to who it is that's hassling him. So I'm afraid I do have to... That's not a very good start, is it? We haven't even got to the end of the introduction and I've had to suddenly protect my dog from attacking the blind dog. Yeah, I know, that's really. I actually don't husky is lovely, it is a lovely, lovely husky.

But they are quite big and need quite a bit of exercise because they're used to casting people like David Cameron across Falbar. Anyway, so you were doing the introduction. So I think the introduction, I'm with Devon Day. That's the headline news and I'm with his fabulous dog. He will now introduce. Yes, so Mr Whippy, seven year old pure Whippet. Quite a big Whippet actually, Emily's quite on the large side, not fat but just grew to be quite large.

People often think he's a greyhound, but it's way too small for a greyhound. We bought him as a puppy for a greyhound. He saw him as a puppy from a woman who, I wouldn't call a professional breeder, but she was very much into her whippets and had had more than one litter, and I think more than one mum out North London near Stansted. And we actually saw him at three weeks. And the story was my partner, Guillaume, had said, I want a blue one. You know how whiffits come in the sort of blue grey. So we see that this lovely woman up near Stansted has got a litter coming, or it's just had a litter of a few days old, and we phoned and said, are there any blue ones? And she said, no, no blue ones.

So I said, why don't we go and look anyway, Gio? And we might find, and he was, well, we'll go and look, but we're not going to get one if there isn't a blue one. Well, when you go and see a litter of, you know, three week old whipping, the idea that you're not going to buy one on the spot, put a deposit on one and then procure is for the birds. No, so Whippy was the one we picked out of that litter and is a kind of cream white. And we call him Mr. Whippy as a working title. But obviously once you've given the dog a provisional name, he becomes that name. He has sort of white streaks and we, someone we know said, well, that's the whipped ice cream falling on his face.

So we like to think there's a meaning to his cream, thorn, a brown, I suppose you might say, in white. I hadn't realised, though, Emily, that there's this, I think in some dog circles, a person who works in a dog's home said, we always call a Mr. Whippy. We use that as the name for kind of very soft dog poo. You know, it's oh so and so is done a Mr Whippy. He was laughing at the name Mr Whippy because thought it was... You and Guillaume have called your son shitty. That is one way of describing.

Anyway, we didn't know that at the time. We thought of Mr. Whippy as a lovely, tasty, sweet ice cream. cream. Evan, look. I think he likes me, Evan. He does like you. He's very friendly. He probably was slightly sniffing your pockets and just thinking, I wonder if this one has any

little snows. I've got my dog Ray. I didn't bring him today because he's a Shih Tzu and I sort of weigh up the competition and it's like a Tinder thing. I just think it's not going to be a fair match. Now one hazard, and this is not the time of year where we have to worry so much about about it is that Whippy is a dog that likes to chase. If you are a squirrel,

it can be dangerous to be in this park. We don't encourage him to catch things. We can't stop him chasing squirrels. And very occasionally, oh, there he is. He's saying hello to, I don't know that one. Hello, is that a retriever? Labradoron. She's a mixed.

A mix. A mix, she's beautiful. Very beautiful. What's her name? Docee. Oh, Docee, lovely. Hello, Docey. Why are you barking, Whippy?

Do you know? Bye-bye. Oh, he had a little reaction to that one. Yeah, I don't know if that was aggressive or whether that was friendly. It seemed to just be attention-seeking to me. I saw that as a sort of lassie come here, you know, a sort of communicative bar. Timmy's stuck down the well we better go and get him.

We can describe all sorts of, all sorts of... Dad's stuck with this weird woman. We better go and rescue him. I'm just going to put him on the lead for two-tick. Let me be rude. What's that Labrador or three-frew? It's quite on the large side, isn't it? Well, we've all put a few pounds on in lockdown, haven't we, Emily?

He's looking over at the husky. We should say where we are, Evan. Are we allowed to say where we are? Yeah, we're in Kennington Park. It's a medium-sized park. The reason we live in Kennington is for Kennington Park. It's just very, very convenient for where we are now. And it's, you know, Whippy just never gets tired of strolling around here. He knows every inch. He knows there's a compass heap behind that little sort of. part of stuff over there and he knows that there's sometimes scraps of food so if I let him off the lead at this point he will in fact run up there to take a look and then we've got the lovely rose garden here and you and your partner Evan you have a place in Normandy as well don't you

not in Normandy actually no it's in the Pad de Calais which is it's the Ode-France region which is really just around the very far north of France so it's about a 30 minutes it derived from Calais itself. Oh, I love you. I guess the question was, my partner's French, obviously, I wanted some connection there, but the great thing about it is that it's dirt cheap there and it's, if you find a nice place, it's very pretty.

