31-07-2023, 10:00 PM
(31-07-2023, 09:28 PM)Brekkie Wrote: There has long been a tradition on Newsnight to basically let anyone have a go in the summer.Yes, though it seems to alternate between periods of other members of the Newsnight team, other BBC presenters and freelancers. The year before the Edwards/Esler/Pillai summer, Jeremy Vine had been a sit in - before later going on to become a regular presenter some years later. Emily Maitlis, similarly, mainly appeared in the summer for the first few years of her Newsnight career.
During the 2000s, Martha Kearney - then Newnight political editor - was a frequent summer presenter. Jon Sopel and later Eddie Mair also used to pop up occasionally in the summer in that era. Then during the middle of the last decade, they went through a few summers of bringing in LBC loudmouths - primarily O'Brien, but it's largely now back to Newsnight team members like Urban and Islam as cover. I also seem to recall Naga doing Breakfast and Newsnight on the same day once, but I'm not sure if that was a summer thing.