OK, SO THAT’S ME. AMOL. THE DUDE IN THE SHADES

And over there in the top left corner of your screen too, in case you missed it. That's me too. Welcome to my (digital) world.

What should I say? I always find those ‘About’ sections on personal websites boring, reductive, and lacking in real insight into the character at hand. They tend to be the sort of thing you might have found on Wikipedia: career highlights. I think most of us have two careers, corresponding to the two types of wealth: material wealth, also known as money; and moral wealth, also known as love. When we die, and mourners gather, and hopefully a few people say kind things, it is always the moral career they focus on. Our kindness is the stuff of eulogies; not this or that promotion we received, or job we did for a while.

And yet it's the material career that I'm going to write about in this Autobiography. That's partly because I'm actually quite private about what matters most to me: my family and friends. You won't find pictures of my kids on the internet. I think there should be a private domain beyond the ken and purview of the public. Also, my family life is probably quite boring to you. So I'm going to tell you a bit about my public-facing life. Maybe some of the more personal bits will spill out over time. For now, I’ll keep this brief. The memoirs can wait.

I should say at the outset that I do genuinely believe all my past career has been but a preparation for The Amol Rajan Connection. That's one of the things that so excites me about it.

Beginnings

I was born in Calcutta, as it was back then, on July 4, 1983. My dear Maharashtran Mum, Sunanda (one of 14 siblings), and my dear Tamilian Dad, Varada (one of 11), were there because she got a posting from the ammunition factory she worked for, in her native Pune, and he got a posting from Uco Bank, where he was destined for the top.

I have an older brother who I adore unconditionally, despite the fact that he is taller, stronger, richer, smarter, faster and better-looking than me. Apparently we lived a lovely life in Calcutta, while my parents worked not far from Eden Gardens, one of the biggest cricket grounds in the world. I’d love to go some day. When I was 3, we moved to England and London in 1986, my dear Dad having received a posting. We started out in Thames Village in Chiswick, and I went to Strand-on-the-Green school.

When I was recording my Mum's Desert Island Discs recently - a sacred experience; you must do it for your parents if you haven't already but still have the chance - I learned that we were due to go to Hong Kong but, at the last minute, the bank changed their mind and sent us to London. Sliding doors, and all that. I wonder if there is a Cantonese version of University Challenge I might have ended up hosting.

By a tremendous stroke of luck, when Uco Bank called my dear Dad back to India, he had a conversation with a client of his. This wonderful man, S P Nair, suggested that he have a conversation with another wonderful man, his son-in-law, Pradeep Menon. Pradeep, who is one of the best humans you could ever encounter, ran a trading company, and needed a General Manager. He soon met the best candidate on the planet - that is, my Dad.

So we stayed in London. Initially, we moved from Chiswick to Hendon for a few months, renting on Montague Road. The house was cold; the landlord, tricky. My dear Dad had a colleague who lived on Lessingham Avenue in Tooting. There was a house for sale; one of those old, 2-bedroom ex-council houses. Tiny garden, miniscule kitchen, but there were only 4 of us. And so it was that I came to be a South Londoner.

Education

I went to Hillbrook Primary School and then Graveney Secondary School. Both were fantastic. In January I had lunch with my old Head-teacher from Hillbrook, and it was magical. But mostly I spent my time playing cricket, at Sinjuns CC on the corner of Trinity Road and Burntwood Lane. This arose because of a very specific event on June 4, 1993. In the headline to the Nine O’Clock News, as it then was, and we always sat down to watch as a family, Shane Warne - cricket’s answer to Debbie Harry - bowled his first ball in Ashes cricket to Mike Gatting. The ball swerved in the air from left to right, pitched, and spun so violently the other way that it beat the Englishman’s bat and took his off-stump. It became known as the Ball of the Century. Warne always claimed it was a fluke. I think of it rather as something closer to divine Providence; indeed, that all sporting history until that point had been but a prologue to Warne’s genius, and all subsequent sporting history but a postscript.

Anyway, I idolised Warne, and spent my childhood trying to emulate him. I was pretty good, but a million miles from good enough. At 17, I was dropped by the Surrey Under-17 squad. Around this time, I developed psoriasis, a skin condition, and various patches of my teenage body were covered in what looked like fish scales. I grew out of that, and applied to Cambridge University. Getting in there was probably the greatest stroke of luck in my life. They told me to take a gap year, during which I worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in 12 months that coincided almost exactly with 9/11 and the year after.

Those Cambridge years were halcyon, numinous and a taste of probably the greatest privilege our species has yet invented. All my closest friends hail from those days; my wife was in the year above me. There is so much to say about those times, how much we read and raved, laughed and loved, but they really must wait for the memoirs. The bit I probably ought to mention here is that I did plenty of student journalism, and became Editor of Varsity, the student newspaper.

