HUMPHRYS

John Humphrys: Why Covid could kill off the big city dream… and we should all be grateful 

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He was just what you would expect a New York cop to look like. Big and tough and chewing gum with his gun strapped to his bulging belly and a bored look on his face. I was a slightly overawed 27-year-old who’d arrived in the U.S. for the first time in his life the night … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS ON SATURDAY: Has the virus killed off the cult of consumerism?

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There is a very old Jewish joke doing the rounds on Twitter. What’s the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? The pessimist says: ‘It can’t get any worse than this.’ The optimist says: ‘Oh yes it can.’ What makes it funny or, rather, deeply unfunny, is that they are both right. For those who … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS says the coronavirus crisis has been a tragedy but has had many benefits

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For a while it seemed to many of us that the nation just might be on the point of mutiny over the Government’s failure to get a grip on the crisis. Not enough testing. Not enough masks and gowns. Not enough information. Treated as children by a government that either had no strategy for coming … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: Keeping grandparents away from their loved ones is cruel

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Only the most foolhardy would announce publicly that they are contemplating defying an instruction designed to protect them. But what’s the point of hacks like me if we’re not prepared to take a chance now and then for something that really matters?  Especially if you’ve been in the trade for as long as me and … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: Why public’s common sense and courage has been the real inspiration in this crisis

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Every crisis throws up its heroes. A week ago we’d never heard of Captain Tom. Now the world knows him. Yet all he’s done is walk around his garden. But of course that’s not the point. It’s the spirit he has shown that has inspired us. We don’t know the names of all those NHS … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: I feel a chill when our politics goes in the deep freeze

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As close encounters go, it was the sort most of us have probably experienced at least once over the past few weird weeks.  The lines in my small local supermarket had been clearly marked. There was one customer in front of me and she was fishing around in her bag for her credit card. I … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: I fear we’re risking lockdown apartheid

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The late afternoon sun still had enough warmth to make sitting in my garden a delight. The blackbirds were competing with the robins and a woodpecker was drilling out the occasional rhythmic drum roll — the perfect contrast to the lament of a dove somewhere in the distance.  The hoverflies had made a welcome early … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: Coronavirus presents very difficult waters

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We are all preparing for CV-Day in our own ways. That’s the day when the virus reaches its peak and the phoney war is over.  The last real phoney war began when we declared war on Germany and it ended when the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries in 1940.  It took another five … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: I’m not cheering the £1trillion ‘Gambler of the Exchequer’ 

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Britain is borrowing again. Big time.  Remember the old joke about the American general giving evidence to a congressional committee about spending on armaments? ‘You spend a million here… a million there… pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ It was funny then because a million really was a lot of money (I said it was … Read more