But the most important thing is it's very accessible. It's very, very, you know, you can go on a Friday night at seven and then have dinner when you get there, and you don't need to book a plane and you can take the dog and you can... The downside of North in northern France compared to most French home buyers is that it's the same climate as here more or less. You're not going far away to get a whip. Come on papes, come on let's just put, come on wips

let's just let's not go here let's not go here let's go somewhere nice. So Evan I need to know about your dogs growing up. Did you have dogs or pets? No actually it was quite sad we we did have an attempt at a dog. and actually we tried it twice and my mum got asthma. It was very slow to come on, but she got asthma and it was the dog and so we had to say goodbye to that dog basically and give it away, which was heartbreaking. So we basically had to let that dog go. Now you might say it was a bit silly because actually the same had happened when

when I was very young and I don't remember this, that there was a dog and my mum got asthma. And so they got rid of that dog. And then many years later, when I was about 13, we got a dog. And my mum really thought, having not had a trace of asthma for the decade before, thought that would all have gone and be over. But then very, very slowly the asthma came back. So it just didn't seem like a very good idea to have a dog if it's giving them. Mama Asana. So we didn't have much experience of dogs. We had a cat. I think the cat was probably quite relieved to see the dog go. The cat had developed a way of walking around the house

without ever touching the ground. Do you know what? I'm going to pick this poo up, partly to impress your listeners with my social good, but partly because there was a scene at the beginning where I think I might have, I wasn't sure whether Whippy had done one. Basically, if you think you've missed one, you have to pick someone else's up, you know. It means if I missed one, I don't have to feel bad. I'll pop this in this bin. Can I just point out, Evan Davis is the first guest who's ever picked up anyone else's poo. Ed Miliband didn't do that.

Ed Miliband said my dog Raymond looked like a toupee. That's a whole other story. Now this, this is actually an extension to Kellington Park. very flat sort of play football crickety area yeah so it's much less manicured interestingly this is Southwick ours is Lambeth this is Southwick but if we go down there we can see a Henry Moore did Greg Davis take you to the Henry Moore I bet you he didn't did he Evan jealousy such an ugly emotion tell me about your family because you tell me where you grew up first place

I grew up in home counties in Surrey, sort of school in Dawking, brought up in Ashted. My parents live in Leatherhead. Is it a sort of commuter belt? Commuter belt, yeah. My parents actually were both born in South Africa. They both went to university in South Africa. They met at the university in South Africa. And they emigrated here when I was a teeny weenie.

embryo in my mum's tummy. So I was born here, but only just really, conceived there, born here. And what did your parents do? My father was a reader. I don't know, most people don't know what a reader is. It's a kind of one below a professor at the University of Surrey in electronic engineering and he, he, so it's actually, you know, it's a good story because he was there at Surrey in the days that's, I don't know if you know, but Surrey University now is the kind of centre of, or one of the centres of the British space industry, satellite industry. It's a very, and that was just taking off when my father was there. So there was a guy, he, I think he was his PhD supervisor, Martin Sweeting, who he's,

then went on to create one of these brilliant British companies, satellite companies. So my father was there in the very early days of Surrey's rise to that. And my mum was a psychoanalyst, Jungian analyst. So she worked in various child welfare departments and places and then she went into private practice. Yeah, so she's, you know, she, we always had this very lovely, really lovely family dynamic of the kind of the electronic engineer and the union analyst. And I like to think that synthesis of, you know, I'm not going to call it the rational and the kind of emotional, but there's a little bit of that about it.

There's a little bit of that about it. Yeah, the jeans worked out well. Well, I like, you know, I love my parents. I think they did bring us up. We're going to go over here to show you the hell of you. That's why you're rigorous and academic, but you're empathetic. That's why it works, you see. Maybe that is it if I am those things.

I strive to be. And tell me about your, you seem very well adjusted, Evan. So I'm assuming that you had a really healthy sort of happy family life. I think we had a pretty happy family life. Yeah, you know, I count my blessings, my parents have been fearsomely loyal to each other, you know, since I've known them and they're still, you know, alive hanging on, hanging on. And two brothers?

