While reporting for the BBC on the 2008 meltdown, Robert Peston was also
facing personal tragedy. He talks about the pain of losing his wife to
cancer, adrenaline addiction – and the haircut that spawned its own
Twitter account
A year or so ago, Robert Peston got a new job, and immediately felt
rather unwell. After 30 years as an influential business and political
reporter in Fleet Street, and eight as the BBC’s business editor,
reporting on the biggest financial story in half a century and breaking scoops so significant that he was at times accused of singlehandedly shifting the markets, he moved to become the broadcaster’s economics editor, and to a suddenly, shockingly, quieter life.
Though still busy, the release from the rat-a-tat round of results,
bonuses and resignations meant he was rarely called upon to be on hand
all day, from the Today programme in the morning to the Ten O’Clock News
at night, as had been commonplace before. The abrupt change of rhythm,
he says, left him feeling “almost physically ill for a few weeks, and I
was trying to work out what the hell was going on”.
“When you have been hooked on adrenaline for as long as I’ve been
hooked on it, actually coming off it was quite painful, and physical. So
there were a few weeks when I thought: what the bloody hell have I
done? Actually, now I rather like it because you do have a bit more
control of your time. But my God, it was a weird transition.”
Economics editor is hardly a small job, but its slightly slower pace
allows Peston time to take a more thoughtful, explanatory approach to
his subject matter, and for projects such as Quelle Catastrophe!, a new
documentary, broadcast on Friday, on what he sees as a potential
economic and political disaster looming across the Channel. This is the
man who revealed that Northern Rock, one of the biggest banks in the country, was technically insolvent, and that HBOS was in such peril
it needed an emergency rescue from Lloyds. So when Peston argues that
France could be heading for calamity, how alarmed should we be?
“I do appear to be the person who says, ‘It’s all about to go
horribly wrong,’” acknowledges Peston with a smile, but he adds that he
does have very serious concerns about France. Economic Cassandras have
been warning for years about the country’s unsustainably lavish public
spending. The rumbling unrest over spending cuts that has swept the
continent is accompanied, in France, however, by the very plausible
chance that the Front National leader Marine le Pen could be elected president
in 2017, on a platform that promises withdrawal from the EU,
renationalisation of major industries, protectionist tariffs and more.
“These are policies that we broadly associate with the 1930s and
with, frankly, years of economic slump,” says Peston. “And I think most
people would say they are very dangerous.”
It’s an entertaining film, in which Peston breaks out his impressive
French, gleaned during a year off in Normandy and an admittedly
pretentious teenage period watching nouvelle vague films (“When I was a
kid I was very, very, very angry with my parents for not being French”),
and whizzes through idyllic countryside in a 1960s Citroën DS – simply because he could, one suspects.
But he also succeeds in making a complicated subject compelling, and
if you want to know how to insert drama into dusty old economics,
imagine Peston on a busy Parisian street at dusk, sweeping into shot
like Bernard Henri-Levy
in a flowing coat and floppy scarf, pronouncing the phrase “SAVAGE
COLOSSAL AUSTERITY” to the camera. He has been lucky, if that is the
word, in the dramatic stories on which he has reported, but he is also
extremely good at what he does.
There is, of course, another reason why Peston’s sudden slowing down
after eight frantic years came as an almost physical shock. In the
summer of 2007, Peston’s wife, the writer Sian Busby,
was diagnosed with lung cancer, weeks before the banking system began
finally to totter. For five years, Peston grappled daily with a
whirlwind at work and “this horror” at home. Despite their determination
to live as if she would be cured, Busby died in September 2012 at the
age of 51. Their son, Max, was just embarking on his GCSEs, and Simon,
Sian’s son and Peston’s stepson, was in his mid 20s.
Does he look back now and wonder how he coped with so much turmoil,
all at once? Those years, he says, were “just about family, and ... you
know, and work. And literally nothing else.”
For the sake of the boys and at Busby’s insistence, very few people
knew just how ill she was. “This is a small thing, but on the night of
breaking the news that Northern Rock was bust, in September 07, there
was quite a lot of criticism that somehow I seemed a bit tense that
night when I was broadcasting. Well that was my first fucking broadcast
since Sian had had a chunk of her lung removed and chemotherapy. It was
literally my first broadcast since she’d had the first phase of her
treatment. And if I was a bit tense, it had absolutely nothing to do
with a story, it was just that my life was really quite challenging at
the time.”
He has talked openly and generously about his private tragedy for two
reasons. The first is to highlight the “public scandal” of how little
funding lung cancer receives compared with other cancers. The second was
prompted by the overwhelming response he received when he first wrote
about his wife’s illness and his own appalling loss. “I just felt it was
important to write and talk about these things, because we all benefit
from a sense of fellowship, that you are not alone when you are feeling
these awful, awful sadnesses,” he says.
Peston admits he was in shock after his wife died “and pretty closed
down”; even talking about moving on from that position is evidently very
difficult. And yet, he says, “a lot of time has elapsed, and I can’t
remotely say ... I still have terrible moments of sadness, and life
remains challenging. But Sian was somebody ... she would have had no
time for any of us wallowing in self-pity or any of that stuff. So we
have all done our best, and I have done my best, to get on with life and
build something.”
That attempt to breathe deeply and rebuild is also behind what he is happy to admit is a fairly striking new image. Search for a photograph of Peston around the time he joined the BBC
and you will be reminded of the sober, close-cropped chap in crisp
shirt and grey pinstripes who used to appear in our bulletins. Now he is
notably thinner, dashingly dressed (today in a flatteringly slim blue
suit, black coat with a flash of burgundy lining and bright turquoise
striped socks) and with the kind of floppy fringe that used to get you
sent to detention.
Peston’s hair has acquired its own Twitter account and attracted
approving commentary in Fleet Street’s fashion pages (in this paper, Imogen Fox described his new look
as “Mikhail Baryshnikov circa White Nights meets the autumn/winter 2015
Raf Simons catwalk”) and comparisons with everyone from Hugh Grant to Tim Burgess of the Charlatans. In the flesh, however, he looks lean, stylish and relaxed, and certainly younger than his 54 years.
Did he set out to change how he looked? “It wasn’t a conscious thing,
but I suppose if I was going to be, you know, unbelievably trite in my
analysis of it, it probably does in some sense represent me trying to
have some kind of a new start.” That may include a change of scene
professionally, he hints.
There have been rumours that Peston has applied for the role of
Guardian editor when Alan Rusbridger moves on later this year. So does
he want to be my new boss? He sidesteps the question with a joke, but
says: “I am 54 years old, and I would quite like a newish challenge at
some point. I have no idea what it would be. But I am giving quite a lot
of thought at the moment to what a newish challenge might be.”
In any event, “one of the really nice things in my life is I am
making new friends and I am able to do social things again, and not feel
guilty about them or funny about them.
“And that’s brilliant. The fact that I can have some sort of joy in
my life is brilliant. That is what I basically feel, that I am bloody
lucky that for the first time since Sian died, I can genuinely enjoy
myself. Which is amazing.”
