Former Today editor Kevin Marsh to leave BBC after 33 years

Former editor of the Today programme Kevin Marsh is to leave the BBC after 33 years.

Marsh, who is currently editor of the BBC College of Journalism, joined the broadcaster as a news trainee in 1978, working in Belfast and Birmingham before joining The World At One team in June 1980.

He went on to oversee the first edition of The World This Weekend, which was aired the Sunday after parliament was recalled to vote on whether to send a task force to the Falkland Islands.

"Our interview with Foreign Office minister Richard Luce ran out of time before we could ask 'will you resign?' Within 24 hours, he had resigned," Marsh said in a statement on his blog today.

He left the BBC in 1986 for a short spell at ITV, but rejoined The World at One team the next year as deputy editor.

In 1989, Marsh became editor of PM, and then in 1993 editor of The World At One before bringing the programmes together under a single editor in 1996.

In 2006, after a three-year stint as editor of Radio 4's Today programme, he was appointed editor of the BBC College of Journalism.

Marsh said today that he had "done all of the jobs I want except one".

"When I first walked into Broadcasting House in October 1978, Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister and Jimmy Carter President of the US. The Shah was still in power in Iran, the Berlin Wall was intact and the IRA had yet to murder Lord Mountbatten ...

"All of these things happened, of course, before some of the people I work with were even born. My own children studied as GCSE history events I had covered as a journalist.

"Time to go."

Marsh added that he hopes to do outside the BBC "something I was unable to do inside it - finally give my own account.

"So there'll be books ... more teaching ... columns .... coaching.

"And life on the cold outside. Scary."

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