Whether presenting on Channel 5, Radio 2 or Eggheads, the broadcaster is part of the national furniture. He reflects on impartiality, the public’s reaction to lockdown and salary inequality
What is Jeremy Vine on? That is surely what everyone wants to know. If you could bottle the elixir that appears to give him limitless energy, it would not only be
Donald Trump rushing to take it. We talk just after he has finished the second of the two-hour programmes he does every day – the mid-morning show on Channel 5 and the lunchtime show on
BBC Radio 2. Vine, 55, has been up and working since 5am, yet he is still fresh and boundlessly enthusiastic.Why on earth does he do two news-based programmes so close together and, at the moment at least, covering such similar ground? “Channel 5 is like playing squash and Radio 2 is like playing snooker,” he says. “With a TV show, you have to have a big bang of you leaping out of the screen, whereas the joy of radio is the intimacy. It’s a busy old morning and people say it must be stressful, but for a broadcaster the stressful thing is not broadcasting. As long as the red light’s on, we’re happy.”Vine says it has been extraordinary to be broadcasting during this crisis. “It’s given us a real sense of mission and purpose. I’ve never seen anything like it: 9/11 wasn’t like this; the crash of 2008 wasn’t like this. Every single story for weeks and weeks has been
Coronavirus, and when we’ve tried to break out of it – Harry and Meghan or something like that – it’s never felt quite right, because for most people this is bread and butter, this is every aspect of life. It’s amazing being at the crossroads of that conversation.”