And two older brothers, yeah. Were you close to your brother? I think we were close. I mean, do we phone each other every day? No, we're not that close in that sort of way. But yes, we're pretty close. We keep in pretty close touch and we all absolutely know how we each think. We all know, sorry, we're walking the wrong way.

Actually, we'd sort of go round this way. Whippee! Whippy, don't chase the pigeons. No, no, no, whip, whipp. Whippy. Best not to eat anything, Whips. No, Wips, because that could be someone had a late night, I think, last night. I think that wouldn't stop Wippey.

Oh, don't it. You are fed actually extremely well, Mr. Whippy, with the poshest bloody dog foods that we can... So, kind of a kid were you, Evan. Were you introverted or shy? Were you a Mr. Whippy? I think I was a little bit, so I was never very sporty. And I, you know, I don't know.

whether this happened in the girls side but when the boys were taken off a P.E. and they'd play football and they'd appoint two team captains who'd then pick the teams. I was always one of the last two or three you know. Normally the captains would then agree with each other. You take him and you take him and I can really spend, I can remember spending large amounts of my school time playing football in which you perfect the art of looking like you're really engaged with the game while positioning yourself somewhere where there is no chance of you getting more. It is quite a thing actually but it's very funny you do get good. That was my

my childhood but I actually had very happy school days. Did you? Very happy and I had um I not going to I'm I was very engaged. So, you know, my secondary school, it was, I became very involved in drama. I wasn't very good at it, but I, that was never a requirement. There's the Henry Moore. Oh, shall we look at the Henry Moore, Whiffy? Yeah, so you became involved in drama? Yeah, so, you know, and I had, was very close to one or two teachers in there, and I had a good gang of friends and who were also in drama.

Was it obvious that you were, well, you were, well, you were. that you were very academic? No, I think I became slightly more academic as the years went on. So by the end of the sixth form, I was one of two or three who were kind of Oxbridgey, getting a bit of extra coaching for Oxford entrance exams and the like. But that was a relatively small number. My school was quite an interesting one because I went to, my secondary school was Dawking Grammar, date grammar in Dorking and then while I was there it combined with a girl school

secondary modern next door and half another secondary modern Archbishop Langton and the three two and a half schools came together to form one big school so I was I was there as the great Shirley Williams conversion from grammar to comp occurred it was I have to say a quite traumatic time for the school. It was a, I would actually call it a botch. I've made a radio documentary about this actually, because they didn't have the money to kind of remove the fence between the two schools that were next to each other. So the council's idea was that you'd get between the schools by walking out of one and into the other. Fortunately, various of the teachers removed the fence and kind of laid a path. It was, Whippy, that's not good.

No. God, Whippy, you're such a scavenger, babes. You're such a scavenger. It was just very messy, They were basically discovering how to make it work. And it took two or three years to settle down. It did settle down. And I was very happy and proud to be part of that school. And I'm still occasionally in touch with them and go back. They must be really proud of you. I don't know if they're, yeah, they, you know, they like me.

And I like them. There's really... I'm sorry, but Whipip, can you just not? I'll tell you what, there's so much chicken discarded in this country. Have you ever found that with your dog? There are so many chicken boned. Yep, come on, put on a good show for this. Nice lady.

Come on, Wippy. I've got a theory that I think you're very curious about the world, and then I think it follows that your dog is. It might well be that the dogs... detect certain attributes. This is the Henry Moore. And I absolutely love the fact it's right here in a, you know, big estate of high rises and the like.

And I just like the fact it's so mixed around here, you know. It's lovely. It's called two-piece reclining figure number three. So this is 61. Oh my God, I think that's really beautiful, Evan. I love that. I'm always amazed at public art of how you people put expensive. things down. Look at Whippy, look at Whippy. Oh, he's got his little pour-up, he's thinking,

we're going to get a snack, never. Oh, Whippy. Do you know what, Evan, I love that this Henry Moore is here. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, me too, me too. They haven't put it in Cleaver Square where the MPs and their, you know, the peers live. They put it in, in this area. It's just really nice. that it was Oxford then Harvard and then I got very involved with a guy called were you thrilled when you got into Oxford what was that moment like at home that was very exciting it was actually just the week of John Lennon being killed as a matter of fact I can remember it very well it was literally around then that was that

December November December when it was it was December the 8th 1980 right and And I know that because it was my mum's birthday. I think it was a horse. That's very interesting. So that was the day I think I heard. I might be misremembering that, but I just always inexplicably link these two events. Did you realise, OK, this is going to have a huge impact on my life? Look, I don't know whether that's the right way of thinking about it.

