EVAN DAVIES
One year into his job hosting the BBC’s premier current affairs show Newsnight, and Evan Davis has become the most important gay figure on British TV.
WORDS BEN KELLY
Attitude Award Winner
MAN OF THE YEAR
PHOTOGRAPHY LEON CSERNOHLAVEK
SUPPORTED BY Virgin HOLIDAYS
Evan Davis has come a long way since he began working as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies back in the late 1980s. After covering economics for the BBC in the 1990s (including on Newsnight), he went on to host the hugely popular Dragon’s Den from 2005, and served six years on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. But by rising to the top job in BBC current affairs, Evan is arguably the most important gay man on British TV, and for this, we are proud to name him our Man of the Year.
When I first interviewed Evan last December, he was just settling into the routine of a twelve hour day, culminating in a fast paced, jam packed live show each night. “I was just beginning to think ‘my god, this is quite difficult to do well!’” he laughs, “and now I’m feeling a little bit more competent doing it my way, and not trying to please other people.” Sitting down with him for a second time as he approaches his first anniversary in the job, Evan has indeed brought his own style to proceedings. “There’s a presumption that the show is about aggressive interviewing, and I’m trying to undermine that assumption. I’m not trying to get rid of adversarial interviews – I think we should do quite a few of them – but I don’t want it to be the default or the presumption, I think we should be willing to hold power to account, but we should also be willing to let power explain what its thinking is.”