Why I Called Time on Times

The long goodbye

Photo: Dan Kennedy

January found me in flux. Tying up loose ends, sending farewell and thank you emails, making plans for the next phase of my life; pulling at the string of this career that started off accidentally and ballooned into something monstrous and wonderful and not what I had planned at all.

When I shared the news in November that I would be stepping down from THE best job I have ever had, the word “Aasmah” trended on X - albeit at number 29 - which made me laugh and my ego swell. I was gobsmacked that finally so many people knew how to spell my name; I felt I was accepted, one of you - something I battled with as a child and to a lesser degree in the first half of my career. It also underlined the unexpected emotional connection that I had with many of the people who listened. My four and a half years at Times Radio coincided not just with lockdown but some huge personal upheavals, so I opened myself up in a way I never have. Because I knew it was how I would survive it.

One day maybe I will share with you what happened, but let me put it this way - I used to be an obsessively private person. When I got married, I was working at BBC Radio 5 Live and I didn’t tell anyone at work. I didn’t want the attention, the constant questions about cakes and dresses and honeymoons. So I took two and a half weeks off and came back and no-one was any the wiser. It was bliss. I went through two rounds of IVF without anyone but my husband knowing, not even my mum. That was much harder. Fast forward 14 years and I was asking people for advice on X, baring my soul, because I needed help. The ice maiden had been torched. “My marriage is over; how do I keep doing a job that means I have to leave the house at 3.30am and look after a 5-year old?” I asked into the void. I was writing columns and pieces in The Sunday Times, Vogue and Good Housekeeping about the triple whammy of divorce, turning 50 and plunging into the menopause; about deciding to become a mother at 42 and striking lucky at 43. The 2007 version of myself would have been horrified; but I learned that opening yourself up a bit, sharing the doubt, the fear and the truly bone-scraping times is how we connect better with each other and sit better with ourselves.

Maybe that’s why I feel such a wrench leaving this job; why I wanted to give it 3 months to say a long goodbye. I didn’t really want to leave but it became unsustainable. A feminist since the age of 13, I never wanted anyone other than myself to dictate my job decisions; but the truth is that my daughter needs me in the early mornings, she wants my blurry face to be the first she sees, she wants to put her little paw into mine and stride down the street to school, giving me wedgies and tripping me up. It’s crazy to think that she was just 4 when I started the early shift. At the time I had a husband, someone who could physically be there to look after her when I closed the front door quietly at 3.30am, crept out into the blank night and sped towards the office at a time so incongruous and unnatural that I felt upside down most days. But after about 6 months I adapted to it. Then, things fell apart. Overnight, I ended our marriage - I can assure you there was no alternative - I stared into the face of something so awful I knew I couldn’t turn and walk back. Then it was just me and my daughter in the house. With no family nearby and no extra bedroom for someone to stay over and look after her, I realised I would have to quit the job of my dreams, just nine months in. There was nothing else for it. What a bloody mess.

And yet. I also knew I had to cling on to my financial independence; that was what would pull me through. After a bit of negotiating, it was agreed that for a few months I could co-present the Breakfast Show from a laptop on an ironing board in the corner of my bedroom; my daughter slept next door, 10 feet from my microphone as I interviewed the Health Secretary. It was insane, my heart hurt, my shoulders dipped - I hated the chaos of my life and that I couldn’t give my job the one hundred per cent attention I had always done; I couldn’t be professional, like my other colleagues who had husbands and wives and family who could pitch in and give them stability. But I had to swallow it.

Over the years, my situation peaked and troughed. I won an award in 2022; my daughter cried every night at bedtime; I was under contract to write a book that year; perimenopause arrived and my bones ached and my face burned as I sat typing into the night, knowing I had to be up at 3am; I launched my book and whizzed round the country to literary festivals; my relationship with my family was in ruins; I interviewed the Prime Minister at the Conservative Party Conference; doctors found a growth; my daughter told me she was lonely and our family was too small; the growth was removed and was OK; we moved house and school; we breathed more freely and decorated as we wanted; she struggled to fit in at a new school; we had a spare room finally so we got a babysitter; she didn’t get on with the babysitter; the election was called and my job went into overdrive; my daughter asked me why I chose a job that meant I never woke her up or took her to school and did I really love her; one of my interviews led the Ten O’Clock News; my daughter decided she actually loved the babysitter; I kept forgetting things at home; I lost two stones; I couldn’t ever remember what day it was. I was in constant crisis mode. And then one day it happened; and I knew I had been outrun.

It was October 2024 and I was just about to spend three days away from home in Birmingham at the Conservative Party Conference. This was another huge logistical and emotional challenge. I had to get my 80-year old mum to come down from Glasgow to look after my daughter. As I left, she gave me a small, hard kiss and whispered tearfully into my neck like a soap opera villain: “I love you mummy… but I hate your job.” The words killed me. A few days before, she had come home and told me that everyone in her class had had their flu nasal spray done, except her. “They told me you never sent the email.” I’ve never felt ‘mum guilt’ - I love working - but ‘single mum guilt’ is like bathing in poison every day.

I told my bosses I had decided to leave in January; they were wonderful about it. Reluctant but supportive. They tried to move things about and find other options but none quite worked. It’s definitely possible to single-parent and work in broadcasting - watch this space - but the 3am starts add a degree of craziness that really crush all your hope and energy. You neglect your children for a large and important part of the day; you’re tired or short-tempered when you’re with them; they don’t get to have normal evenings. And almost five years of abnormality is enough for a small child whose world has already been turned on its head. And yet I’m so glad I got to do it and stuck at it for 4 and a half years. Before, I was a night owl, never in bed before midnight; I was used to presenting Drive not Breakfast; I’m a defender not an attacker, a lover not a fighter etc. But it was brilliant. I learned new skills, interviewed people I thought I never would, was supported for the first time in my career by bosses who really believed in me. I never thought I would experience that. I will always expect that level of support in any job I do from now on.

Photo: Richard Pohle

A few last important things. When I posted that I was leaving, a sweet man on X said “Oh Aasmah, why are you always saying goodbye?” I’m honestly not. Almost five years at Times Radio; six years at Radio 4; eleven years at Radio 5 Live. If you do the maths, you’ll see that I will soon run out of road. There are so many things I still want to do while I can. People are often sceptical, incredulous. Why would you leave the best job you’ve ever had? Because sometimes you just run out of options; sometimes it’s best to leave a job on a high, when things are good, when you still enjoy it and you like the people you work with; sometimes there are even better things around the corner. (Also, whisper it, but as a listener and someone who would like to run a radio station one day, I have always thought that the same voices, the same shtick, for ten years can get stale; you need to shake it up a bit.)

Finally - it’s coming up to the four year mark of when things fell apart and I’ve been reflecting on what else got me through it all. The opportunities I was given at News UK/Times Radio were insane. The breakfast team at Times Radio saved me with their gallows humour, scurrilous gossip and juvenile running jokes that often made it on air. So much good stuff against a backdrop of absolute heartbreak, destroyed friendships and the desolation of trying to comfort a tearful child almost every night; of being mum and dad, breadwinner, cook, cleaner, house mover, decorator, school-finder, therapist, presenter, book writer, finder of lost socks and loser of minds. And then I realised what else it was. When friends were absent, you were there. When I needed advice, I asked you. When there was no empathy where I expected to find it, I found it online in tweets and emails and comments under my columns - and in handwritten letters.

Thank you. It was you. It was always you.