{"id":492765,"date":"2026-03-24T14:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492765\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:58:08","slug":"huw-edwards-hates-the-tv-dramatisation-of-his-life-maybe-he-should-have-thought-of-that-before-you-know-marina-hyde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492765\/","title":{"rendered":"Huw Edwards hates the TV dramatisation of his life. Maybe he should have thought of that before \u2026 you know | Marina Hyde"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see Huw Edwards is still not the subject of any of his verbs. The BBC\u2019s former iconic newsreader (trademark: Huw Edwards) has emerged from a minibreak in the wilderness to excoriate Channel 5\u2019s forthcoming dramatisation of his downfall. \u201cMental illness is misunderstood by many but can never be an excuse for criminality,\u201d Huw informed the public<\/a>, the overwhelming majority of whom are already well across this particular point. \u201cIt can, however, at least help explain why people sometimes behave in shocking and reprehensible ways, and why things fell apart for me in the way they did.\u201d Fell apart because of you, I think you\u2019ll find.<\/p>\n

Anyway, there was a lot more of Edwards\u2019s lengthy statement. \u201cI have been open about my struggle with persistent mental illness over a period of 25 years,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhat is less well known is the severity of that condition, which was managed successfully until the downward spiral which led to an appalling outcome.\u201d Again, note the tragic passivity of \u201can appalling outcome\u201d, as though a flow chart and not a person has led us somewhere we\u2019d very much rather not be.<\/p>\n

Failing to apologise for your interactions with a teenager and instead deploying mental illness as an explanation in the year 2026 would be more understandable if Huw Edwards had spent the last 18 months in solitary, or been cryogenically frozen, instead of passing the time as a free man in some nice Welsh village or other. Ironically, he seems not to have kept up with the news, in this case the development that this stuff doesn\u2019t work like magic any more. Edwards first trotted this explanation out in the fag-end of the Peak Woke era, when casting various things as mental illness was still \u2013 just \u2013 an axiomatically unassailable form of victimhood. It\u2019s why his defence was initially taken up with such mad enthusiasm by elements of the reflexively wrong Good Guys of the media when the Sun first started running stories<\/a> about him secretly paying huge amounts of money to a teenager. First it was a private matter. Then it was a vile witch-hunt by the tabloids. Then it was a witch-hunt that had driven a vulnerable man into the protective care of medical professionals.<\/p>\n

In the end, of course, it was a conviction for possessing multiple indecent images of children<\/a>, including category A images, a crime that feeds on and perpetuates the suffering and sexual exploitation of children and traumatises those victims for life.<\/p>\n

Martin Clunes as Huw Edwards in Cheannel 5\u2019s Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards. Photograph: 5 Broadcasting Limited\/PA<\/p>\n

Edwards still hasn\u2019t paid back a penny of the \u00a3200k of licence fee payers\u2019 money<\/a> he was happy to keep taking while on suspension from the BBC awaiting trial for a crime he would plead guilty to. He\u2019d much rather talk about a different media organisation to the BBC \u2013 Channel 5, whose production values he has taken issue with. He doesn\u2019t think the new drama is likely \u201cto convey the reality of what happened\u201d. Furthermore, he suggests producers \u201calso refused to disclose whether any of those making allegations had been paid for their contributions\u201d. Hifalutin words, particularly coming from someone who forked out over \u00a335k to one teen who\u2019d become homeless, before allegedly asking if there was something he could get<\/a> in return (police said they found no evidence of criminality). Then again, most sex offenders have got some kind of screw loose, haven\u2019t they? I\u2019ve got a feeling \u201chaving a screw loose\u201d is no longer deemed an acceptable term for talking about this stuff \u2013 and yet, it describes the mindset of all sorts of sex offenders so much better than \u201cmental illness\u201d.<\/p>\n

At this point I should say I haven\u2019t seen anything other than the trailer for Channel 5\u2019s show, so have no idea what it\u2019s like. I do have deep reservations about \u201ctrue story\u201d dramas, which have become a genre of their own and scripted TV\u2019s most runaway success story in recent years. However, making shows about real-life criminals is hardly a new thing, and you can argue the Edwards drama sits more traditionally in that basket. It\u2019s not a point Huw argues, inevitably, preferring to lambast Channel 5 for not checking its narrative with him at script stage. Again, TV producers tend not to bother asking criminals to give script notes. But Huw could definitely pitch the jump from sex offender to story consultant as one of those unfair barriers-to-entry in the creative industries if he\u2019s after a new avenue for his victimhood.<\/p>\n

That said, I can picture Huw handing down a lot of the classic executive notes that all writers love to hate. \u201cCan we make the character more likable?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t get the \u2018why now?\u2019 of it all. Why not never?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not really feeling the stakes because at the moment the character returns inside of two years explaining he essentially didn\u2019t have any agency at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

According to some very chatty publicist<\/a>, Edwards plans to speak out further in the future. \u201cI am making an effort,\u201d Edwards himself declares, \u201cto produce my own account of these terrible events.\u201d No rush. \u201cThis is a slow process\u201d \u2013 finally, some good news \u2013 \u201cgiven the fragile state of my health.\u201d There it is. A reminder that, for Huw, and indeed so many of the difficult men of television who have been forcibly resigned from our screens in recent years, their issues are much better clinicalised than owned. Yet are they all just victims of illness? Or are they, infinitely more pertinently, creators of victims?<\/p>\n

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I see Huw Edwards is still not the subject of any of his verbs. The BBC\u2019s former iconic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-492765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}