Sue MacGregor to leave 'Today'
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Sue MacGregor has put an end to months of speculation and named the day. The Today programme presenter, one of the best-loved voices on radio, will cease to be an early morning fixture from next February.
Ms MacGregor, 60, said yesterday that it had been "enjoyable, challenging, stimulating and, yes, occasionally exhausting" getting up at 3am to work on the programme for the past 18 years. "For a presenter, it's just about the best programme on BBC radio, and it's been a great privilege to have been there for so long. I shall miss it hugely," she said.
The Radio 4 controller, Helen Boaden, confirmed that Ms MacGregor's role will be shared between Edward Stourton, Allan Little and Sarah Montague. Another presenter who has been touted as the next Sue McGregor is Winifred Robinson, but she has told the BBC that she does not want to work an early morning shift because she has a young child.
Ms MacGregor's warmth and humanity have endeared her to the Today audience, but may have counted against her when it came to the adversarial political interviews for which Today is famed and which tend to be shared by John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie. Ms MacGregor said in The Independent's media section recently: "If there is a major political interview on the programme, it will not go to me. It will go to John or Jim."
She has said that her job as an interviewer is "to go for elucidation rather than to make a clever political point ... to pin them down on behalf of people out there who are not journalists". The popularity that she has commanded because of this approachis one of the factors that has made it hard for the BBC to fill her shoes.
Jenny Abramsky, the director of BBC Radio, paid tribute to Ms MacGregor, saying she had been a "towering figure on the radio landscape".
Ms MacGregor's first radio role after she has left Today will be as a castaway on Desert Island Discs.
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