Sunday 28 October 2012

"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. 

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