Presenter of Radio 4's Today admits he is the product of affair
It is the sort of salacious revelation that appears in the pages of celebrity magazines, but would rarely warrant a mention on the Today programme.
But Justin Webb, a presenter on Radio 4's breakfast news show, has surprised colleagues by using an article in the Radio Times to admit he is the product of an affair his mother conducted with Peter Woods, the TV reporter and newsreader who was a household name in the 1960s and 70s.
Webb used the article, published this morning, to write that Woods had an affair with his mother, Gloria Crocombe, while working at the Daily Mirror; she was a secretary and Woods a star reporter.
Woods went on to work for the BBC in 1960, one of the first print journalists to make a successful transition to the screen, and also worked for ITN during a long and successful career. He retired in 1981 and died in 1995.
Webb, previously the BBC's Washington correspondent, was told about his father's identity at a young age but said he never contacted him, even when he chose to follow the same career.
"I cannot even remember wanting to tell anyone, it was that deeply buried," he writes. "And when I left university and wanted to join the BBC, I applied for a traineeship.
"He was by then retired but very much alive, and I can honestly say that I never thought of making contact. I built my career without consciously aping his; without giving him much of a thought."
Webb told the Guardian that not knowing his father had not affected him. "You know how it is as a child; you just accept things," he said.
He added his hand had been forced because he suspected the story of his father's identity, although not widely known, may have been sold to a tabloid newspaper. "I know there's someone who knows and he's toyed in the past with flogging the story," he said.
Webb, 50, added: "If you are older than me you remember [Woods] well, because in the 70s there weren't too many [TV journalists] and they were very famous. People would swoon when they walked past ? including my mother."
Webb, whose mother was sacked after she became pregnant by Woods, said he thought Woods, who married twice, had behaved badly and "caused a lot of trouble for his own family".
He said was willing to talk about him publicly partly because Woods's ex-wife and Webb's mother are also dead.
Woods is best remembered for slurring his words at the end of BBC news bulletin in 1976, which prompted the corporation to end the broadcast suddenly.
"It was almost as bad as saying the 'C' word on the Today programme," Webb said, referring to a more recent on air-gaffe when his co-presenter Jim Naughtie memorably used a four-letter word to refer to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt live on air last year after mixing up his words, an incident Naughtie dismissed at the time as "a spoonerism".
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/18/justin-webb-father-mystery
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