Robert Peston: 'My therapy is my rock band with Ed Balls'

ITV’s political editor Robert Peston talks to Hannah Stephenson about therapy, stress, being in a band with Ed Balls and the dark possibilities of AI, a subject tackled in his latest thriller.

Strutting around a small stage in the back room of a pub, belting out rock and punk cover songs may not seem a natural environment for ITV’s political editor Robert Peston.

But he throws himself into performing with Centrist Dad, a band he set up featuring Peston on vocals and his pal, former Yorkshire MP and shadow chancellor Ed Balls, on drums.

“It is definitely a form of therapy,” he muses, while taking a well earned break from his job as ITV’s political editor, in the wake of yet another new Prime Minister and what has seemed like a decade of political mayhem.

“I think we were all hoping after the last election that it would just be a bit dull and boring for a bit. But it hasn’t turned out that way,” says Peston, 66.

“Music is my principal way of just cutting off from the world. When we are rehearsing, all the misery of the world is locked out and we’re 13-year-old boys again. It’s a very innocent pleasure.”

It also helps the man with a history of OCD and ADHD, who had acute anxiety as a teenager which carried on in adulthood as he engaged in rituals like not walking on the cracks in the pavement to try to calm himself down.

He and Balls have known each other since the mid-90s and Peston recalls visiting his pal in Yorkshire years ago and noticing that he had a drum kit, so assumed he could play.

“When he joined (the band), Ed wasn’t an accomplished drummer, but like everything that Ed does, if he decides to do something, he massively commits and he’s now a pretty good drummer.”

They only perform to raise money for charity and Peston recalls that Sir Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper (Balls’ wife and now Health Secretary) attended their first gig in north west London in 2023.

“There was this moment where I launched into the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK.

"According to Tom Baldwin’s book about Starmer (Keir Starmer: The Biography), which I understand is completely true, Starmer turns to Ed Miliband and says, ‘Under no circumstances are you to sing along to Anarchy In The UK’.

"We don’t make claims to being the world’s greatest musicians,” he continues, “but we do take pride in what we do.”

What does he think of the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham?

“It’s early days. He is plainly somebody who has tried to learn the lessons of what went wrong in the early days, weeks and months of Starmer, in the sense that he’s started by giving stuff to people rather than taking it away from them.”

Writing political thrillers is another way Peston lowers his stress levels and his latest, The Kill Switch, is the third in his series featuring fictional investigative journalist Gil Peck – who has distinct similarities to Peston – and journalist Jess Neeskens, who have an unexpected scoop when the Prime Minister becomes unwell, collapses mid-interview on their podcast, and later dies.

It is found that she’s been injected with a novel virus.

Then begins the hunt for the killer, as they discover that the PM had blocked a contract for a major tech company to manage public sector systems, including the NHS, which they suspect led to her assassination.

AI – and its possibilities – features heavily in the novel, posing the question of whether AI is evolving to develop a mind of its own. It’s a fear Peston voices now.

“My big obsession for about three years has been artificial intelligence and essentially the good and the bad of it.

"The good is that, harnessed in the right way, it can make us more productive, it can make us as societies richer.

“But the negative side is potentially hugely serious and troubling, which is the AI super intelligence being somehow created or born with a will of its own and an autonomy, the ability to improve itself without any human intervention, and we’re already seeing that with the latest AI models to an extent.”

He’s also concerned that AI will end up replacing people in a vast number of jobs, which would ultimately devastate the economy – and society.

Away from work, he has also had his share of turmoil. 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.

He threw himself into work to distract himself from the grief. However, taking the notes for his late wife’s final book to write up so it could be published proved the final emotional straw.

Two months later, he collapsed, experiencing agony in every joint, was hospitalised and was diagnosed with reactive arthritis. Over a period of months it subsided.

“It was my body just saying to me, ‘Stop! Take time for yourself, don’t use your tendency to be hyperactive.’

"When we’ve had a catastrophe in our lives like the death of a wife, we all need time to grieve and try to understand who we are.”

Early last year, and met his current partner, artist Nell Breyer, at a Christmas party, although it’s a long-distance relationship as she lives in New York and he lives in North London.

His mother died in February and Peston believes he takes more time to grieve and understand himself these days.

He has had a lot of therapy over the years, but his earlier experience of losing his wife also changed his attitude to life, he says.

“Fundamentally I became less scared in the sense that when you are with somebody as brave as she was – and she was extraordinarily brave – but also when the most important person in your life dies, it makes you realise that we do only have one life and you’ve got to stop being scared and just do the stuff you want to do.”

The Kill Switch by Robert Peston is published by Zaffre, £16.99.