"Hello Jim. Hello John"

For the millions of ardent fans of Thought For The Day, Today's daily offering of short religiously-inspired talks - though the word 'inspired' doesn't always spring to my mind while listening to many of them -, here's a list I prepared earlier which may be of interest. 

If you're bursting to to know whether Giles Fraser has been on more than Angela Tilby, here's your chance to find out. 

Does the BBC monitor such things? If it does it has never revealed its figures for TFTD for public consumption - as far as I'm aware.

The BBC website used to have a dedicated archive for past editions of TFTD since February 2001 which listed every appearance by individual speakers. They stopped updating the archive in April last year and removed the page altogether earlier this year. That means that tracking who’s speaking on TFTD either becomes a slog from each page of the Today programme’s archive (with its occasional gaps) or, much easier, a run through the (ever-amusing) archive at ‘Platitude of the Day’.

I did a tally a year or so ago, after someone on another blog wondered whether a FOI request could be put in to get the BBC to give figures for TFTD speakers. (He had his reasons for that. He thought they were inviting too many Muslims on.). Updating it to include all recent editions of TFTD thus provides a complete record from February 2001 to 3 August 2012.

The following list shows the number of talks given by TFTD speakers over the last eleven and a half years, in descending order (with their religious affiliation, for added spice):

Tom Butler 166 Christianity

Anne Atkins 150 Christianity

Jonathan Sacks 146 Judaism

Richard Harries 143 Christianity

Roy Jenkins 136 Christianity

Rob Marshall 130 Christianity

Angela Tilby 129 Christianity

Indarjit Singh 128 Sikhism

Alan Billings 126 Christianity

Giles Fraser 122 Christianity

Mona Siddiqui 121 Islam

Rhidian Brook 120 Christianity

Clifford Longley 118 Christianity

James Jones 112 Christianity

David Winter 107 Christianity

John Bell 107 Christianity

Lionel Blue 104 Judaism

Akhandadhi Das 99 Hinduism

Catherine Pepinster 83 Christianity

Joel Edwards 83 Christianity

Colin Morris 80 Christianity

Elaine Storkey 78 Christianity

Brian Draper 77 Christianity

Abdal Hakim Murad 67 Islam

Rosemary Lain-Priestley 51 Christianity

Vishvapani 51 Buddhism

Dom Antony Sutch 47 Christianity

Oliver McTernan 46 Christianity

David Wilkinson 40 Christianity

Lucy Winkett 40 Christianity

Jim Thompson 34 Christianity

Martin Palmer 31 Christianity

Lesley Griffiths 30 Christianity

Jeevan Singh Deol 29 Sikhism

Michael Banner 27 Christianity

Johnston McMaster 25 Christianity

Huw Spanner 21 Christianity

Christina Rees 19 Christianity

Harvey Thomas 19 Christianity

Lavinia Byrne 19 Christianity

Graham Jones 17 Christianity

Cristina Odone 14 Christianity

Satish Kumar 14 Jainism

Russell Stannard 12 Christianity

Gabrielle Cox 11 Christianity

Laura Janner-Klausner 9 Judaism

Rowan Williams 9 Christianity

Eric James 8 Christianity

Jonathan Bartley 8 Christianity

Cormac Murphy-O’Connor 7 Christianity

Shagufta Yaqub 7 Islam

Gavin Oldham 5 Christianity

Jonathan Gledhill 5 Christianity

Vincent Nichols 5 Christianity

Annabel Shilson-Thomas 3 Christianity

Antonia Swinson 3 Christianity

Jo Ind 3 Christianity

Madeleine Bunting 3 Christianity

Mark Christian 3 Christianity

Hamza Yusuf 2 Islam

Penny Faust 2 Judaism

Raj Sharma 2 Hinduism

Alan Woodrow 1 Christianity

Anna Magnusson 1 Christianity

Benedict XVI 1 Christianity

Bishop Angaelos 1 Christianity

Brian Protheroe 1 Christianity

Courtney Cowart 1 Christianity

David Hope 1 Christianity

David Wilkes 1 Christianity

David Wells 1 Christianity

Duncan Green 1 Christianity

Farhan Nizami 1 Islam

George Carey 1 Christianity

Gilleasbuig Macmillan 1 Christianity

Ian Sherwood 1 Christianity

Jerome Murphy O’Connor 1 Christianity

Jimmy Morrison 1 Christianity

John Barton 1 Christianity

John Sentamu 1 Christianity

Julia Neuberger 1 Judaism

Keith Patrick O’Brien 1 Christianity

Kevin Franz 1 Christianity

Khaled Fahmy 1 Islam

Maurice Michaels 1 Judaism

Mary Steel 1 Christianity

Michael Sanders 1 Christianity

Michael Symmons Roberts 1 Christianity

Nicholas Papadopulos 1 Christianity

Richard Thomas 1 Christianity

Robin Eames 1 Christianity

Yunus Dudhwala 1 Islam

There have been 92 individual speakers on TFTP. The number of speakers representing each religion breaks down as follows:

Christianity 73

Islam 7

Judaism 6

Hinduism 2

Sikhism 2

Buddhism 1

Jainism 1

There have been 3443 TFTDs over that period.

This is the total number of talks given by representatives of each religion (and their percentage of the total):

Christianity 2657 (77.17%)

Judaism 263 (7.64%)

Islam 200 (5.81%)

Sikhism 157 (4.56%)

Hinduism 101 (2.93%)

Buddhism 51 (1.48%)

Jainism 14 (0.41%)

The above figures, of course, say nothing about the standpoint of the speakers. Regular listeners of TFTD will be able to draw their own conclusions from the list of presenters above.

As regards the question 'Is the BBC biased?' I'll leave you to form your own opinions.