BBC presenter Evan Davies has revealed that he learned of his father’s death during a phone call on his wedding day.
The Dragon’s Den star, 61, said in an interview with The Times that she received a text from her brother Roland shortly after the ceremony with her husband at Lambeth Town Hall last July, asking her to ‘actually call’.
Mr Davies, who has presented Radio 4’s flagship evening current affairs show PM since 2018, managed to break away from guests during the reception to ring his brother, who then told him their father Quintin had taken his own life.
She had just married her partner Guillaume Baltz, 56, a French landscape architect, on a day when 17 Conservative MPs resigned, the day after Boris Johnson himself was forced to step down as prime minister.
Mr Davies, whose wedding day had already been marred by drama at Westminster, urged his guests not to be alarmed by the sad news of his father’s death saying ‘he was old and it must have been his time’.
BBC presenter Evan Davies learned of his father’s death over the phone on his wedding day
Ivan married his partner Guillaume Baltz (pictured together), 56, a French landscape architect, on the day when 17 Conservative MPs resigned, as Boris Johnson forced himself to stand down as prime minister.
Mr Davies’ father, who said he had ‘a wonderful, long and happy life’, had already told the presenter and his two brothers that he planned to take his own life as his physical and mental condition deteriorated.
Quintin sent them all an email the year before informing them of his intentions, which they respected because they didn’t try to talk him out of it.
Mr Davies told The Times that after announcing the news at his wedding party, one of his guests, former parliamentary standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin, proposed a toast to his late father.
The day after the show, she returned to work at BBC Broadcasting House in London and broke down in tears when colleagues asked her how the day had gone.
Four hours after going on air to host the PM programme, Johnson resigned. Mr Davies said the whole week had been ‘very strange’.
Mr Davies and his partner met in a bar in 2002 and have been together ever since.
He first graduated from Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics and did a postgraduate at Harvard before joining the BBC as an economics reporter, then editor. He has been the host of Dragon’s Den since 2005.
Earlier this year, the BBC star found himself at the center of another neutrality row after his Radio 4 program failed to ‘remind listeners’ of ‘opposing views’ on legalizing cannabis.
Four hours after going on air to host the PM programme, Johnson resigned. Mr Davies said the whole week had been ‘very strange’.
It comes days after Prince Harry opened up about his recreational use of illegal drugs during an intimate chat with a toxic trauma specialist.
The corporation ‘partially upheld’ a complaint about an interview Mr Davies conducted with a professor who advocated legalizing cannabis, on Radio 4’s PM show.
After the show aired in October, a listener complained about the ‘absence of an alternative point of view’ and ‘lack of impartiality on the part of the presenter’.
A month ago, the BBC was forced to apologize after Mr Davies accused JK Rowling of making a ‘failed attempt’ to challenge a trans guest accused of transphobia.
In 2019, shortly after stepping down as host of Newsnight to take over as prime minister, Mr Davies admitted he felt better suited to radio.
He said at the time: ‘I didn’t want to do Newsnight forever, because it’s an intense job and anti-social because of the hours. I’d love to go, but if something like the Prime Minister comes along and you say no, someone else gets it, and there won’t be a vacancy for another ten years.’
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