Tom Bradby on surviving Election Night: 'You feel like you've been punched in the face for eight hours'

Unlike Burnet, Day, or so many of the greats of Election Nights past, Dimbleby is, of course, still very much with us, even if the BBC dispensed with his services in 2019. Do they talk about their shared trade, master to apprentice? “Yes, he lives just round the corner. I bump into him all the time. We chat for hours. I wouldn’t say he gives me feedback, but we always have long and funny chats.”

Does he think Dimbleby will be tuned to ITV come 10pm Thursday? “I wouldn’t dream of making any assumptions about where he was going to watch Election Night,” he says, his eyes twinkling behind a pair of oversized tortoiseshell spectacles. It sounds like a yes.

We’re talking in Bradby’s London flat, five floors up in a stuccoed Victorian terrace, a brisk 15-minute walk from Westminster. He has just flown in to London after seeing family abroad, a brief stopover on his way to Winchester where he lives with his jewellery designer wife Claudia, their house now an empty nest since his three 20-something children – two sons and a daughter – left home.

He’s as laid-back as he appears on screen – “Don’t Panic, Captain Mainwaring” reads the legend on my mug as we sip tea in the late afternoon sunshine – every inch the unflappable voice of the news, whose easy charm and polish have made him friends not just among broadcasting royalty but real royalty, too. (Not that he talks about either Princes Harry or William these days. “I’ve taken the decision to keep my mouth shut.”)

“I actually signed the News at Ten contract the day I came in to do the 2015 Election Night,” he says. An ITN lifer, whose route from graduate trainee to grand fromage has taken in roles in Ireland, Washington and London, where he was first the royal correspondent and then political editor, he’s been a constant presence on our screens for more than three decades. “I never get nervous on live TV but on that day I thought, ‘God, I hope I don’t screw this up, because I only signed my contract two hours ago.’

“I really loved being political editor, but when the head of news and current affairs at ITV asked me what I wanted to do with my career, I said I’d love to do Election Night. It tops everything.” He considers it the ultimate test for a news anchor, a marathon race of nerve and skill that begins at 10pm and ends just before breakfast the following day.

“You’re at the centre of a fascinating unfolding narrative. My kids have taken the piss out of me for years – ‘Dad reads aloud for a living’ – and I’m the last person on the planet to say that being a TV presenter is rocket science. Transparently it’s not. But in the middle of Election Night stuff happens really quickly, seats come thick and fast, and you have to talk about it for eight hours.”

How does he navigate that? “There are all these weird things we get up to. Like, if you can’t go to the loo, how are you going to manage? I’ve worked out that if I don’t drink from 5pm but then start drinking again at 3am, I don’t get too dehydrated. And you’ve got chocolate, bananas and nuts to keep you going.”

What about the mental gymnastics? “Sometimes you get to the end of the night and realise you have had no personal reaction to the news at all, because all you’ve been doing is thinking about the next five minutes and the questions you’re going to ask. You come out and the whole world has had time to react and you just feel like you’ve been punched in the face solidly for eight hours.”

With the polls indicating that this time around we’ll have the most one-sided election in living memory, will that make things easier, more predictable, perhaps even boring? “Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the polls are right and Labour gets a really big majority, the Tories are in very, very difficult territory and, in Scotland, the SNP have a really bad night. You’re into three completely fascinating stories straightaway. Does having a really big majority mean Labour can govern differently from if they had a majority of 20? Do the Tories merge with Reform? And in Scotland is independence off the agenda for a generation?”

On Thursday, Bradby will have by his side three big beasts of the political jungle better placed than most to answer those questions. Former cabinet secretaries Ed Balls and George Osborne are back, reprising their ITN general election double act that began in 2017, continued in 2019 and has since launched a podcast. But joining them this year will be Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland and ex-leader of the SNP, who barely 12 months ago was arrested in connection with a police investigation into the funding and finances of the SNP. It turns out hiring her was Bradby’s idea.

“I thought after 2019, how do we take it to the next level? Who do we put in there who people would be really interested in watching go from politician to analyst? I went up to Scotland and very carefully laid out over lunch how interesting it is to be an analyst and not have to stick to a party line. I think that’s what appealed to her. She’s up for new challenges. She was one of the pre-eminent figures of her generation and she’s looking for the next phase in her life.”

