[2] In his 21 years on Today, Naughtie had anchored every BBC Radio UK election results programme from 1997 onwards.

[4] Naughtie began his career as a journalist in 1975 at the Aberdeen Press & Journal, moving to the London offices of The Scotsman in 1977.

[7] He has also made several radio documentaries and series and has written three books, Playing the Palace: A Westminster Collection,[8] The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage,[9] and The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency.

It has dealt with various famous names, including Richard Doll, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth David, Margot Fonteyn, Peter Hall, Cicely Saunders, John Lennon and Paul McCartney and Tim Berners-Lee.

The final week of the programme dealt with Tony Blair, Fred Goodwin, Rupert Murdoch, Simon Cowell and finished with the Queen herself.

[17] In July 2015 he announced, via the BBC, that in early 2016 he would retire from regular presenting duties on the programme and would, instead, be its 'Special Correspondent' with 'responsibility for charting the course of the constitutional changes at the heart of the UK political debate', as well as the BBC News's Books Editor, contributing a book review to the Saturday morning editions of Today.

[22] On 6 December 2010, Naughtie was co-presenting the Today programme, and trailing the guests who would be interviewed after the 8 am news bulletin.

Naughtie was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Stirling in 2001, and installed as its Chancellor on 9 October 2008, succeeding Dame Diana Rigg when her ten-year term ended.

[27] In his speech he referred to the Trump presidency thus: "There hasn’t been in living memory in western democracy a threat to freedom of the press of the kind we see there."