First Job

I’ve often reflected on why I chose the career I did. Mark Zuckerberg, who is a few months younger than me, bet his future on Tech. I went for News, silly old romantic that I am. Actually my first job had been as a waiter in Wandsworth Common, at a cafe called Common Ground. My mate Simon and I had answered an ad in a local paper, offering to clear out the cellar. We got upgraded to waiters, and didn’t have a clue. I served Gordon Ramsay once, and he was charming.

After university, I did a very brief stint at the London Evening Standard, writing terrible editorials. And then I got a call to do a screen test for a Channel 5 show called The Wright Stuff, with the legendary Matthew Wright. It was basically a radio phone-in show on TV. They had my number because, in my final term at Cambridge, I’d participated in a Channel 5 show with Tony Blair during the 2005 election campaign. It was called ‘Talk to the Prime Minister’, was presented by Kirsty Young, and I was gobby as hell. On The Wright Stuff, which had very early starts - though not as early as ‘TODAY’ 15 years later. I was the bloke in the audience in black t-shirt and headset, corralling regulars in the audience who came in off the street knowing they could get a croissant and subsidised travel. There were moments of farce. Matthew was a phenomenal boss, mentor and journalist: one of the sharpest minds I’ve come across. One day in 2007, Simon Kelner, the visionary Editor of The Independent, came on the panel, after Tony Blair had singled out The Independent in a speech about the media being a pack of feral beasts. In the ad break, I asked him for a job. I then made sure he had to walk past me to get out of Whiteley’s Shopping Centre, where it was filmed. That’s how I managed to procure his email address. A few months later, in August 2007, I was a news correspondent for The Independent in its then home, in London’s Docklands.

Newspapers, the BBC, and Fatherhood

I’ve gone on a bit about all the above because those are the bits that I don’t often talk about, and that you can’t find on my Wikipedia page. In terms of what came next, it’s been a wild ride, and a wonderful preparation for The Amol Rajan Connection.

At The Independent, I wrote editorials and edited columns, worked for the paper’s owner, and then, when I was 29 and on a stag do in Barcelona, became the Editor. It’s true that I was the youngest Editor of a ‘broadsheet’ title in Fleet Street history - Piers Morgan edited the News of the World at 28 - but the claim that I was the first ethnic minority editor requires you to overlook Rachel Sassoon Beer, and I’m not prepared to do that. Interestingly, she was born in India.

In 2016, when The Independent shut its print edition, I moved to the BBC, as its first Media Editor. This meant leading the Corporation’s coverage of global technology and media, in a period of huge turmoil and revolution in those sectors. I loved it. As I’ve loved all of my decade at the BBC, where I’ve presented many shows, some of which are collected in the Archive elsewhere on this website.

In May 2021, I joined the TODAY Programme, the most influential news programme in Britain, where I worked with a world-class team. And a couple of years later, I succeeded the great Jeremy Paxman as host of University Challenge, Britain’s oldest TV quiz. I feel an immense sense of humility, duty and love toward that sainted show.

Family

You’ll have noticed this brief Autobiography has rather sped up. The main thing that was going on in these fast, wonderful years was at home, of course. I married Charlotte in 2013; we have 4 children: Winston, Jamaica, Loveday and Nesta. My devotion to them is eternal and unconditional, and that’s about as much as I’ll say about them here.

My dear Dad died in January 2022, which in emotional terms has been the biggest event of my adult life. Much bigger than becoming a parent. It just really went to the root of my character, and performed some acrobatics there. Barely a few weeks later, Warne died. And more recently, my best friend during those Cambridge days died. He was just 40.

These confrontations with mortality, and the realisation that Mortality is our Master, have made me think extremely hard about what I want to do with my remaining time on Earth. One thing is: extend that time. I have become healthily obsessed with longevity, a huge new passion of mine, which I express through running, intermittent yoga, and a lot of kettle bell action.

In general, I’m someone who has an internal locus of control. I feel a strong sense of Agency, that I can determine the future. Maybe it’s an illusion. But I like that feeling, and want to act on it. Life is so damn short. All life and civilisation might just be the flicker of a tiny candle in the infinite darkness. I want to make the most of this organic sojourn. I want to build and see and visit and grow and experience as widely as I can. I want to be a winner, not a whinger; a victor, not a victim. And I want above all to be noble and useful in the world. To increase knowledge, fight injustice, and spread love.

You might know a bit about passions of mine, like social mobility and helping kids from rough and tough backgrounds; or reggae; or books. I hope you’re going to get to know more about them. But for now I think I should really leave it there, other than to say, if you’ve come this far, maybe you’ll come a little further. Thank you so much for joining me on the journey.

The best is yet to come.