WELL-KNOWN journalist and broadcaster Amol Rajan recently left his role as the BBC’s media editor following a tenure of six years after he landed his latest gig as the new host of University Challenge.
Announcing his decision on Twitter in the first week of January, Rajan sent out a threat of tweets giving “elegiac” tribute to the unsung producers he worked with. He also urged BBC to give more credit to its backroom employees, calling the failure to do so a “moral, editorial, commercial, strategic and reputational missed opportunity”.
Rajan said he was delighted to become only the third host in the show’s 60-year history, following Paxman and the recently deceased Bamber Gascogine who had become synonymous with the programme –and regarded as the preserve of boffins, in street speech.
Rajan has been working with BBC since 2016, when he was appointed as Media Editor. He has been the presenter of its Media Show, a Masterchef critic, and the host of the Big Debate on the Asian Network. He has covered for Zoe Ball and Jeremy Vine on Radio 2, and been a regular stand-in on The One Show.
Through his work, Rajan tends to unabashedly question the class divide...
