Interview: Ken Bruce

Nobody is better than anybody else. The chartered accountant drinks in the same pub as the brickie. "There are no class divisions in Glasgow," he says, and then his voice slips into that almost sing-song, faux innocence so characteristic of his radio persona. "While Edinburgh, I always found," he continues, "had an Establishment. People who thought they were above you." He laughs wryly. "All those poets who never wrote a decent poem in their lives." Oh relax, all you Edinburgh folk. He's joking. The man's joking. Though let's face it, not much.

Waspish humour has been Bruce's stock in trade at BBC Scotland and then Radio 2 for more than 25 years. "I'm not a serious-minded person, I'm afraid," he says. "Flippancy has always been my downfall." His job doesn't matter. "I don't take it at all seriously." Does it ever bother him being in a job that patently doesn't matter? "No, I'm in the perfect job for me. I've never wanted power and influence." Mind you, English listeners weren't at all sure about him when he first started. "I think they thought, ooh, he's a little bit sharp, isn't he? I'm not. That's just what you do. People get a bit of needle from me but I reserve the sharpest needle for myself. It's a Scottish thing. Good… tough… a wee bit harsh. You give it and you take it back."

Bruce has just written an autobiography, which is a peculiar thing for a Glasgow man to do since we all know west of Scotland men, particularly of a certain generation, like to discuss their lives about as much they like to tie string round their aching tooth and attach the end to a door handle. (There, there, all you Edinburgh New Men, so in touch with your feminine sides – have we addressed the balance now?) Some people give you every cough and spit of their professional life as a diversionary tactic in their autobiographies, to avoid talking about their private lives. Some spill their private innards like turkey giblets. Where would Bruce place himself on this spectrum? "Oh, in the middle," he says, confidently.

Hah! Planet self-delusion calling. What about his therapy? Hmm, yes, I did forget to mention that, didn't I, he admits. Should have put that in. Failed marriages? "I tell the story, but I don't want to go into too much detail because everybody is still alive and they're all good people and everybody's happy, so I'm not going to rake over the coals." But never mind. He tells us about that Radio 4 job he went for once and didn't get. Bruce is funny and barbed and can make anything into a tale, usually one that involves copious amounts of alcohol and a good bit of banter. And he's terribly laid-back on air – which he says is the real him. No doubt it is. But do we believe it's all of him? Of course we don't.

So three marriages, Mr Bruce. What have you learned about women? He splutters a bit. "Obviously not very much," he says. "I haven't learned anything. I have learned to keep quiet and say, 'Yes dear,' that's what I've learned." He has been happily married for the last ten years to Kerith, his third wife, with whom he has three young children (he also has two sons from his first marriage and a daughter from his second). But this time, things are different. "I've learned to be less self-centred," he acknowledges. "Actually, it's not just about what I want to do. It's about what everyone else wants to do as well."

Despite the personal turmoil over the years, he came from a very settled background that was, particularly in Glasgow terms, quite prosperous. His father was a small businessman who dealt in shoes, a middleman between the factories and the department stores. He also owned a small newsagent's shop in Ingram street, in the city centre. Like many dads of his generation, he was simply an armchair presence in the family home in Giffnock. "He had his paper and his cigarette and a little glass of whisky in the evening, and that was the extent of it. But he was a very reassuring, calm presence."

His father ran the business and his mother ran the family. Bruce was the last of four children – three boys and one girl – and says talking for a living sprang from the fact that he always needed to make himself heard in a "big family of quite forceful characters – funny, life-and-soul-of-the-party people." There was constant banter. "I was the baby and couldn't get a word in. I would just throw in one line – which would always get a laugh – but I would have to wait for the moment. I always think being on the radio is my chance to speak without being interrupted."

His mother was warm and kindly, and probably a bigger influence on the children than his father. His parents eventually moved to Carrbridge, in the Highlands, to run a guest house, and she was in her element. "When she was widowed and living up there she made soup, and every child in the area appeared to go into Granny Bruce's. She was a nice woman who shaped me well. I was brought up to think you didn't have to be the best at everything. As long as you were doing good work and were happy and were nice to people, that's all that mattered, and that certainly stayed with me. This is a business where you can start to take things much too seriously and I don't take it at all seriously."

