‘I’d rather have a discussion than a fight’: Meet the hosts of the new podcast, The Daily T

‘We are not being told what to say and what to think and we are not telling our audience what to say or think.’ For Camilla Tominey, this is about as clear a mission statement as you can get – and indicative of the no-nonsense approach Telegraph readers have long associated with her.

She’s talking about her latest project, a new podcast for The Telegraph, co-hosted with Kamal Ahmed – and the pair are currently crammed into a sparse and airless second-floor meeting room a few doors down from where the finishing touches are being put to their purpose-built (and somewhat more glamorous) recording studio. They’ve come to discuss a venture into audio journalism that promises to deliver the day’s breaking stories and high quality analysis to a new audience every weekday. The Daily T, as it will be known, might not be the first such endeavour but it will, they stress, have plenty of unique properties.

Tominey, 45, is dressed, as she puts it herself, ‘nicely’. Ahmed, 56, fills the confined space with poise, wearing the traditional uniform of a liberal media grandee: thin grey wool trousers and a roll-neck sweater. Preparation for The Daily T launch has been intense, but for two seasoned journalists such as Tominey and Ahmed, any stress presents as measured excitement.

‘This will be about bringing the vibrancy of the newsroom into the podcast,’ says Ahmed, himself a former Telegraph, Observer and BBC editor. ‘The studio overlooks the newsroom so it means Camilla and I will have all this brilliant journalism at our fingertips. The key to great journalism now is, “However you want it, we can get it to you,” and we can get it to you quickly, show you the drama, tell you the inside track in audio.’

He adds, ‘We’ll also be recording it to view on YouTube. It’s going to be an intimate experience. We want listeners to take away the informed debate Camilla and I will be having about what the stories really mean. It could be that the Prime Minister has just resigned, or it could be a huge culture story, the Royal family, business or sport – we will be here bringing you our experience as journalists and that of all our colleagues.’

‘In a funny way we are going back to some of the basics,’ adds Tominey. ‘We will be going out reporting on stories as well as commenting on them. By the time the podcast goes out at teatime [hence The Daily T, as well as representing The Telegraph and tea being slang for gossip], our listeners will probably have heard the headlines, but they will want to know the story behind them.’

As well as the insight of Tominey and Ahmed – and their ability to call on the most informed guests around – The Daily T will have a couple of other distinctive selling points. Reflecting its place in The Telegraph family, it will be a Right-of-centre-focused podcast, which the co-presenters are aware is something of a rarity in the mainstream British media landscape.

‘There’s a gap in the market for something that hasn’t been designed by a Left-wing committee,’ says Tominey. ‘A lot of programming serves an agenda and I don’t have an agenda beyond expressing an honest opinion, listening to other people’s honest opinions and – shock horror – changing my opinions if someone convinces me their arguments are better than mine.’

The biggest single criticism of the current crop of political and news podcasts is that the presenters come from similar backgrounds or share the same opinions and end up agreeing on almost everything, which doesn’t stop them being informed, but can make them prone to prolonged bouts in confirmation bias and self-affirmation. Tominey wants something different that she calls ‘agreeable disagreement’.

‘I would be described by most people as socially liberal but economically I’m pretty dry,’ adds Ahmed. ‘My go-to political books are Charles Moore’s brilliant biography of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair’s autobiography. Both have affected my political journey and both have important things to say. Camilla and I come from different political persuasions and that’s a good thing. Neither of us is an ideologue – we don’t stick to a line. We just need to be ourselves. Camilla lives in the beautiful countryside and I live in north London. I am a walking cliché that some people might describe as the north London liberal.’

So is he a member of the metropolitan liberal elite? ‘That’s a phrase I have put in copy quite a few times,’ interrupts Tominey. ‘Little did I know I’d be working with one of these elitists.’

‘People may think they know me, but they don’t,’ says Ahmed. ‘I grew up in very modest surroundings and now I’ve become the north London joke and that’s fine. Camilla lives in the Home Counties, of course.’

‘So now I’m the joke, because I’m called Camilla everybody thinks I’ve got a pony and a Range Rover.’ Does she have a pony and Range Rover? ‘No, though I do have a pair of Hunter wellies. But Right of centre is my position. I can be Left of centre on some things. I can be surprising. We shouldn’t be afraid to express an opinion even if it’s contrary to what others ascribe to us. Everybody knows I’m not a Leftie. There is an attempt to marginalise anyone who expresses a Right-of-centre sentiment as being “hard Right” or “far Right”. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor [her step-grandmother survived Auschwitz and a ‘death march’ in 1944] so the idea of being far Right is anathema to me. So “I’m very nuanced because life’s complicated” is probably the best way to describe my opinions.’

Like actors being cast for a new romantic comedy, they went through the ordeal of a ‘chemistry test’ to assess their compatibility. I wondered if they had discussed any great presenting double acts of the past and what they could learn from them. Tominey’s first thought is Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street.

Neither will offer a suggestion as to which would be which, though Ahmed does provide a clue: ‘Camilla is very funny and I’m boring.’ Then she suggests Statler and Waldorf, the irascible hecklers from The Muppet Show. A pattern emerges. Both are keen to offset the seriousness of the task ahead of them with a healthy dose of self-deprecation.

‘We had a chemistry test in a studio in Shoreditch as we hadn’t seen each other for a while,’ says Tominey. ‘We discovered we’d both been to Leeds University. And we started having test “chats”. Kamal is very polite. I’m also polite, but I am robust in how I express my views. I’m never rude. This will be the antidote to social media, where it’s all screaming and ranting and raging. I think the public have had enough of slanging matches and the media doesn’t reflect enough normal conversations that happen at the dinner table or in the pub.’ And the effect of Twitter and so on? ‘Social media has bastardised the discourse and made things more divisive than they need to be. If you want to be informed, as well as entertained, that’s what we’re there for. At teatime, it could be a commuter or someone making dinner for their family.’

