Welcome to BBC Radio 2, where millions tune in each day to argue, confess, complain and, occasionally, agree. A single conversation can shape a national debate. It is a powerful, unpredictable world that few outsiders ever see… until now.
For nearly thirty years, Phil Jones was the guiding hand behind the station’s weekday lunchtime programme, first with Jimmy Young and later with Jeremy Vine, when it became Britain’s most popular news and current affairs show. From the studio control desk, Phil helped steer conversations with prime ministers including John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, global figures including Hillary Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev, and even Queen Elizabeth II in one of her rare unscripted conversations.
Part exposé, part memoir, this book also tells a deeper story. Woven through the drama of live broadcasting is Phil’s own family history, spanning some of the great events of the twentieth century including the suffragette movement, the trenches of the First World War, the Normandy landings and the shadow of Auschwitz concentration camp.
A revealing, funny and often startling insider’s account of how a nation talks to itself.