I think you're just driven to the next thing you're told you should be able to do, you know, and then you set that as a goal, and then you try and get in. and you're very pleased when you do. I don't know if I... Yeah, I wouldn't want to overblow it, to be honest. And I also... I think I would have been very happy if I hadn't got into Oxford as well.

I just think I probably would have made the best of whatever I had... Yeah. I would have just striven to make the best. I was... I often think there's a sort of view of life in which people think if I can do A, I will be happy.

And it's not that. It just works the other way around. So when we're buying a house, I remember saying to Gio, you know, you're thinking about, do we like this one? Do we want this one? And what should we do?

And I said to Giam, here's the truth. We're both positive thinking people. We're actually, once we buy the house, we're going to say, I'm so glad we bought this one, not the other one. It wasn't that we bought this house, so we're happy, we bought the right, we made the right choice, so we're happy with it. It's that we made a choice and we're happy with it because that's just the way we, and it's just the way we're. And it is absolutely true and we keep laughing about it. We say, I'm so glad we bought this one.

And I say yes. And if we bought the other one, we would have been really glad we bought the other one. Like we say, we're so glad we got Mr. Whippy, you know, and we picked Hill. out of the six that we looked at in the litter. But I'm quite sure that we would have liked any of the other ones equally. There's nothing special about this dog. That, to me, seems quite a Buddhist approach to life, which is a very present-cent-cent-of-life, isn't it?

It's like, this is good for me now. Yeah, well, I think it's about seeing the best in situations. And the world needs people who are glass half full. And the world needs people who in glass half-empty. in their mindset. If the world was only glass half full people there would be very little impetus for change and improvement. On the other hand, if the world is full of glass half empty people who are constantly dissatisfied, then it would be a much less happy place. So you want a kind of a balance. Which are you, Evan? I'm glass half full, totally always. And what's Guillaume?

He's glass half full as well. Yeah. You're a pint. It works so well. No, well, it, it, I mean, I would rather be a glass half full person. But I do really appreciate what glass half empty people bring because I think, you know, you need some, I tend not to be a very angry person. I just sort of get on with it. But you do need some angry people to make things change and to... How does your anger manifest itself?

Do you... My what? Your anger manifests itself. No, I say I'm not an angry person. I know you're not, but you must feel it sometimes. Oh, well, yeah, of course. And it manifests itself for me being irritable, mostly with Guillem. He gets most of it, you know.

But he's lovely about it, you know. We laugh about it. We have protocols for dealing with, oh God, he just finds that, wherever it is, he just finds the little bits of discarded food and bone. You're loving having it. That's it. Leave it. It's a bone.

It's a bone with it. It's amazing, isn't it? He managed to find that bone at about 10 metres, a bit of discarded bone. Come on, Mum sir, come on. So tell me, were you, did you, did you, had you come out by the time you went to university ever? No. I had to myself. Coming out has, I think, three stages, to be absolutely honest. There's first to yourself, that's by far the most important. The second is to your parents and the third.

to community at large. And I sort of basically had been a bit tortured in my early teens by the thought that I might be gay. And then I just flipped one day and realized I was and that there's no point in fighting it and was extremely happy thereafter. It was literally almost like turning a light switch. you know what, I am, it's fine, and that was that.

But I still didn't tell my parents for another decade. Did you not? No, I went to the States for a couple of years after undergrad. Is that when you went to Harvard? Yeah, yeah. See, it's very Evan Davis. You say I went to the States for a couple of years. And most people would be sending out a press release if they went to Harvard.

No, I went to Harvard, but actually the instrumental bit of my US experience was the summer. summers in fact I spent in Los Angeles so I had an internship at a at a at the electric utility in LA Southern California Edison and you know what they this is 1980s I was working on a cost-benefit appraisal of a smart metering system that they were investing in and I mean way ahead of their time I No, no, don't dig. I love him. Look.

