One of the most recognisable voices in Britain was in full flow at a summer arts festival in the Harrogate district last night (June 25).

John Humphrys read the evening news on the BBC during the 1980s then spent 32 years as presenter of Today on Radio 4. He also hosted the quiz show Mastermind and now presents a show on the radio station Classic FM.

Humphrys was a late replacement at the Northern Aldborough Festival, near Boroughbridge, following the withdrawal of fellow journalist Amol Rajan.

A Marmite figure, some were sad not to hear the erudite Rajan, while others felt Humphrys, a healthy looking 82, might be spicier.

Festival director Robert Ogden introduced Humphrys to the packed St Andrew’s Church in Aldborough by referring to his distinctive interviewing style. “You mean I’m rude,” replied Humphrys, who has quizzed 11 Prime Ministers and four American presidents.

He said “being a stroppy little bugger” influenced his career as a journalist by fostering a sense that “authority should never be trusted”.

Cardiff-born Humphrys was the first reporter on the scene at the Aberfan disaster in Wales in 1966, when coal waste slid down a valley and engulfed a school, killing 144 people, including 116 children.

He recalled seeing miners with black faces whitened by tears. “It had an effect on me like nothing else in my life,” he said. “And it taught me there is a point in being a witness, a journalist.”

He said being in Aberfan and later being in Washington at the time of the Watergate scandal were examples of the lucky breaks journalists need.

The audience wanted to hear some anecdotes. Asked to name his most challenging or exciting interviewee, he recalled a chastening first experience with Margaret Thatcher when she deflated his opening question about religion with a one-word answer. He never recovered, and she constantly reminded him of it.

He said he was “deeply suspicious” of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and had “misgivings about his party”. When he asked the audience if any of them supported Farage, not a single hand was raised. There was a similar response when he asked how many thought Donald Trump was “not doing a bad job”. The older, well-heeled festival-going clientele clearly isn’t a hive of right-wingers.

People, said Humphrys, claim they want honest politicians, but really “we want them to think what we think”.

Asked what his specialist subject on Mastermind would be, he said “absolutely nothing” and confessed he’d made a career “pretending to know huge amounts about things”. But he skewered former Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy for giving comically bad answers, including that Henry VIII was succeeded by Henry VII, when he appeared on a celebrity version of the show.

Humphrys remains a fierce advocate of the BBC, which he “trusts more than any other source of news in the world”.

But talking about the Today show now, he said he “gets really fed up with new presenters who want to become personalities or celebrities” and that it had gone “too far down the entertainment road”. He added: “In the end, news is a very, very, very serious commodity.”

Old habits die hard. Humphrys frequently turned the tables on the audience by asking them questions.

Sadly, sound problems meant he was hard to hear at the back of the church, and some people left early. The festival wrote to ticket-buyers this morning offering a refund and saying it was “reviewing the technical setup”.

It had achieved what many of Humphrys’ critics had craved for more than 60 years by silencing — or at least muffling — his famous voice.

But those who heard it appeared to enjoy his look back on more than half a century at the heart of public life.

The Northern Aldborough Festival continues until June 27.