But perhaps that wasn't always the case. If there is one clear insight Bruce's autobiography gives into his life, it's that he recognises his priorities were skewed when he was young, and that caused a lot of personal unhappiness. His broadcasting career took precedence over everything else. "If only you knew when you were younger what experience teaches you as you get older," he says, "you wouldn't make all the mistakes." So he was ambitious? "I never thought I was an ambitious person, but obviously I was. Certainly in my 30s I was enjoying it so much, having a great time, and I wanted to get to here, where I am now, because I thought that's where I would be happiest." He paid a price for that, a price which, much as he still loves his job, he would no longer be prepared to pay.

"When I eventually give up broadcasting, I'll need to find something else to give me my interests, but I won't go to pieces about not appearing on the radio again. I think I've got that bit of my life sorted now. Twenty years ago, if you'd said I would never work on radio again, I would have been absolutely bereft, suicidal."

Bruce had to battle to get into broadcasting and perhaps that heightened the sense of achievement once he finally started making progress (he had been turned down by both the BBC and forces radio before using hospital radio as his training ground). After leaving Hutchesons' Grammar School in Glasgow, he had gone on to work in an accountants' office, but a less natural environment for the flippant Bruce was hard to imagine. Unsurprisingly, his second-year exams suggested the world economy would not collapse should he choose to rethink his career. He left and joined a car-hire firm. He had worked his way up to assistant manager and married his first wife, Fiona, when the offer of a three-month contract working as a BBC Scotland announcer came up. He didn't hesitate.

He always felt completely at home in a radio studio, never feeling fear in front of a microphone. His duties as an announcer were varied, from reading news and football results to introducing a symphony concert, but eventually he was offered his own programme, graduating finally to Radio Scotland's mid-morning show. The exposure landed him additional jobs for the BBC in London. He found it hard to turn anything down, and in 1984 was given his first permanent show on Radio 2, on a Saturday night. By the following year, he was taking over the breakfast show. But there would be a few years of moving about the schedule, of hirings and firings, before he finally came to rest in his mid-morning show, which attracts seven million listeners.

Maybe it was years of long shifts, constant travelling between home and London, and the long boozy sessions surrounding work that gradually distanced him from his home life. In fact, there are so many jokes and references about the demon drink in his autobiography that it begs a question. Did alcohol become a problem for him? "It wasn't a problem in a medical or social sense, but there were times when… Well, there was a great drink culture round newspapers and the BBC at the time. There were actually quite a lot of good programmes, and the BBC was just as good as it is now – but a lot of people were three-quarters pissed at the time."

In fact, he argues, not only was the BBC just as good as now, maybe it was better. "I think there was more creativity. There were more people around with perhaps less to do. People who work in radio and television now are working very hard and don't have time to stare at the ceiling and think of new things to do and ways to be creative. That is why you have so much format repetition in television. Somebody needs to go away and look at the sky for a bit."

Bruce wasn't just gazing at the sky but at a BBC researcher called Anne, who would become his second wife. He says he agonised over the collapse of his first marriage and felt a lot of guilt about it. Fiona didn't deserve it. When Anne subsequently left him, it felt a bit like his moral debt was being called in. It was Bruce's lowest point.

"I never get really depressed, but that's as close as I came, I suppose," he admits. The depression was about feeling he'd failed a second time? "Yeah. I think it was, oh God, where did this go wrong? I didn't see this coming. I like to think I'm savvy and I look ahead and I know everything that's going on in my life, and I really hadn't clocked it. It made me wake up and think, you need to think a little less about work and a little more about what's going on in the rest of your life."

It was at this point he went for therapy. "It was a couple of months and I just went because I was boring my friends basically. 'Oh God… my life…' 'Why don't you go and see somebody?' So I did. You sit there and talk and after a while they say, 'Don't you think you've just proved…' And you go, 'Oh yes, I have haven't I?' Nobody sorts you out really, apart from yourself. You just talk and talk and talk. It's quite good to unburden yourself and if you do it to friends, their eyes glaze over. And they can't offer a nudge the way a therapist can. It's just a nudge to say, 'Actually you've got this, and that…' 'Yes I have, haven't I?' After three or four sessions, I said, 'That's fine. I'm happy now.'"

