Decca Aitkenhead

When Sir Chris Hoy was ready to reveal his terminal cancer diagnosis, his team knew exactly who should tell his story. They offered the Sunday Times the exclusive interview on one condition: that it was with Decca. Their trust in her is a testimony to her reputation as Fleet Street’s pre-eminent interviewer, and was rewarded with a breathtakingly powerful piece read by more than half a million online.

Decca brought both her professional expertise and personal experience of cancer to the conversation with Hoy. Sensitive and yet also searching, she explored his feelings about his own mortality to produce an interview that was both profoundly moving and philosophically riveting. Afterwards he wrote to her: “I was so nervous before the interview, I wasn't sure if I would get through it without becoming overly emotional, but your empathy and sensitivity made it so much easier than I was expecting.”

The second most-read article in the Sunday Times in 2024, it made headlines all over the world and generated a massive mailbag.

Nigel Farage’s return to frontline politics became the big drama of the UK’s general election, foretold in Decca’s prescient interview in January. A chance encounter with him in December alerted her to his ambition, inspiring the interview. It was the fifth time she has interviewed Farage, and she disagrees profoundly with his politics, but her track record of scrupulous fairness had earned his respect, enabling her to tease out his true intentions. This interview showcases Decca’s peerless skill in creating a rapport while robustly challenging her interviewee, producing a vivid and insightful portrait of both the person and politician. His candid doubts about his desire to “spend every Friday in Clacton for the next five years” would dog him throughout his election campaign.

Decca’s talent for extracting a sensational interview even from a much less well-known subject was demonstrated by her encounter with Andrew Wylie. The literary agent’s legendary clash with rival agent Pat Kavanagh in the 90s was exhaustively covered at the time, but Decca drew out of him previously unreported twin bombshells about the finances of the saga, and Kavanagh’s affairs with both Martin and Kingsley Amis. Wylie also talked for the first time about his incarceration in a mental institution in his teens, following his arrest for underage drinking. Decca’s astute ear for disingenuousness, and careful diligence, were rewarded with a memorable pay off line. As one reader commented below, “Please, PLEASE let’s have more articles like this.”

This was another year in which Decca’s gift for revealing the private side of very public figures was confirmed, with Harriet Harman confessing her secret addiction to Love Island, Neil Kinnock sobbing about the death of his wife - “This is like a bloody therapy session!” - and Shonda Rhimes disclosing that she had to hire 24/7 private security to protect her from fans angry about her Grays Anatomy season finales.