When the familiar voice of Grumpy Humpy (my private designation) greets me, it is often not long before I am shouting back at the set. Usually it is along the lines of “You can’t say that, John”, or “Let the man finish the sentence, John.” I realise I am not alone in shouting at the radio, a more intimate medium than TV; nor in sometimes wishing that Radio 4’s national treasure should be reburied or, at the very least, dropped down a deep well to cool off.

In the face of ever-fiercer breakfast time competition, the Today programme’s listening figures are on the rise again, we are told. Good – it is part of the media spectrum that has not dumbed down. But these days I can often listen in chunks lasting no longer than half-an-hour before having to take a breather with a music station, loyally returning to Today where duty calls. I know plenty of grown-ups in the media, BBC journalists included, and in the world outside, who feel the same way. All of which may just be Old Fartdom, though I don’t think so. I am old enough to remember when Jack de Manio was in charge of the Today programme, if that is the right way to describe the role of a man who regularly misread the time for his busy breakfast audience. “Whoops, that was ten to eight, not ten to nine,” he would say, causing 10,000 listeners’ hearts to miss a beat.

Where my memory is less clear is whether de Manio properly discharged what the chattering classes (we did not yet call them that) are supposed to regard as Today’s prime duty: that of calling to public account the Great and Good who hold sway over our lives in so many ways. That is certainly John Humphrys’s own explicit view – in an era of big government majorities, when the Opposition is weak, someone must oppose. That doctrine is widespread among newspapers too, but the BBC has more power and a different function. Its prime duty is to sustain trust in what it says. Trust, not scoops, at which it has never been very good.

Though Britain was usually in a much shakier state in the de Manio era of weak governments, the Today programme seemed more chaotic and more fun, more light-hearted even. “Light-hearted” is not a description to apply to great swathes of the modern news media. On a bad day it manages simultaneously to be earnest and flippant (“Where will you ski when the Polar ice cap melts?”). Some of the newspapers – I name no names, Mr Dacre – seem permanently depressed, their readers in need of free Prozac rather than DVDs. But 50 years from its inception, the Today programme is still there, still Radio 4’s flagship news programme. Regarded as a branch of the family in our household, it remains essential listening for anyone in the news business who needs to assess which morning battle will dominate the coming day’s agenda. We have not deserted to Five Live or any of the many talk radio alternatives.

So when I am occasionally asked to make an appearance on the programme, I do so out of loyalty, not for the fee. It has been £29 for as long as I can remember and once, when I drove myself to Broadcasting House to save the BBC taxi money, they shifted my spot from 8.25 to 8.35 so that I got an a £30 parking ticket. It is (rightly) not BBC policy to pay parking fines, so I lost a quid plus tax. I have forgiven them. And yet and yet… family loyalty is under strain. I treat myself to Saturdays off Today duty and my wife’s rival chain of digital radios dotted around the house are tuned elsewhere. Why so? In a word, hectoring. There is too much hectoring, which in turn reinforces the relentless negativity that pervades Today like much of the modern media: bad news is always good news. Good news is tricky.

More than anyone other than the less influential Jeremy Paxman, Humphrys takes this hectoring stance to the borders of self-caricature: John Humphrys:“Why are you telling me lies, minister?” Hapless Minister: “John, I am not telling you...” JH:“Will you stop prevaricating...” HM:“Let me try and answer your...” JH:“Don’t interrupt when I’m interrupting.”

I exaggerate, but not much. Little wonder that some politicians, such as David Cameron, now attempt to play these tactics to their own advantage, appealing to the listener for fair play: “Let me first answer your last interruption.”

Part of what goads the interrogating classes, of course, is either spin – the propensity of a Blair or, especially, Brown to ignore the question and keep bulldozing on with the message – or bland or evasive answers. But who encouraged politicians to behave this tedious way? A media for whom every nuance of policy difference within a party is whipped up into a major split. We all do it, but we are not all, like the BBC is, licence-funded. I realise that Kevin Marsh, the Today editor who took over from the priapic boy racer, Rod Liddle, shortly before The Great Gilligan Disaster, has tried to draw back from the Torquemada School of Journalism and to lighten things up with enjoyably daft exercises, like Britain’s favourite painting. For his pains, Marsh (now moved on to start the BBC’s new College of post-Torquemada Journalism) has been accused by headbangers at the New Statesman and elsewhere of emasculating the programme’s inquisitorial and pro-active journalism in the post-Hutton era. Not during the half-hour chunks I hear, he hasn’t; not while farmer Humphrys draws breath over the radio gate.

