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- [00:00]
A
Lets be completely honest. Are you happy with your job? The fact is, a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we never really wanted in the first place. But we stick it out and we give reasons like what if the next move is worse? And I've put years into this place and maybe the most common one. Isn't everyone miserable at work? But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry Me. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you get from where you are to where you want to be, either at your existing job or by helping you find a new one. Your coach helps clarify your goals, creates a plan and keeps you accountable along the way. Go to Strawberry Me Career and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry Me slash Career.
- [00:54]
B
Hey marketers, here's something to note. 75% of listeners don't consider podcasters to be influencers, yet 84% say a podcaster has changed their mind about something they once believed. That's the paradox of podcast influence. It's built on credibility, not clout. Trust, not trends. Acast's podcast Pulse 2025 report reveals how podcast creators are redefining influence through resonance, multi platform fandoms and their ability to shape culture. Get the full report free@podcastpulse2025.com
- [01:31]
C
from the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Saturday. I'm manving Raana. This week, the downfall of the former BBC news anchor Hugh Edwards was dramatized by Channel 5 with the actor Martin Clunes in the lead role. It portrayed the events leading up to his catastrophic fall from grace. Andrew Billen, who writes brilliant features for the Times, met Hugh Edwards on several occasions, including the day before his world imploded. He wrote a fascinating and insightful piece in the paper this week reflecting on the man he knew, so we asked him to read it.
- [02:27]
D
The most important thing about the Jeffrey Epstein affair, everyone says, is his victims. They then proceed to fixate on the sex trafficker himself, Ghislaine Maxwell, Andrew McBatten Windsor and Peter Manderson. Conversely, although this week's Channel 5 drama on the faintly comparable Hugh Edwards affair was sold on the former news anchor's name, in fact, power the downfall of Hugh Edwards, with Martin Clunes in the title role, concentrated less on him than Ryan, the 17 year old from South Wales whom he bullied and bribed to do his wishes, and I applaud it for that. Nevertheless, one day someone may truly dramatise the fall of Hugh Edwards. Perhaps it will even be with this help, since he has made it clear about his unhappiness that Channel 5 did not seek his side of the story for its film. Such a drama would be a study of a trusted, highly capable but troubled man, a hero in his own mind, but one whose flaws were too sordid even to earn his fall. The palliative adjective tragic. I hope Clunes is asked to play him again. And I hope Clunes, who is a fine man who in the most minor way himself lived a few years in the eyes of the tabloids and later became a national treasure in Doc Martin. Kind of the Hugh Edwards trajectory, but in reverse. I hope he'll say yes. Clunes, I think, gets so much right about the man I interviewed twice for the Times and twice lunched with, the last time the day before his suspension. It came after the sun warned the corporation that it was about to expose Edwards. The family of Ryan, which is not his real name, had approached the paper worried about the large sums of money Edwards was in the habit of sending their son in return for videos in which he took his top off while Edwards also, the drama claims, masturbated. Yet here we are, almost three years on, Edwards a virtual fugitive from public life, and me still thinking and writing about him, disturbed by a brutal drama documentary and its convincing account of the secret life of a man I kidding myself, I knew a bit. At the film's press screening last week, Clune said he had not attempted to imitate Edwards voice well, it sounded pretty accurate to me. The actor's body language was excellent too, from the formal tummy in way, Edwards held himself to the brisk gait of a star who did not want to be stopped by fans to his sitting posture on set, his left arm stretched out across the desk.
- [05:56]
E
A few moments ago Buckingham palace announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii.
- [06:09]
D
In his script the writer Mark Burt equally deftly sketches several aspects of his personality, most of them unappealing. Certainly Power is a decent title for the piece because it stresses the imbalance of Edwards so called relationship with the teenager. But Edwards was pretty obsessed with power every time we met for my Times Magazine interview with Edwards in the COVID summer of 2020, he understandably asked to be interviewed in the open air, meeting him in the garden of his home. My suggestion was, however, out of the question and perhaps fair enough, but asking me to meet him at Norwood Cemetery at 8 in the morning struck me as bizarre and I now think, controlling. Our picture editor called after we'd finished talking to us when we'd be able to make it to the photo shoot and Edwards asked me to pass him the phone. He proceeded to calmly lecture her on how he would be there, but in his own time. And then in the early summer of 2022, when we met for the first of our two lunches, he was equally keen to take charge. Told by the waiter there was no table available, he corrected him and one miraculously appeared. He was not rude, he was firm, and I'm pretty sure he felt his behaviour befitted his status. Yet his fear of losing power was even stronger than his love of it. Edwards nowadays emphasizes his struggles with his mental health. Well, and I'm speaking as a layman, I would say it is little exaggeration to say he was powerful paranoid when he told me on the record in our cemetery interview that the BBC could be a very treacherous place. This was mild compared to what he said to me off the record. Almost. The first words he spoke to me over that first lunch in the hotel opposite Broadcasting House was that there was a lot of disquiet from the talent about the BBC's decision to cast Kirsty Young as the main presenter of the Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee weekend. Edwards clearly felt he had been reduced to a spear carrier role. He proceeded to worry over a forthcoming meeting with Charlotte Moore, who was then the BBC's chief content officer. He felt that she insufficiently appreciated him. He seemed convinced that she would be suggesting he leave his job for two decades as the main anchor of the News at Ten. In fact, she didn't suggest that when they met. But he said to me he might move, but only were there to be a vacancy of sufficient seniority. One possibility, he thought, was as host of Question Time, which was then, as it is now, ably helmed by Fiona Bruce. This professional insecurity, essential, I think, to understanding him, is depicted in a short scene with his editor early in the drama.
