Rob Rinder: ‘Gary Lineker is entitled to say what he likes'
Loquacious, erudite, entertaining, maybe even a little pretentious, but agreeably so: these are all impressions of Robert Rinder one forms within seconds of him dumping his jacket on a chair and saying a warm hello. They are personality traits which have made him a prolific and popular television personality for the past decade.
We're in the penthouse of an east London hotel and Rinder is discreetly casting his eye around the room in quiet judgement; the BBC's Amazing Hotels, which he co-presents with Monica Galetti, is one of his many gigs.
Today is a typical varied work day for the former criminal barrister. A little filming this morning in St Paul's Cathedral, where he is reading some Samuel Pepys, an interview right now to promote his new novel, and then another professional engagement this evening.
He's busy, but gives every impression of being delighted to be interviewed and photographed, even gamely posing on the bed; although I suspect the decor isn't passing his professional scrutiny.
A broadcaster of catholic taste, he is best known as Judge Rinder, the host of the Channel 4 reality courtroom series. He is also a regular host on ITV's Good Morning Britain, has made well-regarded documentaries such as My Family, the Holocaust and Me, The Holy Land and Us, and Britain Behind Bars, as well as participating in the 14th series of Strictly Come Dancing.
He certainly crams it all in: his third novel, The Protest, which we are ostensibly here to discuss, will be published on June 19.
How does he do it? 'I used to be a barrister, I'd spend Sunday night preparing cross-examinations for attempted murder cases,' he says, adding in a whisper: 'TV isn't that much work.'
That's not to say he isn't relishing every single moment of the career he never set out to have. 'I'm doing different things in all different parts of life. It's heaven. What a bloody gift,' he states.
There have been no downsides to fame as yet. 'My experience thus far has been people being completely kind and lovely. They often want to talk about work that I've been part of making, saying things like, 'Oh, I've just been to an art gallery',' he says.
That is a huge win for Rinder, who has styled himself as a champion of high culture for the masses – he is president of the Orion Orchestra, an ensemble of young musicians, and has also made the art and architecture travelogue, Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour.
His passion for making art and classical music available to all is rooted in his childhood. A working-class boy from Southgate, north London, the first generation of his family to go to university, he says: 'I had a very aspirational single mum and the idea was you jolly well do better'.
Education was seen as betterment, and a young Rinder absorbed the idea that to speak a certain way was classier. He's had received pronunciation since secondary school. By rights, he should sound like the late Amy Winehouse, who grew up just a few roads away from him. Instead, Rinder is fond of saying, 'I sound like I've been mugged by a Mitford.'
His own life has shown that you don't have to accept the novel that's been written on your behalf, 'chiefly by virtue of the postcode you've been born into'.
He's certainly not the first to sound plummier than his origins – Stockport-born Dame Joan Bakewell was turned down by the BBC when she first auditioned because her accent was not posh enough – but it is what makes his partnership with Rylan Clark so fascinating.
In Rylan, he has found a friend and colleague who is the flipside of the same coin. While their backgrounds may not be that dissimilar – London, working class – they have arrived at the same point – TV and fame – via different routes. Rylan has been resolutely himself, first on The X Factor, and then on Celebrity Big Brother. Rinder, 47, meanwhile, has assimilated into the chattering classes via higher education and the law, even saying, rather unfairly of himself, 'I'm an invention, aren't I?'
By contrast to Rylan's authenticity, Rinder says he is too much of a people pleaser.
Take his attempt to impress an art historian in the Casa Buonarroti, the home of Michelangelo in Florence. 'She could not have given me more of her aggressively undivided indifference,' states Rinder. 'Not in a horrible way, she was just a bit unimpressed with me.'
Meanwhile, Rylan, his co-presenter and travel companion on Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour, came into the room, looked up at the magnificent frescos and simply said: 'F-----g hell, it's like Graceland in here.'
'That is exactly what this place is,' responded the historian approvingly, warming to Rylan's authenticity. 'That's Rylan's complete authentic gift; people respond to that so much more than the thirst to be loved,' he says.
Rinder's desire to impress is founded in class. A friend of his is a housemaster at Eton. 'The value of a school [like that] is that they are imbuing their young learners with the feeling that they belong in the room.'
He hopes programmes like Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour make it easier for those who would otherwise feel uncomfortable walking through the door of an art gallery or attending the opera: 'And not just to say, 'Wow, that was amazing'. But to feel sufficiently safe to say, 'I looked and listened and that was really s---.'
'It means that person can go into that art gallery or concert hall and say, 'I don't get it'. It's much harder to do that if you feel you should be grateful for being there.'
When I tell him his work feels out of the Reithian mould – the principles and style of public service broadcasting established by John Reith, the first director-general of the BBC – Rinder glows. 'That's an enormous compliment,' he says.
'That was the fundamental idea, that you can entertain people of course, but educate at the same time. But it's about the type of education that tells you, 'You can do this. You know this. I'm just telling you stuff you know'. Telly is at its best when it's reminding people just how culturally curious they are.'
How does his recently wrapped new reality TV show with Elizabeth Hurley, The Inheritance, fit into those principles? The show, from the makers of The Traitors, follows 13 strangers competing for part of the fortune left in the will of The Deceased, played by Hurley.