Do you think he knows he's a Whippet, Evan? I don't know. No, Whippie, don't dig the park. Don't dig. So here we are. You were getting my coming out story. Go to the States. Summers in L.A., working on this fantastic smart metering system

that was ahead of its time. But it was L.A. where really I just became much more comfortable with being out in front of other people. And I mean, it's so relaxed L.A. And everything was just so accepted and tolerant. And I had a boyfriend there, lovely guy called Philip, and his parents were just so easy with it all. At that point, when I was going to get home,

it just seemed preposterous really to not tell my parents as quickly as possible. I just felt it was keeping something from them. And they were always going to be, right about it so so no that was the that was the kind of point at which I realised it was okay to be open and then and they were all right about it yeah they were I don't you know say it took a couple of days for them to get over it they hadn't clocked it you must have felt a real relief yes I think it is a

relief to tell parents and it is a relief not to have to hide these things, you know. But it's just changed so much. This is really an era where there's glass half full and glass half empty, because I just look and think, my God, when you think back, and look, I don't want to think that the 80s and 90s were some period of hardship.

I mean, you know, you could go off with you. There was gay pride in Kennington Park. I remember coming here in probably 1990 for a gay festival in this very park, years before I, you know, had any connection to Kennington. And I, so I don't want to pretend that it was all oppression, but when you think of the things that the papers said about gay people, it's just unbelievable, unbelievable now.

And it just seems like the idea, you know, that you would just have equal marriage or it's just, it's extraordinary. And now, I mean, the most interesting thing is the, the rates of LGBT identity that surveys of Generation Z, that's sort of up to early 20s, mid-20s, are just off the scale. So, I mean, the number of gay men is still relatively low, and the number of lesbian women is still relatively low. We're talking sort of a couple of percent. But when you go to that Generation Z, you're talking about higher numbers and you're talking about 15 or 20% are saying they're bisexual, you know. Yeah.

Now there's, there are some who are saying, oh, they're not really bisexual. They just want to identify as, because it's very trendy. There are people saying that. I mean, maybe maybe that's true. I don't know. I've not researched it. But it is still absolutely fascinating that when you basically remove stigma, what happens? And it is going to be absolutely amazing to see how that plays out over the next few decades.

And it's interesting as well, isn't it, that idea of, it makes me so happy. The idea that there'll be a generation of kids that won't have shame as at the forefront of their sort of adolescent experience, you know? I think it's also interesting because I still wonder, yeah, I just, whether there will still be shame or will there be no shame, has. it all come from social stigma or is some of that in ourselves and our desire to be more normal to fit with the, what are you kidding there with? So Evan, tell me about when you realised you had a talent as a presenter, because you went to the BBC. Not initially as a performer though. No, no, no, no.

I mean, I went to the BBC as an economics correspondent on. BBC Radio 4 there wasn't a 5 when I got there so I was I was I went in with an economic specialism that had been my I'd basically been working at the Institute for Fiscal Studies for a bit and had had quite a good career there but I realized I was not going to be a kind of brilliant academic I was a little bit too big picture in my view of everything. So I'd want to get the basic stories straight and then I was a bit useless of follow-up detail and rigour. So I had a slightly journalistic approach to it all and I really thought, you know, I should probably move into journalism.

So I got a job as an economist at the BBC and now that was a break that was a very lucky break. the BBC wanted specialist economists. This is the day of Peter Jay and John Burt where Peter was the editor, the economics editor, John Burt was the DG, and they really felt we want people to know what they're talking about. We don't want, you know, some bod given the job as economics correspondent, who doesn't know any economics. So I did, I had the privilege of being appointed as an economics correspondent,

and that really meant I kind of leapfrogged over lots of, lots of, of steps, journalistic steps that others had to go through to get jobs at that level at the BBC. And the advantage of that was, of course, it was a shortcut to a good job at the BBC. The disadvantage was I never really had any understanding of what journalism was or what you were meant to do. I mean, it was just basically I had the economics. I'll just keep an eye and Whippy, hang on. Come on, whips, come on, babes, come on babes, come on, babes, come on, here's a good point. Come on, come on, babe, this way.

And then when did you, at what point did you make that transfer? Basically, I'd worked my way up to being economics editor. 2008, the editor of the Today Program said, why don't you become a presenter of the Today Program for a bit? And I did a couple of weeks just over a summer. And then he said, why don't you come and work at the Today Program? I said, well, I might, I wouldn't mind doing it for a little bit as a change, but I would obviously never want to do that permanently,

because he didn't think of myself as a presenter. And then he said, okay, do it for a year. And then when they announced it, they didn't say it was for a year. And I said, Kerry, the press release hasn't mentioned that it's only for a year. It just says like I'm going to be a today presenter. And honestly, I was so naive, I just can't believe it. He said, oh, does it not say? and they're basically made up their mind.

I was no longer fit to be economics editor and it was time to move over. So no, I did that. I didn't mean to do that. It was never a plan. I've just done what the BBC asked me to do, really. Have you? You know, they wanted me to do that.

