The kamikaze destruction of his eminent BBC career by Huw Edwards will reach its climax next month when he is sentenced at Westminster Magistrates Court for receiving indecent images of children. Whatever happens, the Welshman has smashed his entire life to smithereens for reasons that are almost impossible to understand. Here I will attempt to identify and analyse some of the underlying factors and causes.

I remember thinking there was something very wrong with him in 2019 when he revealed he was on a “fitness regime” involving running, boxing, gym workouts and ‘total resistance exercises’. As a result, he had lost three stone (20 kg) and transformed the natural sagging flab of a sedentary late middle-aged man into rippling muscle. He claimed he was doing it to help him deal with his “mental health” and “struggles with depression” – and I immediately smelt a rat. That, after all, is the same ‘self-esteem’ and ’empowerment’ bullshit mouthed by every steroid-pumped male gym bunny with grotesquely disproportionate biceps and every tragic woman who has mutilated herself with cosmetic surgery. “I do it for myself,” they trot out unconvincingly, either through self-delusion or plain duplicity, when their true motive is invariably the desperate search for ‘love’. To the brainwashed this much-abused abstract noun is routinely confused with ‘sex’, and then that commonplace bodily function is wrongly linked to ‘appearance’, resulting in today’s rampant ugliness epidemic among the simultaneously prudish and sex-fixated smartphone generation who believe looks are all that matters and yet can’t cope with a spontaneous, unplanned, face-to-face encounter.

Such stupidity and crassness is to be expected from shallow wannabes weaned on internet algorithms and barrel-scraping TV, but seemed wildly incongruent from the BBC’s senior newsreader, the very symbol of heavy-duty gravitas and grown-up sobriety. At the time I dismissed his silly and rather repellent self-absorption as a male menopause mid-life crisis, while making a mental note that Edwards was most likely a closet gay who, having ticked the wife and kids box, built a stellar career, made millions and entered his seventh decade, had now calculated that the coast was clear to indulge long-repressed same-sex longings (the gym work-outs were the giveaway).

Then, last year, the reality of his twisted sexuality slowly began to emerge. The BBC suspended him on his full £480,000 annual salary (the third highest in the entire organisation, only topped by Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball) when The Sun revealed he had paid a teenager £35,000 for “sordid images”, and initially it seemed he had broken no laws and was guilty of nothing more than a sad priapism, essentially harmless even if excruciatingly inappropriate for a man in his 60s (if you think that statement is ageist, all I can say is you have obviously never seen a 60-year-old penis). However, a moment’s reflection suggested there was much more to it than a dirty old man with more money than sense paying for a very expensive wank: the way he suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth for convenient “hospital treatment”, the way the gender of the teenager was scrupulously concealed as if homosexuality was the shameful thing rather than the age gap, the way his poor wife Vicky Flind had to act as his spokesperson, and the way BBC colleagues began to shatter Edwards’ squeaky-clean, carefully manufactured public image, first in a trickle and then in an avalanche, to expose him as a haughty egotist, a “very difficult man” whose problematic behaviour had been ignored by BBC bosses for years despite multiple complaints, and someone with a creepy preference for the company of youthful underlings.

Edwards’ world crumbled to dust after he was arrested in November 2023 – a development known by BBC top brass, who continued to pay his massive salary including pay rises regardless, but not made public until it could be kept secret no more. He resigned from the BBC on “medical advice” in April 2024 and only in June, when the Met Police charged him with distributing child pornography via convicted Merthyr paedophile Alex Williams, were his shocking offences made known. In July Edwards, a broken wreck hiding behind huge dark glasses, pleaded guilty to three charges including sharing the most serious ‘Category A’ images of pre-pubescent small children.

Why? Why would someone who has received approximately £8 million from the BBC over 20 years, accumulated a net worth stockpile of £5 million and is one of the most instantly recognisable people in the UK take this crazy risk for no discernible gain when he could have simply used self-control and common sense to rein in his base urges and instead stick to young men over the age of consent and discreetly conduct his sleazy activities without consequences in London hotels or even his own private bolt-hole without anyone knowing? There are a number of possible answers to this puzzle.

