For two days the broadcaster Eddie Mair had locked himself away in the study of his North London mews house reading two political biographies.
They were about Boris Johnson, the London mayor who would be his headline guest on Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show on BBC1.
Johnson, whose carefully contrived buffoonery has disarmed not only voters but seasoned interviewers as well, arrogantly assumed that Mair would be a walkover.
He could not have been more wrong.
While the 15-minute conversation began in a gentle enough manner there was one subtle clue that it was about to turn into the most chilling public inquisition of Johnson’s political career.
‘You always know when Eddie is about to turn up the temperature when there is a slight pause in his speech. It means he is turning into the assassin – about to go for the jugular,’ says one senior BBC presenter.
And so it was on Sunday morning as 47-year-old Mair asked a very flustered Boris about a number of notorious incidents from his past. The questions were based on Mair’s meticulous research of Johnson’s misdemeanours.
As that senior BBC presenter explained: ‘He will have read those biographies from cover to cover, and worked out in advance the structure of the interview. When he is on the attack he is relentless, never giving his subject time to recover before launching the next wave of the bombardment.’
Like so many broadcasters, Mair has a healthy ego – although he is careful not to impose it on his audience – and the ambition to match. Within minutes of the programme’s closing credits he knew from the extraordinarily positive reaction on Twitter that it was mission accomplished.
Andrew Marr, the regular presenter of the BBC1 show, is recovering from a stroke and there is already speculation Mair will replace him if he decides not to return.
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Humphrys is, of course, still peerless, but Mair’s mauling of the London mayor shows he is fast coming up on the rails. For years Mair’s deadpan delivery has been familiar to listeners of Radio 4 as presenter of the weekday PM programme.
His relaxed style conceals a ruthless approach to all his subjects. As Labour MP Diane Abbott says, he is ‘soft-spoken but deadly’.
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On Sunday morning, Eddie Mair asked a very flustered Boris Johnson about a number of notorious incidents from his past. The questions were based on his meticulous research of the London Mayor's misdemeanoursClash: Eddie Mair would have known within within minutes the reaction his grilling on Boris Johnson would have provoked
Like Humphrys, Mair never went to university and has come a long way from his humble upbringing in Dundee. His late father was a lorry driver and his mother Mary, to whom he is close, was a nurse. He has one sister.
He was educated in the local high school and his measured tones were first heard on the airwaves when he was chosen to make announcements over the tannoy in the school playground. He started work at Radio Tay aged 17, the summer before he was due to go to university and stayed on. From there, Mair joined BBC Radio Scotland.
Eddie Mair, pictured in 2001, never went to university and has come a long way from his humble upbringing in DundeeWhen Radio 5 Live was launched in 1994, he moved to London and began presenting a midday programme. His big break came in 1998 when he created the quirky Sunday morning show Broadcasting House with Radio 4 controller James Boyle and Kevin Marsh, who went on to edit Today.
James Boyle said of Mair: ‘He is never too intelligently pompous, but never too flippant. Guys who are low on the vanity factor make great broadcasters.’
A deeply private man, Mair rarely gives interviews. In 2006 he paid £675,000 for a mews house in Harrow, North-West London, with his partner Paul Kerley, who is a journalist working for BBC online.
They have never talked about their relationship, although keep-fit fanatic Mair is a regular fixture in the annual Pink List of influential gays.
His career moved into the premier league in 2003 when he became sole presenter of PM. According to the latest Rajar listening figures it has a reach of 3.91million people each week, second only to Today.
It was on PM that his rivalry with Robert Peston, the BBC Business editor, came into the open. Peston is notorious for his verbose sing-song delivery.
The enmity dates back to an exchange in January 2011 when Peston took offence that Mair failed to credit him with a ‘scoop’ about the Government retreating on its pledge to curb bankers’ bonuses.
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