I didn't argue. So when Newsnight came up? Yeah, that's an interesting one. So I agonised over that. quite a bit. Paxman left and then they needed a new lead presenter and so this is this is an interesting story because essentially their feeling was we're not going to get another Paxman who is as good as Paxman so we should swing over to the opposite we should go for something that is a very different style and I was associated with

with being kind of the friendly, not terribly adversarial or argumentative. So they did give me that job. I agonized over it. And Tony Hall said to me, I think you'll bring a warmth to it, which will be useful. So I did go. And I stayed there for a while for four years.

It was not the most successful people. piece of my career in all honesty. I don't think it was car crash bad. I would never say that. But I actually think the culture of that program was quite geared towards adversarial takes on things. And so I think I was never quite, I was never quite in willfully non-adversarial enough

to make that work. But I certainly wasn't adversarial enough to make that work either. So I think I was falling between the two. Plus, I think I actually don't quite have the face for TV. I mean, I think I just, I think I looked a bit swamped in that studio. And I think in retrospect, I probably should have said, if I'm going to do this job, we just need to make the studio work, you know, with my small head and the chair's too big.

And just the desk is too big. the lighting is wrong. I should probably have insisted on something. It's not that you were not right, it's that it had to be right for you. Well, it's just, you know, the culture of it, it was a lot more than I could do to kind of make that work. I think the habit of adversarial interviewing was very deeply is very deeply ingrained. And actually what's interesting is, I think when I went to a programme that's in the kind of great pantheon of BBC programmes PM, I think it has much less, it had a very strong Eddie Meyer tradition.

Eddie was less adversarial. I mean, Eddie was the most interesting presenter, really, in radio. and he had a whole lot of very, very interesting ways of engaging with the audience, dealing with interviewees and the like. Massive warmth sometimes could be very, very, very, very sharp and attacking when he wanted to be. But I think it was much easier for me to just come to PM, do it the way I wanted to do it. Whippy is now about 60 metres away. Whippy, come on. Whip? Bye, bye, bye Whippy. I have to do bye, that's the thing that makes him come. Bye, bye, Wippy. It's not working.

He's like, you know what, I'll take my chances, Dad. I don't really, he's going anywhere. Bye, bye, he's smelling something and he's like, I'll keep an eye for the moment. But it is true. He will absolutely, he will not lose me. he knows where I am. Here he is. I said he had come and he did. Good boy. Good boy. So and PM were the show that you do. So I think it's been much easier to shape PM to what I think fits me most naturally. And there hasn't been a kind of a strong culture in there. And there's not a lot of direct,

there's not been the same level of direction as to what each interview is about. That, um, I think it's just been easier to make it work. Hello. And I'm much happy with you. Oh, he's trying to give him a French kiss, isn't he? Whippy, he's kissing you. He's 11 months. No, not even 10 months.

Is he a terrier? He's a mixed with jokey. Is he fully grown now? And it probably is then if he's 11 months. Fully grown now? Yeah, more or less. They're fully grown around one year. Lots of puppy-like enthusiasm for making friends.

She was a little fatter before. He was a little fatter before. Nice to meet. I could see you. What do you think of little dogs, Evan? I don't mind little dogs. I think it's useful to have a dog that you can pick up. And I can pick up Whippy, but he's 20 kilos,

and I can imagine there'll be a point in my life where I won't be able to pick him up. No, I don't mind little dogs. Don't mind them. They can be a bit yappy sometimes. Yeah. I don't know if that's something one can control. I think they are just always keen to make themselves heard.

Well, my dog isn't, but then that's because I was very adamant. As soon as he came home, he went, oh! I said, no, we don't do that. And he never did it again. I'd like to believe there was a causal link between those two things, but I don't believe it. So with PM, Evan, I love PM, and I think it feels like rather than the head-mine, telling me the news.

It's like I'm having dinner with a really well-informed, nice friend. Well, that's the nicest thing you could say, because that is, I have always said, and Awenna, who was the editor then, and who appointed me, who's now actually editor of today, Awenna said, Ewenner and I agreed, we wanted the programme to sound warm and curious. So when you're doing an interview with a politician, For example, and actually we don't do that many big political interviews.