It might sound more on the 'entertain' end of the Reithian spectrum than the Grand Tour 's 'educate and inform', but Rinder found it no less fascinating. 'One of the tools that you sharpen as a barrister is being able to predict human behaviour, which means you're usually unsurprised by people, but I really was.'
What was Elizabeth like? 'She's extraordinary. Truly extraordinary. She undoubtedly has that Max Weber-ean charisma. It's always nice to reference late 19th-century philosophers when you're thinking of Elizabeth Hurley. There are just a few people who can come into a room and change the emotional complexion of it simply by being them. Granted, the hair and make-up help make an entrance for you, but still, there's something owning and commanding about the depth of her voice, in the way that people used to describe early 20th-century aristocratic women. It's about owning the molecules of the room somehow. There are not too many Consuella Vanderbilts left. She [Elizabeth] has that sort of quality.'
Rinder is used to being around celebrities. At Manchester University, he became a firm friend of Benedict Cumberbatch, when they were both involved in university dramatics. Cumberbatch officiated at Rinder's civil partnership to Seth Cumming in Ibiza in 2013. The couple later broke up in 2018 after 11 years together.
'Over the years, friends of mine have gone on to be very famous, and you meet that chorus of friends around them, and after the initial flush of recognition, they're just actors aren't they? They talk of actorly things. Especially if you've known them for a very long time before they were famous, it's not that interesting.'
Woe betide you are someone whom Rinder admires. 'My friends have got anti-Grinder behaviour orders, which have specifically injuncted me from meeting certain people. I don't do well with opening hellos because I'm always so effusive and so thirsty to be liked by that person.'
Away from fame and celebrity, the law, the other side of his world, remains important to him. The people he started with on the first day of chambers are still central in his life. He is a full member of chambers, having kept up his professional development. The decision to pursue media work came at a stage in his career when he was prosecuting serious criminal cases, but had started to lose his passion for it. After pitching a few scripts to a TV exec, he was approached with the opportunity to do Judge Rinder.
Nevertheless, he says, 'I really love still being rooted and connected to that part of my professional life.'
His new novel, like his previous two, draws on his experiences at the Bar, based loosely on a case he did of a British soldier accused of killing an Iraqi looter. As a barrister, he also defended members of the National Front, in spite of being gay and Jewish himself.
'They have a right to defence. If I'm not going to stand for that person, who is going to stand for me?'
As a child, his grandfather would take him to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, where he would hear anti-semitic views. Such early experiences were formative in making him a free speech fundamentalist. A real no-no for Rinder is when people want to shut down speech because they feel offended.
'Being offended is one of the risks of living in a shared society. But it also protects minority rights.'
Is there anything he finds offensive?
'No. I genuinely don't think I'm offended by anything.'
The day before our interview, Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor jailed for a Tweet that incited racial hatred on the day of the Southport attacks, has had her appeal refused. What does he make of the case?
'She may have done it impulsively, but the problem was that what she said triggered a real world effect,' says Rinder. 'Those are the tough cases, and that's the challenging conversation of where free speech begins and where it ends. In this case, it is slightly more clear-cut because of its incitement.'
He blames social media for eroding the quality of public debate. You certainly won't find Rinder weighing in on Gaza/Palestine or the trans debate online. He has his own thoughts, but generally prefers the approach that believes we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
'You ought and should show solidarity where you can. But if you do have a platform, it's more important to hear and listen, and above all else, to advocate an approach that is rooted in open-mindedness and trying to understand the complexity of a situation.'
His documentary The Holy Land and Us, where he and Sarah Agha explored how their family's histories were changed forever by the 1948 founding of the state of Israel, is now shown in schools around the country. In 2020, he was awarded an MBE for his services to Holocaust education.
'What I wanted to do was give second-generation people from both sides an understanding of the origin stories of the narratives, so people can at least hear each other.'
He is less interested in what he calls, 'the type of glib hubris that assumes that in a few characters your opinion is going to make a radical difference'. And yet, he defends Gary Lineker's right to post about the Gaza conflict: 'He's entitled to say what he likes.'
It would be different if he was presenting the news, 'where it's essential that you present as impartial,' he says. 'I have sympathy, however, if you are a football pundit. I may vehemently disagree with you, but it would be inconsistent or me to take a view you should be sacked and shut down. I would never sign or support those who would seek to do that. I feel the same about Gary Lineker, despite often disagreeing with some of the ways he expresses himself.'
He is more frustrated with the way the BBC fails to take control of such situations. 'There needs to be a bigger push to separate the news arm and the political branches of that really unsung institution,' he says. 'And boy does it not sing its tune well enough, to explain what it does in our world enough in a brilliant way.
'If I had to do another job, it would be rethinking how we can advocate and make the country more proud of what the BBC does. Because they're always fighting fires, like the Gary Lineker fire.'
Rinder has worked in parts of the world such as Sierra Leone, and values the work the BBC does in exercising soft power. He is proud that the success of a show like Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour across the world means BBC orchestras can be paid for.
And we're back to inform, educate and entertain, and what motivates him in his work. 'My mum will be delighted,' he says of my earlier mention of his work in relation to Lord Reith's values.
Is she proud of you? 'She's a Jewish mum,' smiles Rinder. 'She is unapologetically, overwhelmingly biased in favour of anything I do.'
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