Amol Rajan has crashed his final pips. He’s quoted his last philosopher. He’s got jungle music onto the Today programme for the very last time. This morning, he bade farewell to BBC Radio 4, bowed out to the Only Fools and Horses theme tune, and prepared to unleash his inner Del Boy, entering the “creator economy” with a new production company, a new YouTube show, and a “club”: The Amol Rajan Connection. As the self-proclaimed “Reithian rascal” – with his positive energy, breathless enthusiasm, easy laughter, south London accent and gold chain – leaves legacy media behind, he leaves Today in a stronger position than he found it.
Ever since he started on the Today programme in 2021, Rajan has been getting blamed for its decline. It’s become too lightweight, too casual, too personal, people complain. There’s too much focus on pop culture, too much focus on the presenters, too many mentions of “I” when it has always been “we” – a far cry, they say, from the stern tone and interrogations of John Humphrys at full pelt.
Humphrys himself had a rant in The Guardian earlier this year about how “irritating” the programme has become, citing “Rajan’s insistence on emphasising, without fail, the definite and indefinite articles in any given sentence. In his world, “A” bomb has exploded in “THE palace of Westminster.” He also mocked his patterns of speech and criticised the congratulatory gushing between interviewer and guest.
