I N T H E H O T S E AT
Iain Dale in the Hotseat POLITIC AL COMMENTATOR, BROADC ASTER, AUTHOR AND PODC ASTER IAIN DALE TALKS TO US ABOUT DOING HIS DREAM JOB, IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE HE’S EVER BEEN GIVEN.
Q
// Are you doing your dream job?
A// I I am doing my dream job. When you work for a commercial station (LBC), you constantly get asked whether you would rather work for the BBC. I always say no because I couldn’t do what I do on the BBC - I do three hours with no script whatsoever, I’m the editor of my own programme so I decide what we’re going to do along with my producers and we don’t very often disagree on anything. I get to interview famous people, I get to speak to ordinary people to really test the mood of the nation and I absolutely love it. I love doing breaking news stories, that’s when the adrenaline really flows - back in January when the Capitol Hill riots happened I covered that live from my bedroom. It was a broadcasting challenge, I didn’t have all of the studio information to go with, I had Twitter to look at and Sky News and I had to have my wits about me. There is no better adrenaline than covering a live breaking news story.
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My other dream job would have been Secretary of State for Transport. If I’d gone into Parliament that would have been the job that I was really trying to get because there are some Cabinet jobs where you can talk a lot but you can’t really change a lot. DCMS, for example, is something that I’d quite enjoy but what can you actually change as Culture Minister? Whereas transport every decision you make, or most decisions, will make an impact on somebody for good or ill. I was the transport lobbyist for a time in the 1990s, so it’s an area that I know a little bit about and I would have loved to have done that.
Q// Has it ever made you feel like an outsider in politics because you didn’t go to Oxbridge? A//
I went to a comprehensive school, I went to the University of East Anglia and even in my 30s and 40s, there was still something that made me feel slightly inferior to those that had gone to public school and Oxbridge. I can remember being in a group - it was George Osborne, David Cameron, Nick Boles and Ed Vaizey - and I kind of felt like a fish out of water. I can’t really describe it but there was some sort of barrier there, I think if you’ve been to public schools and Oxbridge you have an inner confidence which others don’t. There’s something that they do at public school which gives people an outward air of superiority. It was only when I got to about 50 when that disappeared and it’s not there anymore. I think it’s partly doing the radio show that has helped me do that because I literally have to talk about things that I have very little interest in or knowledge of, and I have to talk authoritatively about them. When I used to do ‘Any Questions?’ I would do a lot of preparation, I would write little cue cards for myself about possible topics but after each one I used to think that I didn’t really need to do that. And now, I just go in and do it, I don’t do a lot of preparation. I’ve worked out that I can talk about more or less anything without making a fool of myself. It goes back to imposter syndrome. I remember the first day I was working in the House of Commons in 1984, I was walking through the central lobby and I saw