Firstly, the very fact of his career as a ‘presenter’ on television reveals a fatal flaw. There is something intrinsically odious about a person who even aspires to a role which has narcissism, exhibitionism, arrogance, vanity and immense self-importance baked into the job description. Inevitably the ‘much-loved’ familiar TV ‘personality’ is a power-mad megalomaniac who needs to feel important, a show-off who has to be the centre of attention, or a preening knobhead with a god complex who comes to believe their own publicity. It is no surprise that such people frequently reckon their exceptional wonderfulness means they can do whatever they like and get away with it.

Secondly there is the BBC itself. Because it is the very symbol, manufacturer and embodiment of ‘Britishness’, it is rotten to the core. How could it be otherwise when it has been propagandising, lionising, whitewashing and fortifying the most murderous and destructive state in all of history for the past 102 years? The BBC’s track record is atrocious, featuring blunder after blunder, scandal after scandal, disdainful lack of accountability, deafness to criticism, undemocratic secrecy and patronising ‘nanny knows best’ contempt for those who pay the licence fee. Although nominally a ‘public service’ broadcaster supposedly above the tawdry imperatives of commercialism, the BBC blithely ignores its ‘binding’ charter and is instead an empire-building, monopolistic, capitalist profiteer in a race-to-the-bottom battle for audiences. With no less than eight ‘national’ TV channels, 10 ‘national’ radio channels plus innumerable TV and radio ‘regional’ operations, not to mention seven BBC-owned digital TV channels operated at arms length that take advertising, the Corporation has become an ever-growing monstrosity that has long abandoned any pretence of public service to become a pointless purveyor of dumbed-down trash and a hopeless chaser after the transient youth demographic. The huge salaries it pays a roster of preening mediocrities to read from an autocue is a symptom of this untenable position, with the BBC laughably claiming it must do so in order to keep these rare ‘talents’ from being poached. Avoided by anyone with a scintilla of discernment, its programmes in one way or another all adopt the ghastly BBC house-style of bossy condescension pitched at an infantile simpleton, larded with patently sham upbeat gushing, ludicrous hand movements and cringeworthy look-at-me gurning.

As for the oft repeated claims to impartiality, this is the opposite of the truth. I have examined the brazen lie a few times on this blog over the years (see The unspeakable in pursuit of the unwatchable, Radio Wales at 40 and Biased, Bad, Conservative) so all I will add here is that it has got even worse. Being a state broadcaster without any explicit principles and values means that if the UK electorate should, say, put the far-right Reform Party in power then the BBC would simply shift further rightwards and become an out-and-out fascist broadcaster in the same way it became an openly rightwing mouthpiece building the profile of people like Farage and Johnson during the last 20 years. To the BBC ‘impartiality’ means a fence-sitting false-equivalence between fact and fiction which always benefits the Conservatives and results in the Corporation’s trademark blandness, pussy-footing and vacuous wittering. As BBC founder Lord Reith (1889-1971) wrote after the 1926 General Strike, Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) “knew he could trust us not to be really impartial”. The fact that Kier Starmer’s Labour government has not yet sacked the BBC’s Tory director-general Tim Davie, a man with an unerring ability to get things wrong, indicates that nothing is going to change any time soon. Little wonder then that this Great British Failure has been a comfortable home for the likes of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Jonathan King, Russell Brand, Chris Denning, Dave Lee Travis, Mark Page, Peter Rowell, Chris Langham, Steve Kish, Daniel Frogson, Tim Westwood, Phillip Schofield, Fred Talbot, Tony Wadsworth, Ben Thomas, Giovanni Pernice, Graziano Di Prima…etc, etc…to give just a tiny selection of names from recent times.