‘Or soaking in the bath,’ adds Ahmed. ‘The options are endless. But taking the chemistry test was nerve-racking. It was like your first Tinder date. You can’t be sure it will work out until you take the test. We had the producers and adjudicators watching over us like Victorian maiden aunts.’

‘I shoot from the hip and perhaps I’m a bit more cavalier,’ says Tominey. ‘I can’t help but just express myself in a frank and honest way.’

Ahmed’s long path to presenting The Daily T mirrors the evolution of news coverage over the past two decades, from the integration of print and digital news to the explosion of social media, video and audio. The son of a Sudanese father and a British mother, he grew up in Ealing in west London and after university worked his way into The Observer, before a first stint with The Telegraph in 2009. Four years later he joined the BBC, first as business editor, then economics editor and finally as editorial director of BBC News.

‘When I left the BBC, I started my own media company [The News Movement] which was about rethinking journalism for people of my children’s age, 20 and 23,’ he says. ‘The decision to [leave and] come here was a difficult one. When you are offered the opportunity to do something like this and you are all about getting trusted journalism to people, then podcasting is that new space. And when they said “It’s with Camilla”, I realised this is someone I want to listen to.’

Tominey’s 20-years-and-counting career has been a triumph of talent and iron will. Following a classic route via a local newspaper – the Hemel Hempstead Gazette – she joined the Sunday Express, where her indefatigability (to borrow George Galloway’s favourite word) saw her become simultaneously royal editor, political editor, columnist and leader writer. ‘And then I came here.’ Though ‘here’ has never been quite enough for her, as she continues to be the go-to voice on the Royal family for Australia’s Nine Network and ITV’s This Morning, as well as hosting her own GB News television show every Sunday.

‘Most people would describe me as a workaholic but there are worse things to be addicted to,’ she says, alluding obliquely to her alcoholic mother, about whom she has written with candour. ‘I’ve only got the three jobs at the moment. As a woman you are always grappling with “Am I being a good journalist this week or am I being a good mother?” and are they inversely proportional to each other? If I chase this story am I being a worse mother? You might fear your career would stall because you’ve had children. Weirdly, I’ve never been more promoted since I had children. I am doing a six-day week but we are balancing it all. My children think I’m deeply tragic but they are also proud of what I do.’

Ahmed, whose 2018 book The Life and Times of a Very British Man explores the complex and sometimes troubled experiences of Britons from a mixed-race background, is similarly sensitive about the upsides to journalism’s intensity and the toll it can take: ‘I was brought up by a single mum and my mother wanted to work. She was a great feminist and anti-racism campaigner in education and I’m very proud that she did what she did. You’re right to say there are sometimes sacrifices, but also it does mean your children can see there is a journey you can go on and it can be exciting and, most importantly, worthwhile. Journalism is a values-driven job. Without factual, well-delivered journalism, democracy is at risk. If your children can see that and be proud of you then that’s got to be a good thing.’

Understandably, neither of them want to overplay the stresses and strains of being the kind of journalist for whom 24-hour availability is expected. ‘It’s not going down mines,’ says Tominey. Yet the demands are real and as Tominey demonstrates, new duties have a habit of piling on top of one another rather than replacing old ones.

‘There are massive difficulties with this lifestyle,’ she says. ‘I spent the last five years worrying about going on holiday and taking black outfits because of the age of the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth. And everyone in my family accepted that. I was on maternity leave when William and Kate got engaged and in a doctor’s surgery with my middle child, so I had to leave my baby with a friend and hotfoot it down to the Palace, where I had a little chat with Kate. When I got home I realised I’d got ready in such a rush that my dress was inside out and my underwear was showing.

‘That was a necessary sacrifice in the furtherance of my career. However, had I been a bloke I wouldn’t be talking about sacrifice, I’d just be talking about “doing my job”. When I went away on a two-week royal trip people would ask, “Who’s looking after the children?” and I’d say, “They have this thing called a father, who is so useful.”’

To succeed, The Daily T will need to foster an enduring relationship with its listeners. That will involve a high degree of engagement and interaction, the worst excesses of which journalists are increasingly steeled to cope with, if not entirely accept. For example, Tominey received death threats after she challenged the ‘truth’ of Meghan and Harry’s claims in their interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.

‘Actually you do have to have quite a lot of courage to be a journalist today,’ she says. ‘Graduates who come through are worried about getting a huge backlash on social media. We say don’t edit yourself but report the facts as you find them. That’s what we intend to do on the podcast: reporting without fear or favour. When I write my columns I’m now in an environment where people who don’t agree with you don’t just say you’re wrong, but call you a bigot for expressing views I would regard as mainstream.’

‘I’ve had some similar experiences with racism,’ says Ahmed. ‘It’s important we are passionate about what we do and what I’m most passionate about is informing the public. I’m not a fan of “everything is a battle”. I’d rather have a discussion than a fight. There’s the relationship between the presenters, plus the relationship with the listeners and the best ones make you feel like part of the family.’

‘Podcasts are revelatory,’ says Tominey. ‘People say more on podcasts than in major interviews, such as when the Princess of Wales discussed being a mother for the first time on a Giovanna Fletcher podcast. That’s the environment they create. There is a human tale at the heart of every great story. We say “frank and fearless” and talk about the freedom to say what we think, because that is what it’s all about.’

The Daily T launches on 13 May and will be released on weekday afternoons