Huw Edwards‘ former BBC colleague Jon Sopel has branded his crimes ‘absolutely abhorrent’ a year after he appeared in the media defending him.
Sopel’s intervention comes 58 days after the disgraced former News at 10 presenter pled guilty to three charges of making indecent photographs after he was sent 41 illegal images by a convicted paedophile.
Edwards’ career now lies in tatters after the sex offenders was handed a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years.
But before he was charged former BBC News North America editor Sopel, 65, was one of Edwards’ biggest defenders after he went out on the airwaves several times to back him, claiming he had a ‘complicated private life’.
He led the fury against tabloid journalism, blasting the Sun’s story he paid a teenager £35,000 for ‘sordid images’ as ‘nonsense’ and describing the decision to publish as ‘half-cooked’.
But he has now turned on his convicted criminal ex-colleague, claiming the two ‘weren’t mates’ and saying he is not going to ‘defend anything that he’s done’.
The police mugshot of Huw Edwards after he was given a suspended sentence for child abuse images on September 16
But before he was charged former BBC News North America editor Sopel, 65, was one of Edwards’ biggest defenders after he went out on the airwaves several times to back him, claiming he had a ‘complicated private life’
Jon Sopel’s July 12, 2023, tweet which claimed his former colleague had a ‘complicated private life’
Huw Edwards leaves Westminster Magistrates’ Court after being spared jail on September 16
In an interview to promote his new book with the Guardian, Sopel responded to a question asking if he had been asked by Edwards to defend him.
Sopel, who left the BBC in 2022 after nearly 40 years, replied: ‘No, he didn’t ask me to do anything. I’ve known Huw a long time, but we weren’t mates, hadn’t seen each other socially.
‘The police came out and said there was nothing to it. I thought, if there’s nothing to it and he sent a couple of inappropriate texts, he’s just got a complicated private life.’
‘You do what you do for the right reasons.
‘I’m not going to defend anything that he’s done. It’s absolutely abhorrent.’
When Edwards was revealed to be the unnamed male BBC presenter who offered a teenager tens of thousands of pounds for sexually explicit images, the Metropolitan Police investigated and on July 12 confirmed there was no evidence to indicate a criminal offence had been committed.
Edwards was later convicted in a separate incident which involved him accessing indecent photographs of children as young as seven after a man he met online sent him hundreds of sexual images on WhatsApp.
Jon Sopel defends Huw Edwards on his The News Agents podcast on July 12, 2023
Shortly after Edwards stepped down from the BBC, Sopel went on Good Morning Britain on July 13, 2023, to defend his former colleague who he has known for more than three decades
Edwards held his hands together and steadied himself as Chief Magistrate, district judge Paul Goldspring, spared him jail earlier this month
It later emerged that the BBC knew of his arrest in November, on ‘suspicion of serious offences’, but continued employing him as the highest-paid news presenter on a £475,000 salary until April.
Shortly after Edwards stepped down from the BBC, Sopel went on Good Morning Britain on July 13, 2023, to defend his former colleague who he has known for more than three decades, saying: ‘We’ve had contact, obviously not since he has been hospitalised.
‘He was very angry, I think felt very let down by what happened in The Sun, furious with their coverage, not overly impressed with the BBC’s coverage either, and I think that he is just, I’m sure anyone who knows him is just wishing him well.’
Sopel, who now hosts the podcast The News Agents with Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall, went on to say that he and Edwards used to ‘compete against each other to get up the ladder at the BBC’, is ‘incredibly funny’ with ‘an acid wit’.
He said: ‘He can be a complicated person to deal with, I just think if you’re entering Huw’s orbit, he’s very defensive of his own territory, so I wouldn’t say we’re close friends but I thought that some of the coverage about someone’s private life, which is complicated and possibly a bit messy and that some might find distasteful, I don’t see what it’s got to do with anyone else.’
Sopel now hosts the podcast The News Agents with Emily Maitlis (pictured together) and Lewis Goodall
Jon Sopel and Emily Maitlis attend The Variety Club Showbusiness Awards in April 2024
Sopel also said at the time that he hoped Edwards would return to his broadcasting role, adding: ‘If at the end of this, what you are left with is someone who had some personal struggles about who he was, what he was, how he lived his life, and he made some ill considered judgements along the way, I think it would be such a shame if such a talented and gifted broadcaster, and the way he navigates state occasions and the big events and reads the news with such authority, if that is lost, I think it will be a great loss.
‘I hope he gets better, and I hope that some way, somehow, he’s back, providing that nothing else comes out that we don’t know about.’
After the Metropolitan Police initially ruled out criminality, Sopel said: ‘I don’t know what went on at The Sun. But it just seemed to me that they had a slightly half-cooked story that they decided to go with.
‘They went with the parents of a young man who was in turmoil and from a fractured family relationship. And they didn’t even carry the denial from this kid … It was nonsense.
‘I think the BBC is a complicated beast and it would be lovely to think of it as a streamlined organisation where one bit knows what the other is doing. But the BBC is a series of completely uncoordinated limbs.’
Edwards at the pinnacle of his career picking up a television award for Best Live Event for covering the late Queen’s funeral in June 2023
The News Agents is recorded around lunchtime and aims to drop by 5pm on weekdays. It has hit 100 million downloads
He said on The News Agents podcast: ‘I would also say that I think that some of my BBC colleagues in news need to look at themselves because I think some of what was said, reported, and led on last night again showed that [Huw] had a slightly complicated personal life.
‘It didn’t show criminality.’
Sopel also revealed to the Guardian he was being lined up to become the BBC’s political editor, but realised he didn’t want it due to ‘laziness’ as it would involve standing outside Downing Street at night in the rain.
But Sopel was not the only media star to come out in defence of Edwards.
Former BBC Political Editor Andrew Marr, also a former colleague of Edwards, told listeners to his radio show in July 2023: ‘We’re all human. We all have our frailties.
‘We both know that Huw Edwards has a very very nice and much-admired wife Vicky Flind and I think five children so there is a lot of family involved in this as well on his side.’
Former Newsnight host Emily Maitlis and Sopel’s The News Agents co-star meanwhile spoke out to claim Edwards’s behaviour should have been reported to the corporation’s HR department ‘rather than turned’ into a news story.
Left-wing warrior Owen Jones claimed in July 2023: ‘The Sun is a disgusting rag and they have to pay for what they’ve done to Huw Edwards.
Huw Edwards shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II during a royal visit to BBC Studios in London in June 2013. He enjoyed a glittering career until the scandal came to light
Alongside Sopel, former BBC Political Editor Andrew Marr (left) and left-wing warrior Owen Jones (right) also came out in defence of Edwards
‘They tried to destroy someone’s life with false claims of illegality involving a minor. We know now there was no criminality.’
Anti-newspaper pressure group Hacked Off used Edwards’s mental health claims to launch a campaign criticising the original media reports and calling for tougher regulation of the press.
Meanwhile online comedian Jonathan Pie got around two million views for a foul-mouthed video in which he ranted that Edwards’s behaviour was ‘nobody else’s business.
In the aftermath of the Huw Edwards scandal, the BBC is commissioning an independent review of its workplace culture.