In a ground-floor office at ITN on London’s Gray’s Inn Road, the pace quickens. “LOOK, HERE’S WHAT YOU TELL HEZZA’S PEOPLE,” shouts a Channel 4 News editor across the half-empty office. “EITHER HEZZA WILL DISCO OR HE CAN BUGGER OFF! What do you think, Jon?”
Jon Snow, the object of his enquiry, is jiggling around on his seat, bashing out some words on his keyboard, occasionally giving a little whoop and a quick clap of his hands to celebrate. Around him sits a group of six – copy-tasters, editors, directors – all studying their terminals langorously “Well, I think .” says Snow His pukka voice trails off. His concentration is back where it was, wrapped around an opening sentence that encapsulates the day’s events in Northern Ireland. There is just over an hour to go before the programme hits the air, and still no one is sure if the Conservative Party will put anyone up against Labour’s John Prescott for a studio discussion, or “disco” as they term it The atmosphere is, I would say, a bit tense. This probably has less to do with recent Tory attacks on news bias than the simple fact of my presence, here to watch Snow go through his paces.

Of course, he says, “you can sit next to me, see how we put the programme together, it’ll be great!” After all, it’s news season on Channel 4, and bash-the-news-team-time everywhere else after Jonathan Aitken’s tirade against John Humphreys and political bias at the BBC. While Snow bounces around like a puppy, his colleagues, most of whom look as though they are about 20 years younger, seem very edgy indeed.But at 47, Snow has perhaps earned the right to his exuberant confidence. Five years into the job as “anchor” for C4 News, he has matured into one of the most respected newscasters (“God I hate that word,” he says) in the country – and also probably one of the last of his kind. Ask anyone in the news business and they will tell you that Snow’s sort of committed, idiosyncratic approach to news and views values, backed by many years experience in the field, is a precious resource under threat not just from intemperate politicians but the whole sea-change in television technology.Some certainly mistrust him for his politics – his committed work in the voluntary sector and his reputation for leftish-leaning views make a few of his hard-bitten peers rather uneasy.

Others find his on-screen style sloppy, but nearly all agree that he has something, and has given C4 News something that is invaluable in the slick world of modern media And that, for want of two better words, is moral authority. It is no coincidence that Snow’s C4 News has emerged as by the far the best news programme on television at a time when politics has never been seedier.”MY ROLE? WELL, I think I am the enemy within, really,” says Snow. “I like to try and throw in the odd unpinned grenade, to see whether everyone has worked through all the options on the programme.”He is sitting, a very tall, tapering figure, hunched up in a little shoebox of an office behind the main newsroom Behind us, another C4 News editor is typing furiously. His typing appears to become more furious with each of my questions. At one point, when he leaves, Snow leans across with a giggle and a goofy grin.

“He is probably a bit cross with me for being self-revelatory,” he says.There is an old canard that news presenters should shun personal publicity. But Snow also has a reputation inside ITN for being hopelessly indiscreet Evidently, it is well-deserved. Within five minutes of our meeting he has kicked over a real shoebox and unveiled the mock-up for a redesign of the C4 News studio that comes into effect tomorrow It was supposed to be a secret. The rest of my week is filled with pleas from ITN begging me to play down what I had seen.Many couldn’t afford to make those kind of gaffes but Snow is so popular that he gets away with it. And this makes him something of an interviewer’s – and interviewee’s – nightmare. The soft pall of his likeability lies heavily over any dealings with him. “Snargs”, as he was nicknamed by Private Eye, is also something of a sex symbol.

“Jon? He is such a dreamboat to deal with, he’s got no front, he’s my heart-throb,” says the personal assistant of one senior television boss I try to get through to. And that, more or less, is what everyone seems to say about him.This is not really an advantage in the cynical world journalists inhabit but Snow is seen to have paid his dues. In a glittering career as an on-the-hoof TV reporter for ITN he risked his neck in many far-off places and in the process won just about every award going: a Golden Nymph (for Eritrea, 1979), a Valiant for Truth (El Salvador, 1982) – very big deals in television news. More than that he is regarded by his peers as probably the best writer-to-camera of his generation. “His scripts always look gobbledegook on paper, but are brilliant on screen,” says one editor who recalls his reporting days. No one at the BBC ever wanted to be working against Snow on the same story. Indeed many in the business still think he is wasted in a studio role.Of course, others still just rem-ember Snow as The Man Who Was Engaged To Anna Ford “Do they?” says a mystified Snow.