After the split, he buckled down to being a dad to his daughter from his second marriage. First time round, he had been a bit of a hands-off father. This time, he was determined to be involved. He shared custody with Anne and looked after two-year-old Kate half the time. He never expected to marry again. It has been one of life's unexpected joys, the last chance he never expected. He met Kerith, another researcher, when covering Eurovision for Radio 2, and their marriage brought new challenges to his life. At 58, he has three young children, the eldest of whom, Murray, is autistic. "It's a big shock when it's diagnosed," he admits. "But you tend to have been aware that it's there and the possibility of (your child] being autistic has grown in your mind."

There's something about a Scottish background, says Bruce, that breeds a kind of stoicism. "You just think, this is the hand I've been dealt so there's no point in getting depressed about it. Deal with it. You look at the positives you get, and that's what I've done with Murray. He's a great little fellow. He can be really tiring and frustrating at times, when everything kicks off at once and there's all sorts of things going on and he's flooding the bathroom. But I'm very glad to have the opportunity to do it properly, the proper family home and the kids all there and I'm there to help. I really don't like to spend any nights away."

There are, he admits, "big moments of sadness". "I've always liked telling jokes to the kids and making them laugh, and you think, Murray's never quite going to get the jokes. I'll never quite be able to make him laugh. But as things turn out, he laughs for different reasons and you get a lot of joy out of him."

His biggest worry is the future. "I'm 58 and my wife's 42 and Murray's seven. When he's 37, I'm going to be 88 if I'm still around, and Kerith will be 72, so we won't be able to help him all his life. Who will look after him? All of my other children have said they will keep an eye on him, which is sweet, but you don't want to…" he trails off. "That's the thing about our younger daughter Verity," he adds. "She already has to be a bit of a carer for him. She keeps an eye on him, and it's quite a burden to put on a little child."

It is a burden, and yet often children who grow up having to look out for a parent or sibling gain as much as they lose. They become considerate people. "Any disability makes you a better person as much as anything else," agrees Bruce. He has changed? "I think so. It makes you less judgmental of people. If you see someone acting a little strangely… There are thousands of adults out there who are autistic and have never been diagnosed. It's such a wide spectrum. You see a lot of people who have difficulty relating to the world, and it makes me more tolerant. The more I learn about it, the more I can diagnose autism pretty well as soon as I meet someone. And all men are to some degree! It's just an exaggerated form of maleness, of being a man."

There were press reports last year that Bruce was being unceremoniously dumped from his long-running show and would be replaced by Simon Mayo. Not true, says Bruce. "The BBC can be a bit irritating at times because they won't confirm or deny stories," he says. "I said to someone, 'You tell me it's not true, and everybody tells me it's not true, but nobody is going to believe it if you don't comment.'" To be fair, the timing was unfortunate; Radio 2's controller, Lesley Douglas, had just resigned after the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross fiasco. "Nobody could comment with any veracity."

With young children to support, Bruce is not anticipating retirement soon. In any case, he loves his job. "At my age I like to look a fair distance in front of me, and at the moment we're discussing a contract that takes me to 2012, which is quite nice." When he first became a full-time presenter, he had to give up his staff job at the BBC and go freelance (the BBC like their presenters to be easily disposable). Coming from a very secure family as a child, Bruce thinks, helped with the feeling of uncertainty that freelancing inevitably brings. But he also doesn't like to be tied down. "I wouldn't want a contract that said 2022. I get frightened by that."

He used to think he'd like to return to Scotland but is settled now in Oxfordshire (though he doesn't like the city of Oxford itself because it has two extremes, 'high' Oxford and the terrible poverty of 'low' Oxford. He prefers a less polarised society). After his parents moved to Carrbridge, it established family connections in the north and these days he feels as much affinity with the Highlands as Glasgow. His sister moved into hotel work there, and one of his brothers used to own the Plockton Hotel. Sadly, that brother died last year of prostate cancer, an event also not mentioned in Bruce's autobiography. Perhaps it was simply too raw and recent to write about.

There is a sense that anything of any importance simply goes on beneath the Bruce surface, the deeper currents churning beneath the apparently shallower waters of waspish humour and self-deprecating jokes. Maybe it's just an indication of that male autism he talks about. His life motto might well be, "Nothing matters. Much!" He certainly doesn't waste much time worrying what his life's all about. "No," he agrees. "I'll worry about that on the last day. Where am I going? I'll look over the parapet and think, what's going to happen to me now?" r

The Tracks of my Years, by Ken Bruce (18.99, Sidgwick & Jackson), is published on 4 September