Cringing deference to power, self-congratulatory exceptionalism, epic hypocrisy, off-the-scale insincerity and industrial-size affectation are written into the BBC’s bone-marrow, meaning its most successful and well-rewarded staff are completely dysfunctional fakes. Edwards was the epitome of this. What the hell, after all, was a native Welsh-speaker from Carmarthenshire doing as the public face of this vile British institution? Answer: he was the useful stooge whose mellifluent Llangennech lilt was cynically utilised to perpetrate the old lie of one big happy British union, the better to dilute, isolate and castrate Welsh objections to being England’s traduced, raped, trashed and ransacked punch-bag. He was a classic collaborator, enriched by the enemies of Wales to whore for the propaganda arm of a state whose existence, by definition, eradicates Wales as an entity. Nothing exemplified this better than his status as the voice of flummery, forelock-tugging and flatulent bombast at the pompous, mock-medieval, no-expense-spared hokum staged for the weddings, funerals and coronations of our violent usurpers, in which he excruciatingly adopted the BBC’s requisite hushed tones of reverence and misty-eyed stoicism as his Caerfyrddin consonants quivered ludicrously on a mandatory stiff upper lip.

This leads to a third factor that might explain his behaviour: daddy issues. His father was the distinguished historian, academic, prominent Plaid Cymru activist and Welsh language campaigner Hywel Teifi Edwards (1934-2010) from Aberarth in Ceredigion. A dominant, larger than life, highly intelligent character who didn’t suffer fools gladly, Hywel had a difficult relationship with his son who was always closer to his mam, Aerona Protheroe, a teacher from Blaengarw. Tad couldn’t hide his disappointment at his son’s perceived weaknesses and faults, and maybe this awkward, distant relationship was instrumental in incubating Huw’s distorted same-sex drives. People do not crave what they already have; they crave what they never had.

All this is just irrelevant speculation and doesn’t explain why a university educated man with a wide hinterland of interests from presbyterianism, choral music, Welsh politics and history through to a rich family life in a splendid Dulwich home could think of nothing better to do with his spare time and his abundant money than hunt for fleeting sexual gratification. Such preposterous squandering of intellect, culture and wisdom all for the sake of mere ejaculation serves as a warning of the dangerous, reckless delusional power that resides in the libidos of too many men.

On September 16th Huw Edwards will be sentenced and he must now prepare for the unlikely but real prospect that he might actually go to prison. Already his life’s work and achievements are being cancelled and erased across the board in the usual extreme over-reaction indulged in by contemporary society to unconvincingly claim the high moral ground and garner brownie points for performative gestures. His honorary fellowships and professorships have been withdrawn by Swansea University, RWCMD, Bangor University and Cardiff University; he has been expelled from the Gorsedd of the Bards; his National Eisteddfod membership has been terminated; his presidency of the London Welsh Trust and patronage of the National College of Music have ceased; his mural in Llangennech has been expunged; his plaque at Cardiff Castle has come down; he is being kicked out of The Learned Society of Wales; archive footage of all his BBC programmes covering important news items, elections, royal occasions and so on is being re-edited and over-dubbed; and, most grievously, the many documentaries he made for both the BBC and S4C are being put into cold storage and may never be seen again. Included in that treasure trove of mainly Welsh subjects are two important programmes I reviewed at the time: The Story of Wales in 2012 and Aberfan in 2016. Methinks the authorities are protesting too much in a demented, purposeless vandalism designed to emphasise a disapproval of sex with children that surely should go without saying.

I slagged off Huw Edwards for being a British establishment crawler long before any of this emerged, but the nasty stench of vengeful scapegoating and public lynching is now having the effect of making me begin to sympathise with him. The blatantly two-faced virtue signallers should now call off their attack dogs and leave him alone. Nobody is all good or all bad; rehabilitation is always possible. He has suffered enough.

UPDATE: In September 2024 Edwards was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for two years, and placed on the sex offenders’ register.