- [09:28]
E
Truth be told, I'm not everyone's first or even 10th choice. Everyone be certain individuals who think that having depression means you're just one bad day away from going full. Christine Chubbuck and other certain individuals who think that my accent is a slippery slope towards a Scouse or even, God forbid, Brummy voice of the nation.
- [09:48]
D
Paranoid much?
- [09:49]
E
It's not paranoia if everyone really does hate you, is it?
- [09:56]
D
Power is also astute in rarely showing Edwards in his enormous house in South London without a glass of wine. I was astounded by how much he drank that first lunch. I'm pretty sure we motored through two bottles of champagne between 2 and 5pm and he was drinking considerably more than I was at 5. He suggested another glass and I pleaded instead for an espresso. So one espresso and two glasses of champagne, he told the waiter.
- [10:38]
F
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- [11:10]
A
Are you happy with your job? The fact is, a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we never really wanted in the first place. But we stick it out and we give reasons like what if the next move is worse? And I've put years into this place and maybe the most common one. Isn't everyone miserable at work? But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry Me. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you get from where you are to where you want to be, either at your existing job or by helping you find a new one. Your coach helps clarify your goals, creates a plan and keeps you accountable along the way. Go to Strawberry Me career and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry Me.
- [12:01]
B
Slash Career with endless scroll algorithms and AI flooding feeds, podcasting stands out. They're sought, not served. Audiences actively choose to hear trusted voices on topics they care about. In fact, 72% of listeners say podcasts shape cultural conversations. For marketers, that means podcasts shift brand perception like no other channel. Acast's podcast Pulse 2025 report has the proof. Get all the insights@podcast Pulse2025.com.
- [12:46]
D
6:00 clock by the time lunch was over, he astonished me by then saying, you'd be presenting the news at 10 that night. I asked whether he would be alright. He said he would have three black coffees and Three pints of water and would be absolutely fine. And when I got home and watched the Brad along, he was that said, I later heard on good authority that the editor of the Bulletin would occasionally text to warn his boss that Hugh is a bit slurry tonight. Other aspects of Edward's makeup emerged before and during the court appearance that would result in his suspended prison sentence for making pornographic images of children. He's a well caught in power. He did indeed feel at a disadvantage coming from Wales rather than the English Home Counties, though I never heard him fret about his accent. He did resent not getting to Oxford after failing to excel in the entrance interview. His relationship with his father, a professor of Welsh Language literature at Swansea University, was problematic, for he felt his dad would have preferred Hugh to be an academic rather than a journalist. Equally, however, he talked of him and his mother in nothing less than loving terms. Nor did the writer Burt invent Edwards late conversion to boxing training. But had he had invented it, it would have been a neat metaphor for his aggression. Edwards told me he had hurt people with his words, not his fists, and I believed him. Also, every digital encounter he has with Ryan on the film identifies Edward's reckless streak. He certainly had one. What, after all, was he doing? Having indiscreet lunches with a journalist? What else? Well, Clunes certainly captures the man's vanity. Our second lunch at the Woolsey in Piccadilly followed his well reviewed coverage of the Queen's death and subsequent pay bump, and it was a happy affair. And after it, he left me to visit his tie maker. I reckon the phone call from the BBCHR department came a few hours, perhaps only a few minutes later. There is one thing the drama does not depict, however, and that was that Edwards could be charming, bonhomous and very good company. He insisted on paying for both of our lunches, by the way. I say this not to paint Edwards in a better light, but to confirm that he presented different faces of himself to different people, alongside being a bully, a groomer, a liar, sexually repressed and a pervert. Being sociable was one of those faces, and without that side, I don't think he could have got as far as he did. Not just in his career, but also in his personal life, his life as for many years a happily married man and a father of five children, whom he was very proud of. Deirdre's I lunched with was very funny. He told me sweetly amusing stories about his widowed mother, who clearly had a dry sense of the absurd herself, and his character assassinations. Of his colleagues were even funnier. A generally admired colleague, whom he clearly saw as a rival, had become a monster. Another, from the political side of things, was probably a Tory and no master of detail. A third colleague was simply in the business for the money and a very greedy person. Well, this was office gossip of a very high order. After the screening, I told Clunes that I had admired his performance very much and that he had caught many aspects of the Edwards I've met. But I also mentioned that the film did not show Edwards, the museum raconteur who lunched for Wales. Martin Clunes looked astonished. He had talked to many people who had worked with Edwards and none had mentioned that side of him at all. Now we all rewrite our assessments of people all the time in light of new information, and I've written my assessment of Edwards, but he was surely one of the most highly discussed, disguised and complicated people you could meet and still not know. Clunes captures that, but perhaps not all of it.
- [17:47]
C
That was Andrew Billen, features writer for the Times in you can read his piece I've met Hugh Edwards. Here's what the TV drama gets right and wrong at the times.com the producer and sound designer today was Dave Creasy. I'm Manveen Rana and we'll be back tomorrow.
- [18:19]
G
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- [18:34]
H
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