Nick Robinson cried after his first appearance on BBC Radios 4’s Today Programme as he thought he wasn’t good enough

He went from being the BBC’s long-running political editor to the voice of Radio 4’s flagship Today Programme.

But despite over 15 years at the corporation and a top-grade CV, Nick Robinson has admitted he cried after his first appearance on Today because he didn’t think he was good enough.

The 60-year-old journalist, who took over from James Naughtie in 2015, said his voice had been so ‘scratchy’ during an interview with David Cameron that he was overcome with emotion.

Nick had had treatment for a bronchial carcinoid tumour and had lost his voice.

‘My first day was pretty memorable, not very relaxing. I just had cancer. Good news, the cancer had gone, but the voice had also gone,’ he said on The Today Podcast.

Candid: Nick Robinson, 60, has admitted he cried after his first appearance on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today Programme because he didn’t think he was good enough

‘Frankly, I should’ve given a bit longer to recover. There had been a terrorist attack in Paris, a bomb had gone off.

‘The Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to come on to react, and that was my very first interview. And as I started the interview, I thought my voice is just not performing.

‘And I came off air – I’m not sure I’ve actually said this before – I came off air and had planned to go for brunch outside, get a fry-up to celebrate and I cried.’

Co-host Amol Rajan asked if he had cried due to being sad and ‘scared that you’d screwed up’ or if it was the ‘culmination of a long-held dream’.

‘All of the above,’ Nick responded. ‘But in that moment – and you’re not always rational in these moments – I thought ‘That’s it. That just wasn’t good enough’. I thought, you know, if I were them, I might say ‘Hmm, thanks but no thanks’.’

Despite his doubts, Nick said Today editor Jamie Angus had ‘rushed over, grabbed a cup of coffee and couldn’t have been nicer about it’.

He said: ‘It takes other people to say ‘Don’t worry’ and in fact, I took a couple of days off to get the voice working a bit better because I’d got a heavy cold that’s why. It was particularly bad.’

Nick said he hadn’t cried after a show since and now only wells up ‘after sentimental movies’ or ‘things with the kids’.

How it was: ‘My first day was pretty memorable, not very relaxing. I just had cancer . Good news, the cancer had gone, but the voice had also gone’ explained Nick

The broadcaster, who has three children with wife Pippa, became the BBC’s chief political correspondent in 1999 before moving to ITN and then back to the BBC in 2005.

Amol, who joined Today in 2021 and took over from Jeremy Paxman as the host of University Challenge this year, said he suffered a panic attack after his first his first shift on the programme.

‘I turned up in state of some emotional disrepair because I couldn’t sleep and I came in slightly freaking out to be honest. I was just happy to survive,’ he said.

Amol, 40, said his anxiety is linked to trouble sleeping at night.

‘I do have trouble sleeping and sometimes I’ve had four or five hours, never more than that, and sometimes I’ve had one or two,’ he said.

‘Whenever you talk about anything that’s in the very, very big category that we now call mental health, I’m very wary of playing a victim or pretending that I’ve got anything special wrong with me.

‘I’ve got lots of amazing support and also I think there are people with much more serious problems than me but I will say that I had a massive panic attack, which I’ve talked about a bit in the past, before my first outing.

‘I’ve spoken to lots of professionals since as I’ve tried to sort this out and that did cause what some people would call a trauma, others would call an injury, it basically created a groove in my brain which associated the Today Programme with a difficulty in sleeping.

‘Generally speaking – I haven’t said this in public before – generally speaking, I do the show having not really been to bed.

‘But I do have an issue with lack of sleep which I’m trying to conquer and I figure the more I do programme the better I’ll get but I seem to keep having children.’

Amol has four children under the age of seven with wife Charlotte Faircloth.

While Amol gets up at 3am and is in a car on the way to work by 3.30am, Nick said he gives himself just 15 minutes to get out the house.

‘I learnt from John Humphries – I shave the night before, I’ve showered the night before, my clothes are ready the night before,’ he said.

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