You don't have to. I think it's great for some programmes to start from the premise, why is this lying bastard lying to me and to try and uncover that. I'm not against those kinds of interviews. I don't want every interview to be like that. So on PM, what I will normally do is not start from that approach, but would start from a kind of why is this person thinking what they're thinking, person thinking what they're thinking you know and it's just a very it just turns out to be quite

quite different really and so i i i think there's room for all these kinds of interviews some sometimes people have tried to set me up as kind of anti-paxman or anti-john humphreys in approach i'm not against you know those kinds of interviews at all i mean i think they're i think there's a they have their advantages and their disadvantages and the advantages they're often very entertaining and engaging and there's also an advantage that they often he's going to sit down and scratch himself watch oh no he's not he's going to oh yes that's good isn't it whips now shake there we go lovely oh yes whips that's nice and you're coming do you prefer radio Evan to tv I think audiences don't understand the degree of artifice in television of sitting with an earpiece in your ear and

looking at a camera, you're not looking at a person. It's just very much harder to be spontaneous and you can't look at your notes as much in TV and when you're reading a script you can't go off piece because you're reading it from an auto queue and if you go off script, the AutoCube person doesn't know what to do, so you have to stick to the script, roughly speaking. And so, it's just basically what I like about radio is the, if you think of the production to content ratio, in radio it's much, much lower, there's much less production and much more content. And in TV there's an awful lot of standing around getting made up, going into the studio, having the person put the earpiece on and fix the microphone.

And radio it's just bolt into the studio. I think actually recorded TV interviews were always much easier because there was less time pressure. You weren't set up with earpieces and stuff and people counting into your ear. So the recorded interviews were always the ones that I felt more satisfied with and always felt were the better ones on TV. You never liked doing live TV, did you? I'm not a big, I mean, I think it's a tiny bit terrifying and everybody can see. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoopi. Do you want to go off through a lead? Yeah, you were saying to the live thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think I just basically have stage fright, really, to some different... And it's much, I don't on radio, but I do on TV. I was going to say, it feels like you're in a really happy place with your work. Yeah, it's a very, very, it's a really great team. It's a very, I think I'm very content with what the programme is. And I, I mean, I think it has found a role. I don't know if you know that World at One and PM are the same team. So Sarah Montague, who is the World at One presenter, you talk to her, she's got a dog as well actually.

If we try to avoid that big muddy puddle. Sarah and I get on well and, you know, it's just it's a very... But I can't imagine you're not getting on with anyone. Well, actually, no, I've not not got on with people. Do you see those two dogs and they're fighting? And there's just one in the background. He's just skipping. around with the grass, that's what you are.

Because I think you're quite a gentle soul, you strike me as. I think I'm actually, I don't want to get too deeply psycho about it. I think I'm actually slightly shy, and I think I'm actually very unassertive. And I think that is true of everybody in my family. So I never, you know, so if we're getting bad service somewhere, Gioam is like, I'm going to talk to the manager and I'm, no, it doesn't matter, I don't matter, I'll just, I'll eat it anyway or it's cold or I don't mind.

I like it cold. You know, that is myself, Guillermo is exactly the opposite. And I don't want to make a fuss and I don't want to be, oh, wippy. Sorry. Well look, I actually do think conflict de-escalation is, if I had another life, I would try and be in the world of conflict de-escalation. By far the most important thing human beings need to discover is how to manage conflict, how to

reduce it. Are you usually the first to say sorry if you have a row with Giam? I think Giam would probably not say that I was the first. Honestly, we normally end up joking about it. We really do have conflict protocols that involve taking the piss out of ourselves. Will you tell me how you met, Giam? I love the sound of your relationship. It sounds like you're really well suited.

We're very, very well suited. We met in a seedy bar in 2002. I could tell you the story, but I would have to then request you not to broadcast it. I'll tell you what happened. He came back. We spent the night together. Then he, the next day, I don't know what, we were just pottering around in the morning. And then it was the Body World exhibition was on near Brick Lane. And Body Worlds, do you remember this one with all the plastified real bodies? There's this German guy who's got this weird way of presenting real human and animal.

bodies in a sort of plastified preserved way. That's quite a first date. I wanted, I've been meaning to see this and he said, oh, I want to go and see that as well. I saw that and that was more or less it. And he thought, he's the one. And you got, are you married? We are civilly partnered.

We got civilly partnered on the 10th anniversary of meeting and our ambition is to upgrade. to upgrade on the 10th anniversary of the Civil Partnership. So that would be, so we just, we thought it would be convenient to keep the dates the same. So there wasn't, you know, confusion of which the anniversary date was, you know, so. So we try to do it on the 20th, which will be July next year.

