‘Absolute titan’ Adam Boulton to quit Sky News after 33 years

Adam Boulton is to step down from Sky News
Chris Lobina/Sky News via Getty Images

Sky News’s editor-at-large Adam Boulton is to step down from the channel after 33 years.

The anchorman, 62, described as an “absolute titan” by Sky colleagues pointed to a changing of the guard in broadcast news and said it was time to move on.

In an interview with The Times, he said: “It looks like the direction which Sky News wants to go over the next few years is not one that’s a particularly good fit for me.

“There’s always a changing of the guard in television. Television is very sensitive to the idea of diversity.”

He added: “I’ve just got to accept to a certain point we’re tail-end baby-boomers, and there’s a kind of move against the baby-boomers and the fact that we’ve had less time at the peak is just the way it goes, but I’m very hopeful there’ll be other live broadcasting in other places. It’s a big change for me but I’m still young and healthy.”

Boulton, who has interviewed every prime minister since Alec Douglas-Home, had said he never felt the British people had got an election wrong.

But now “his confidence was shaken”.

He said: “Until recent years my assumption always was that, whether I thought they were playing well or badly, the prime minister, leader of the opposition, the first thing they thought about was doing well by their country.

“I’ve really rather lost that. I think, ‘What’s right for me?’ dominates a lot of politicians, rather than what’s right for the country.”

In the same interview, he hit out at the rise of GB News and other opinion-led news channels, saying: “It’s much easier to sit in the studio, let other people gather the news and then bloviate about it.”

In 2018 he was caught swearing at Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby after off-air footage at a Labour conference was leaked.

But it appears to be water under the bridge with Rigby tweeting: “Adam’s leaving after 33 yrs. A hugely significant force, not in just our newsroom, but in the very fabric of British politics & broadcasting. I grew up watching Adam & was lucky enough to work with him. An absolute titan. We will miss you.”

One of his on-air highlights was the infamous row with Alistair Campbell in the inconclusive 2010 election when the Labour spin doctor claimed Boulton was “obviously upset that David Cameron is not Prime Minister”.

Boulton lashed out on air ranting: “I’m fed up with you telling me what I think, I don’t think that.”

He apologised after for his temper and admitted Campbell knew how to “wind him up”.

He said: “Here we had an unelected person who actually didn’t even have a job in the Labour team who was coming out and, before the Cabinet had met, telling us what the Government was going to do.

“And once I tried making these points to him he turned nasty and attacked my integrity.”

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