Expert knowledge

Peter Jay was afforded a minute and a half obituary on the late BBC News last night. It started with a piece to camera from his time as BBC Economics Editor, reminding us how bad he was at bulletin pieces. His voice went up in pitch and he tried to speed his delivery. He volunteered contributions on grand themes, then struggled to use words and thoughts in an accessible way. Which was sad, because, with John Birt, he had made the case that tv news had an inherent 'bias against understanding', partly because of a reliance on pictures and partly because bulletins were too short.  It needed, he argued, real experts to explain things. 

Peter Jay was an early Birt hire when he arrived at the BBC as Deputy Director General, in 1987; Jay joined in 1990. The Birt/Jay thesis had been developed when they worked together at LWT's Weekend World.  But in later life, Jay was more frank about his expertise.. or lack of it.

"At Christ Church at Oxford I did the proverbial PPE, majoring almost entirely in philosophy. I subsequently passed myself off as an economist which was a bit of a cheek really because I rather neglected my economic studies when doing PPE." 

That wasn't all he neglected - the other P, 'Politics' got little attention ahead of exams, despite his father being Labour politician Douglas Jay: "I had completely neglected politics. I read the Political History paper with mounting despair and having read all the questions except the last, I realised there was not a question there I could begin to answer. The last question, however, said explain the dominance of the Conservative Party since 1951 (this was in 1960). Well, this was the story of my life, and I seized a piece of paper and began writing instantly. I wrote non-stop for 3 hours on this one answer, based entirely on my father’s table-talk and walking-talk. I got away with that, even though that was the only answer I offered."

He eventually parlayed his First in PPE into a Civil Service job, and, within six years, had no doubt how important he became, before George Brown refused to work with him (Jay had married Jim Callaghan's daughter Margaret) " I had about eighteen months in charge of the education budget, which was the largest single budget in the whole government – even bigger than defence. Yes, it was a big

responsibility. But, partly as a result of being prematurely pushed out of the Private Office because of George Brown’s intervention, I had been promoted to the rank of Principal rather earlier than I  otherwise would have been." 

He was an early fan of monetarism, and Polly Toynbee (another Birt hire, as Social Affairs Editor) believed he let politics into his reporting, writing in 1997: "One thing everyone knows about Peter Jay, economics editor and setter of the tone of Euro and business reporting, is that he has always been profoundly anti-EU. And he has Panoramas under his belt to prove it."

Peter Jay and Margaret divorced in 1985, after both had affairs while he was US Ambassador; Margaret had already headed back from Washington and was working on more and more editions of Panorama. Peter spent eleven years at the BBC; he managed to acquire small offices, off the beaten track, with a suspicion that he was abusing smoking rules. Even while employed, he would write letters to the Press from his preferred lunchtime/afternoon venue, The Garrick.