After working flat out on the recent General Election, cabinet changeovers and pledges from the new government, as well as the build-up to the American election, ITV News political editor Robert Peston is feeling weary.
But the acclaimed journalist, best-selling author and podcaster, who presents ITV’s political interview programme Peston and co-hosts The Rest Is Money podcast with business correspondent Steph McGovern, says that his ADHD has helped him to hyperfocus.
“The weird thing about ADHD is that you have a brain fizzing with tons of thoughts, in my case, colliding thoughts the whole time, and it’s very hard to stick to a strand, to sit still.
“But the positive side is that if you have this condition and there’s something you really want to do, you have this ability to hyperfocus, to shut out the world and just concentrate in a way in life that is quite useful, although it drives people who love you mad when you slightly cut yourself off from human interaction.
“I’ve written five non-fiction and two fiction books and if I hadn’t had the hyperfocus I don’t think I would have been able to do them and continue with the day job.”
Peston, 64, also suffers from OCD, as does his fictional hardened TV journalist Gil Peck in his latest thriller, The Crash.
It’s Crash papperbok day. Available from all fine booksellers https://t.co/0x8qOB4rPO pic.twitter.com/zCw3lzWzte
— Robert Peston (@Peston) August 1, 2024
It’s set in 2007, beginning with Peck breaking the news about the collapse of a bank resembling Northern Rock in the build-up to the 2008 financial crash – a story which Peston broke at the time, which won awards and made him famous.
The fictional plot thickens when Peck’s source, a director at the Bank of England who also happens to be his lover, dies in an apparent suicide.
Peston says of his OCD: “It never goes away completely. It was really acute when I was a teenager and it very much damaged my life.
“I would feel very anxious the whole time and I’d have to engage in weird rituals, like not walking on the cracks in the pavement, to try to calm myself down.
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep and at about one or two in the morning I would routinely leave my bedroom, go downstairs, check the gas was off, check all the doors were locked, go back to bed, somehow not trust that I had properly checked and go down again and again for hours. It was pretty devastating.
“Nobody dealt with it. I didn’t tell anyone. My parents, for whatever reason, never noticed, and I worked my way through it and learned techniques for it to become less of a burden, but it was always associated with anxiety.
“I still have flare-ups of that kind of anxiety, but not in a way that ruins my life.”
The acclaimed journalist acknowledges his urge to be busy, but he’s more interested in the job than the fame.
“I don’t think I’m addicted to being on television. For me, what matters is the journalism and I’m lucky enough to have people around me who will say when they think I’m being a bit of a narcissistic p****.”
As well as his political prowess, Peston’s fashion sense over the years has also attracted attention.
He has had comments about his hair, one minute floppy, the next flyaway, his eye-catching scarves, his tie – or no tie – choices and his sartorial selections.
“Ah, the latest thing, of course, is the trainers,” he says resignedly. “I’ve worn trainers for a couple of years just because I’m on my feet all day and running around the whole time.
“There was a period, long before the (former) Prime Minister got into Adidas Sambas, that I was wearing them. Now I wear Air Jordans and people have decided that’s the talking point.
“When I was young, before kids, I had more disposable income and I was pretty interested in fashion and clothes. Let’s be clear, I look a bit shabby and shambolic sometimes and I’m sometimes a bit creased up but I do care. I like the usual schmutter, as we say.”
Away from the frippery of fashion, the job in the past few years has kept him engaged.
“In a way the more complicated the world is, the more interesting the job. Trying to explain what’s going on in a way that’s relevant to people’s lives is the thing that motivates me. And let’s be under no illusion, we live in very complicated, very challenging times, not just in Britain but in the world.”
Does he get stressed about the issues he has to report on?
“Occasionally I get depressed when I see leaders saying and doing the wrong things and if you do my job as ITV political editor, probably the hardest thing in recent years has been to keep my cool on television and not say what I really think.
“My job is to tell people in unemotional terms what’s going on and give them the information so, with any luck, they can make the judgment that these people are behaving like blithering idiots.”
Keeping his emotions in check is nothing new to Peston, who held senior editorial roles at the Financial Times before moving into broadcast and became BBC News economics editor in 2013 before joining ITV News in 2015.
Work was a distraction to his intense grief when his wife of 14 years, the novelist Siân Busby, with whom he has a son, Max, and stepson, Simon, died from lung cancer in 2012, aged 51.
“The trauma of being with somebody with a horrible and painful illness over five years and who you love dearly and thought you would be with forever and then, obviously, being with them as they die, does cause trauma. It took me a long time to get over that.
“I’m pretty addicted to keeping busy and, at some point after Siân died, I worked out that I was keeping busy in a way to deflect from the self-analysis and self-understanding that I needed to achieve if I was going to get over the trauma of Siân’s death.”
He continues: “I’ve had a lot of counselling over the years, not just grief counselling, but other counselling and psychotherapy. I’m a great believer that good therapy can be incredibly helpful in helping one to understand who one is and how to become more resilient. It’s helped in many different ways.”
Since 2018, he has shared his home in north London with the writer Charlotte Edwardes, who has three children from a previous marriage.
“Whatever sadness I feel about the death of Siân, I feel a lucky and happy person in the sense that I’m lucky enough to have a combination of Charlotte and a large modern family.”
Amid the political chaos, the doom and the gloom on which he reports, he endeavours to look after his mental health.
“I just try to be as open as possible about the challenges that I face at any particular time. I still have a therapist who I talk to who helps me explore the issues in my life.”
And he remains an optimist.
“My attitude is there’s no point in being anxious and pessimistic. You have to face and understand the challenges, even if they are a bit scary. The only way you can fix them is to be honest about them and think about the possible solutions.”
The Crash by Robert Peston is published by Zaffre, available in paperback, priced £9.99. Available now
