Britain, a country with social media, is no country for an old, Welsh broadcaster called John Humphrys

John Humphrys, the veteran BBC broadcaster is 72 years old. He was born in the first half of the last century in 1943 during the Second World War in Splott, Cardiff, the capital of his native Wales, the son of Winifred, a hairdresser and Edward a self-employed French polisher. Although he went to grammar school, he didn't fit into the middle-class environment and left school at the age of 15 to become a cub reporter on the 'PenarthTimes'.

Since 1958, John's increasing brilliance as a communicator has meant that he has had a long and varied career in various media :

* a commercial tv channel based in Wales
* a BBC district tv reporter for Liverpool and the Northwest
* a BBC tv foreign correspondent in the USA and South Africa
* the main presenter for BBC's tv's flagship 'Nine O'Clock News'
* a presenter on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' Programme
* the author of several books, including 'Lost for Words', in which he criticizes what he sees as the widespread misuse of the English language
* the host of the BBC quiz show, 'Mastermind'.

Having worked in and made a living from various media manifestations for the last 58 years, it might come as a surprise that John is no lover of 'social' media and our veteran broadcaster has revealed the depth of his contempt by lambasting Facebook and the ‘utterly pointless’ Twitter for fuelling ‘idiocies’ and like an Old Testament prophet John has inveighed against the millions who use them. He told the Radio Times : ‘I do not do Facebook or Twitter. I am anti the sort of idiocies that Twitter frequently produces and baffled by people who feel they’ve got to be telling everybody what they’re doing all the time. If I want to hear what ordinary people think then I will talk to them in a pub. Twitter is utterly pointless.'