A measure of the speed and depth of Huw Edwards’ reputational collapse is that his appearance at Westminster magistrates court on Wednesday came just 14 months after he reached his career peak, presenting the king’s coronation. The presenter has already suffered disgrace and career ruin and could, when sentencing occurs on 16 September, face jail.
As always after such public catastrophes, the question quickly arises of to what extent the events were predictable or preventable. Last July, I fell out with a friend who is a senior figure at the BBC, to the point of not speaking for some time. He said it was completely unimaginable that early reports about his behaviour in the Sun could be true, let alone what has now emerged.
After the Sun alleged Edwards paid a 17-year-old for explicit images, police investigated and brought no charges. This led some media supporters to conclude that the presenter had been completely exonerated, whereas the BBC continued to explore the possibility of professional misconduct. That was seemingly enough to end his BBC career and now the Sun’s initial interest feels more than vindicated.
The view that this story was fanciful was very publicly shared at that time by close friends and ex-colleagues of Edwards, including Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. My opinion was that the newspaper reports were plausible and potentially only a detail in a grimier picture.
Edwards was not – either in behaviour or rumours pursuing him – another Jimmy Savile. But there had been talk for a long time of somewhat intense mentoring of younger members of staff. It was these, when teased on Newsnight, that led, rather than the Sun coverage, to his suspension by the BBC. Because of such stories, some wondered, before the scandals, how suitable Edwards was to judge the BBC Young Reporter competition, which offered mentorship and newsroom internships to school students.
There is no suggestion that this scheme ever led to abuse – Edwards was dropped as a judge last year – but questions may be asked about whether, so soon after the Savile scandal, sufficient safeguarding was in place to prevent another well-known TV face potentially exploiting power and popularity. The story is told that when a bigwig reporter last year sought permission – as BBC News staff must – to write a magazine piece defending Edwards as a victim of sensational red-top journalism, the ally was then told some details from the BBC internal investigation (acts not of criminality but of alleged professional misconduct). The leave-Huw-alone piece never appeared.
It may also seem relevant now that the presenter’s public persona often seemed visibly conflicted, even tortured. The French have an expression about someone being “happy in their skin”. In contrast, Edwards frequently seemed to wear his corporal and psychological form like a thorn-studded corset. While David Dimbleby, his predecessor, presented with a twinkle, Edwards threw off grimaces and tics. His office desks reportedly resembled a pharmaceutical car boot sale, stacked with remedies for many conditions to which he seemed prone.
Some of this visible unhappiness was perhaps career frustration. Edwards started meteorically – a graduate news trainee, then chief political correspondent, before becoming a main bulletin newsreader – but then found himself in a holding pattern. Even main presenter of BBC News at Ten – from 2003 until resignation – was just a pre-level. He craved the nearest that TV has to a constitutional position of power – fronting UK and US elections, budgets, referendums, Windsor weddings and funerals. Dimbleby, though, was the Elizabeth II of public service television – so impeccable and emblematic that no one was in a hurry for the succession.
Edwards had to wait until the 2015 and 2017 British polls to host the Friday morning wrap up after David Dimbleby anchored the overnight results show – with senior BBC executives on hand to prevent an unseemly fight for the chair – before, finally, in 2019, going solo. After that, one royal funeral and a coronation. Surely now he is doomed only ever to be a headline rather than a headline announcer.
Apart from legitimate questions over whether the Savile lessons went unlearned, BBC director general Tim Davie is also coming under pressure over the circa-£475,000 (including a £40,000 pay rise) of public money that Edwards banked in his final BBC year, despite serving a disciplinary/medical suspension for most of that time. In fact, employers have little legal choice but to pay staff while under investigation, and removed Edwards from the payroll before he was found guilty. Now we know the BBC were aware of Edwards’ November arrest, the lack of any tribute to the broadcaster in a terse valedictory statement in April – for which some criticised the corporation at the time – seems explicable and sensible.
Unless Edwards’ criminal offending directly involved the BBC or its premises (of which there is now no indication), the corporation’s greatest problem is its archive. Previous exposed or convicted BBC paedophiles – Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall – were removed from the archive as both moral censure and to prevent triggering for abuse victims. If this is done for Edwards – and Davie would surely not risk a debate over whether Edwards’ crimes were better or worse than others – an abyss in history will open up for documentaries and dramas using the common trope of news footage as an era-establishing time-code.
In programmes last September to mark the first anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the BBC was forced to clip ITN’s Tom Bradby or a BBC radio presenter announcing the solemn moment. This was far from ideal as a temporary move and would be cataclysmic as permanent protocol – for millions of Britons, Edwards’ slow, moist-eyed, black-tied, twice repeated announcement of the queen’s death is the equivalent of Walter Cronkite’s 1963 declaration on CBS of the death of President John F Kennedy.
It is easy to use footage from US broadcasters, should anything from the inauguration of President Obama (which Edwards also fronted) be required, but avoiding the BBC archive from all the Westminster and Windsor events he presented would remain a pain and shame for programme-makers.
It also seems likely that Edwards will be digitally removed – and another front person substituted – from various entertainments in which he appeared as himself, including Doctor Who, Psychoville and the James Bond film Skyfall. These gag-gigs often involved him announcing the end of the world. Now, in a professional sense, his has, Skyfall an appropriate metaphor for what will rank as one of the greatest British public plunges from success and celebrity.