Why do the media get so obsessed by your clothes, Evan? I don't know, are they really obsessed by my clothes? There's only been one photo in the mail where they said, please, Mr. Davis, won't you dress more age appropriately? I can't remember what it was. No, I tell you, it said, please, Mr. Davis, won't you wear a tie? Well, there's been a bit of that. So what it really is, Emily, is let's have an item about ties and a good way of doing that is to say, why isn't he wearing a tie? I mean, that's just the nature of our journalistic tradition.

And I think that's a perfectly good way of doing it. So, I mean, I didn't wear a tie on Newsnight because I was trying to make the program more informal, warmer and less kind of, you know, less kind of rigid. Evan, do you, do you cry a lot? I do cry from time to time. You're harking to an interview I did with a colleague. I ask everyone that. Do you? Yeah.

Because someone asked me that in an interview was. Did they? I think it was a Times person. She said, what makes you cry? And I described this and then it started crying. Because as soon as I think about it, it makes me cry. Evan, I don't want to make you cry. I'm sorry I brought it up.

No, no, you're welcome to bring it up. Here's the problem in my job, Emily. Often we do emotional interviews. This literally happened on newsnight. So you're doing an emotional interview and the producers will be thinking it would be good if the person cried at this point. I am hopeless at those interviews

because I always cry before the person who they want to get cry. So I'm a bit terrified of those. I think sometimes I cry instead of expressing anger a lot of the time, I think. I'm not in that category. I can tell you what makes me cry is people trying to maintain dignity in the face of that.

adversity. And I won't think of examples because as soon as I think of examples, I do cry. Oh, Evan. That's really lovely reason to cry. I cry because I get a parking ticket. I feel like. I know people normally say this to potential romantic partners, and I appreciate that's off the table with us, but I feel like you make me want to be a slightly better person. No, that's very sweet of you to say. I'm not sure, you know, I'm not sure. You know, I'm I'm not sure I've said anything that merits that, but, but, but, but, you know, that's, that's lovely. Oh, Whippy. His little innocent face, he's actually ready to go home now.

I've loved meeting your daddy. He's such a lovely daddy. And he's got his smart coat. What are you going to do today, Whippy? Oh, I don't know. I think I might have a snooze after lunch. What's lovely about him is he's so jealous. If, if, if, if, if, him and I,

If I come in and we kind of hug each other or something like that, he just yelps and yells and yelps. And so we have to go down, bend down, stroke him and then his tail wags. He just loves the kind of three-way. We're living in a thruple, aren't we, Mr. Whippy? And do you do this every weekend? Well, I tend to bring you in the mornings. Giam works at home and so, you know, even when we're not in lockdown, worked at home. So he takes him in the day.

So he gets two walks a day, you know. We think he needs at least an hour a day. An hour, two 45 minute walks is about right, you know. Two 45 minute walks. Oh, Evan. Is that, are we spoiling him or depriving him? Do you find people saying, I don't have children? I always say I forgot to have children.

And people often say to me, oh, is your dog a child substitute? And I said that to my therapist and he said, yeah, probably is, but that's all right. Well, I mean, the dog isn't the child, the children are the dog substitutes. Of course they are. We have an absolute nurturing instinct. But my affection for that dog is clearly as evolved. I mean, it's not as strong as a mother's affection for her child. I'm not in any way comparing. However, my affection for this dog is a clearly,

evolved thing. It is, I love that dog. I don't mind the smell of his poo and I don't mind picking it up. It's, it is absolutely a deeply, deeply ingrained, instinctive relationship. It's an arbitrary one because we picked him up and as soon as we had him, we loved him and he loved us and we just get the oxytocin rush. Each of us, he gets it, we get it every time we gaze into each other's eyes. It is an extraordinarily strong bond and I mean you know I I don't think it's for everybody to have a dog but I wish more people could it gets people out of the house it gets them walking it's yeah you know what more do you need in in life than a little it's just look at his ears you know we're talking about you don't we you know that he's a flapping they're literally flapping you know that we're

talking about you and how beautiful you are did you know that I've loved meeting you Mr Wippy. Daddy's going to take you home now. I'm going to take you home. I'll ever, I'd love meeting you. No, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Emily, for strolling around Kennington Park with me. It's been lovely. And Mr. Wippy. Bye, Mr. Wippy. I really hope you enjoyed listening to that. And do remember to rate, review and subscribe on iTunes.