A certain naivety

Naivety aside, the Corporation routinely and blissfully displays many of the collective characteristics one would expect from members of the welleducated metropolitan elite: to name a few, it is secular in spirit; it is pro- European and save-the-whale; it deplores racism more than it worries about class-related unfairnesses in society; it is wary of predatory capitalism, as well it might be given its own privileged, predatory status. No surprises there then. But crucial to the Grumpy Humpy question is the assumption that underlines much of the Corporation’s output, from current affairs to light entertainment – namely that the governing classes are a bunch of thirdrate crooks and liars who are in it to enrich themselves and let down the public.

No one exemplifies this world view better than John, which goes a long way to explaining his popularity and cult status. There is a lot of voter anger out there, as a quick visit to the blogsphere will confirm. We are all angrier than we were, often with far less justification. That courteous duo, Jim Naughtie and Ed Stourton, Today’s other male presenters, are more tentative, unconvincing when they venture into Humphrys’ “tough cop” role. They are teased mercilessly for it by the Daily Beast. Sarah Montague and Carolyn Quinn are women and thus not capable of aggression, which is, as every right-thinking Today listener knows, a male characteristic. Might that be why Margaret Beckett is one of the most successful ministers in dealing with Humphrys? Myself, I sometimes wonder whether the Today interviewer who strikes the most effective balance between affability and tenacity isn’t sports reporter Gary Richardson, who gets a lot of good stuff out of the sporting fraternity without accusing them of all being rapists.

Of course, a lot of people out there share the Humphrys view, famously expressed by the late H L Mencken as “Why is this bastard lying to me?”. John’s rottweiller instincts, underpinned by years of frontline reporting, is not offset by the air of polished detachment (I put it no stronger) conveyed by Jeremy Paxman. But it is imitated by less experienced or able youngsters who want to become the next John Humphrys. He is 62 and, so I read, due for contract renewal next year. Sooner or later the rottweiller vacancy looms.

How much does it matter? Quite a lot. It is complacent to assume that democratic politics are robust enough to go on being metaphorically mugged every day. It may prove to be the case, and the absence of an aggressive media in France has not prevented far greater democratic decay, to the point where the National Front got to the last presidential play-off. The causes and effects of democratic atrophy are complicated and widely noted across the industrialised world. One under-reported consequence is the decline in volunteers for public office: if Jacques Chirac or George W Bush are the best that systems can produce, it’s a cause for alarm. The most debilitating trait here, however, is not competence: politicians screw up or screw around, like everyone else (even at the BBC). So Charles Clarke deserved the multi-media duffing that the Home Office got over the non-deportation of foreign criminals. The real issue is the assumption that politicians are incompetent, their motives base and lacking in integrity.

Blair’s wings clipped

Neither side came out well. Both sides still believe they were “basically correct” in what they said at the time. Yes, I am sure Tony Blair still privately expects to find proof of Iraqi WMD stockpiles which he – and the late Dr David Kelly – both believed were there. Kelly was pro-war. And yes, I am aware that BBC heads rolled, as they should have done, and Blair’s did not, though voters clipped his wings severely on election day. Never glad, confident morning again for him. Yet John continues to enjoy glad, confident Today interviews at 8.10 of a weekday morning. Gilligan’s central charge, that Downing Street deliberately massaged the intelligence dossiers on WMD knowing key claims to be false (never seriously tested by the BBC suits until too late) did not survive Hutton’s scrutiny. Yet it is still widely believed. After all, it bears the imprimateur not just of the over-excitable Gilligan, but of honest John Humphrys, a man at least as convinced of his own rectitude as the prime minister. Yet it was wrong.

That the BBC’s trust level remains far higher than that of the Government is a tribute to Humphrys’s standing in the community. That may be healthy for democracy, but there is no iron law or precedent that confirms that it is. Blair is due to go soon, a mere stripling of 53 who has been at the eye of the national storm for less than a decade. John has been unofficial leader of the opposition for far longer. Time to draw stumps for him too? They will both find there is life – and much less aggro – outside the boxing ring of politics.