While some might question the wisdom of hiring a figure being scrutinised by an ongoing police inquiry, Sturgeon does at least add a change of tone to a top table that some TV producers might condemn as pale, male and stale. We’ve come a long way since a bunch of middle-aged white men had the general election stage to themselves. Does he feel exposed to the winds of change?

“I don’t particularly, because that’s not my decision. That will be someone else’s decision. There aren’t many white male anchors left, dare I say, so I feel a bit less nervous about that than possibly I should. You just put your head down, do a good job and try to be as nice as you can to everyone around you. As you get older, you think, ‘Will I be remembered as somebody who was decent to work with?’ Because that’s what you want to be remembered for. It’s much easier to have that perspective when you’re older.”

Bradby’s outlook on life has changed dramatically in the last few years. In 2018 he had a breakdown. The underlying cause, he says now, was the death of his parents. But the trigger was insomnia. “When I was having my breakdown, I went from thinking I was OK to being in really significant crisis, very fast. Because if you don’t sleep at all the night before doing News at Ten, then you are terrified you’re not going to be able to sleep again and you think, ‘How am I going to do News at Ten tomorrow?’ Then you can’t sleep because you know you must sleep and you go into crisis. Even if your body has injected enough adrenaline into your system to get to functionality by 9.50pm.”

In the end he stepped back from presenting duties and sought help. “I went to one of Britain’s best psychiatrists and my life changed completely. I carry very little stress around in my life now and I sleep soundly every night. It’s a marvellous feeling to wake up and not worry about things.” What sort of things? “Like having to get to the top of the tree. The psychiatrist was pretty relentless about that. He’d ask, ‘Why do you care what people think of you?’ In the end, you get ground down and think, ‘OK, maybe it’s better not to worry about it.’ I still really want to succeed, but fundamentally if something doesn’t go well, or people say bad things, I can’t control it. So I don’t worry about it.”

Television is an industry built on stress, success and fragile egos. After speaking about his breakdown in a series of interviews, he found himself being sought out by others from TV newsrooms. “I ended up having two-hour conversations with people who I don’t really know. When you’re in crisis, you don’t know what to do and I suppose people think, he was open about it, and they ask for a chat. After this is printed no doubt, I’ll get a whole bunch more. I find it great. It’s enhanced my life.”

On Election Night he will be going up against a pair of double acts – Clive Myrie and Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC and Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. The corporation’s pairing replaced Huw Edwards, who’d been the BBC’s election anchor in 2019 but ended up in hospital last summer with what his wife called serious mental health issues after he was caught in an explicit photo scandal. He has since left the BBC.

Does Bradby think he could have helped? “Yes, probably, a bit. You think about the world differently once you’ve had a breakdown and spent a lot of time talking about the stresses and strains we place on ourselves. The demands we feel we must meet and the standards we must achieve. Once you’ve had a chance to rethink it, you’re bound to view the world differently. I definitely do.”

When he’s not presenting elections or the news, Bradby writes thrillers and screenplays. He says he has three careers. ITV recently announced it will be turning his novel Secret Service into a drama, which starts filming next year.

“I wrote it in that period after I started News at Ten. When I look back, it’s obvious that the female MI6 agent at the heart of the book is on the cusp of having a breakdown. If you follow the trilogy through, she does have a breakdown and then recovers. But when I go back and read it now, I can see this woman is psychologically on the edge. And I was psychologically on the edge when I wrote it. But I didn’t know it. Which possibly makes me look a bit stupid. But hey ho.”

It’s an admirably phlegmatic approach. One that will no doubt serve him well in the heat of the studio lights at 3am on Election Night. Can he imagine a time when he would give it all up to spend more time with his novels?

“I’ve been at ITN for 34 years. I’m pretty institutionalised. I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was 17. I can’t imagine waking up one day and not wanting to do this.” He may be the last of the election news anchors standing, but he’s not ready to set sail for the sunset yet.

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ITV's Election Night coverage will air throughout the night on Thursday 4th July.

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