David Dimbleby leaves Question Time: The BBC's man for the big occasion bows out after 24 years

The veteran anchor known as a cool master of ceremonies is making way for Fiona Bruce

David Dimbleby is to present Question Time on BBC1 for the final time on 13 December before being replaced in the chair by Fiona Bruce from January.

The veteran anchor, 80, has presented the topical town hall debating forum – broadcast from around the UK every Thursday evening – since 1994, inheriting the job from Peter Sissons.

Dimbleby – described as a “hereditary broadcaster”, representing the fourth generation of his family to enter the journalism trade – quickly proved himself a cool and dependable presence on the panel, never allowing his personality to dominate or his guests to showboat at the audience’s expense. Crucially, he knew when to fall silent.

But he also had an acute sense of fun. Occasionally permitting himself a dry chuckle – as when the alarm sounded on his digital watch and a panellist quipped it must be his bedtime – Dimbleby was able to lay down the law when it mattered, evicting a heckler just last year after they began barracking Remain campaigner Gina Miller.

Other celebrated encounters he oversaw during his tenure included Ian Hislop tackling Mary Archer over her husband’s part in dragging the Conservative Party through the mud, Nigel Farage at daggers drawn with Eddie Izzard over immigration and Eric Pickles facing a hostile crowd during the expenses scandal.

Throughout, he remained the model professional.

“Dimbleby has become virtually inscrutable,” Ben Summerskill wrote in The Observer in 2001. “Even his closest colleagues say they find it almost impossible to divine who he might vote for.”

Equally adept interviewing John Lydon as he was John Prescott, Dimbleby was on superb form in 2009 when BNP leader Nick Griffin was invited on to Question Time, a matter of huge controversy. The presenter handled the occasion by simply putting his questions forward and allowing the man’s absurdity to speak for itself.

Asking the far-right politician about Holocaust denial, he pressed him: “Why are you smiling? It’s not a particularly amusing issue.”

That same year, Dimbleby missed a show for the first time in his career when he was briefly knocked unconscious by a rearing bullock he was attempting to load into a trailer on his Sussex farm. John Humphrys stepped in to the hot seat.

In addition to Question Time, Dimbleby has taken part in every BBC general election broadcast since 1979, his famous calm tested in 1987 when Robin Day unexpectedly threw him a link and caught him out live on camera with a mouthful of Mars Bar. He rowed back on his retirement in 2017 to bump the unlucky Huw Edwards from the desk, apparently unable to resist the excitement of one last ride.

David Dimbleby (BBC)

He has also regularly hosted the BBC’s coverage of America’s presidential elections, memorably sparring with Gore Vidal during the Obama-McCain race of 2008, amused and genial while the writer was on cantankerous form, pretending not to know who he was and asking: “May I talk the facts of life to you?”

The BBC has made good use of his gravitas for great occasions of state, inviting him to provide the commentary for Remembrance Sunday, the funerals of Princess Diana, the Queen Mother and Margaret Thatcher, New Year’s Eve 1999, Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 and the Brexit referendum of 2016.

“The British people have spoken – we are out,” he concluded that night, effectively firing the starting pistol on the madcap bureaucratic chaos that has since ensued.

Like his father Richard during the Second World War and its aftermath, David Dimbleby found himself providing the public face of the corporation, and uniquely suited to it. He might have equally become an MP, his privileged upbringing leading him to study politics, philosophy and economics at Christ Church, Oxford, the usual route to the hustings.

Dimbleby has also developed a nice sideline in national heritage documentaries, fronting A Picture of Britain (2005), How We Built Britain (2007) and Britain and the Sea (2013) and been tipped as a potential director-general or chairman of the BBC at various stages without ever quite making the leap.

It’s Question Time though with which he is indelibly associated.

Loved for his deafening ties – electric pink is all in a day’s work – Dimbleby was always extremely game when it came to promoting the show on Facebook, wiggling his hips to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and even performing a Brexit rap: “We’ve triggered Article 50/May’s letter was nifty/Michel Barnier looks shifty/Are we going to have to be thrifty/With a recession in 2050?”

This underrated side of his character perhaps explains the Dimblebot.

A spoof mechanoid alter ego offering a droll running commentary on Question Time via Twitter since 2009, the Dimblebot tweets in block capitals to his “DIMBLETS” every week, hailing the work of “BIO-DIMBLEBY” as the real presenter “DEFEATS” his guests and members of the audience in debate.

Adored online for his “DIMBLE-DANCE” and Teletext-style website, it is rumoured that members of the extended Dimbleby clan buy each other merchandise from the site for Christmas, so delighted are they by the send-up of the patriarch.

When Prescott raised the Dimblebot with the host and his unlikely online celebrity live on air in 2011, he responded with a laugh: “We’re having a serious discussion here but I do know I’m called ‘Dimblebot’ and I know there’s a Dimble-dance and I can do it, too… But this is neither the time nor the place!”

Whether the creators are assembling a BRUCEBOT to succeed the decommissioned avatar of BIO-DIMBLEBY is as yet unknown.