Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg would always rush the experts, pressuring them to get to the point asap. I found him a bit off-putting and even rude at times, but it was what made made the show unique and never stagnant.

I found it so off-putting, I couldn't really listen to the show. On some episodes he would basically lead them through his notes, as if he were the expert and was having to suffer these people explaining things badly to him.

Bragg has been a strong force in intellectual culture in the UK for many decades. I remember my Mum and Sister being upset by a trailer for The South Bank Show back in the early 1980s, and he was a prominent "elder statesman" figure of the media by then, really - so he's had very good run.

But to be honest, I am hoping we get somebody a little bit less frumpy and grumpy picking up the space he will inevitably leave behind. I just hope it's not closed down and we end up with more middling dross.

His notes, of course, were assembled by his producers, based on the notes & writing of those academics (and others, I'm sure, thus the weekly reading list). He sometimes made reference to this, saying things like "Well you said it in your notes; what did you mean?"

You do realise that those notes, are notes provided to him by the experts he is talking to, right?

I mean his whole job was to make sure that the conversation didn't get too wildly off topic. I have to say I appreciated his nudging based on his notes.

In this day and age it seems like people get a soap box and get to say whatever they want without interruption. Someone needs to keep things in order and he did a fantastic job curating the show.

Without his personality driving the show I suspect it will have a tough time finding it's footing.

That's the only way they managed to cover such big subjects in relative depth in such a short slot! All the guests are used to waffling for a full uninterrupted hour to captive audiences about tiny segments of each topic; without that pressure the show couldn't exist.