Amol Rajan’s under cover role! BBC journalist had job as a model for agony aunt’s photo casebook

His meteoric rise has made him one of the BBC’s star journalists, with assignments on Radio 4’s Today programme and host of University Challenge.

But Amol Rajan has revealed a much less commanding role: playing an ‘inadequate’ man in an agony aunt’s photo casebook on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff.

‘I would be pictured, often with someone out of my league, and I’d have real questions and self-doubt and there would be a little thought bubble that said “I just can’t make it happen”,’ he told the BBC’s Would I Lie To You? ‘It was really to bring alive scenarios that people could relate to,’ he added. Asked to decide whether The One Show host’s extraordinary tale was a truth or a lie, the opposing team, led by comedian David Mitchell, said he was telling the truth, which Rajan confirmed.

Viewers were shown an example of the comic strip, which saw a topless Rajan in bed next to a woman who appears less than impressed with his lovemaking. The 39-year-old former newspaper editor joined the BBC as media editor in 2016, a role he held until last month.  

He had spent two years as a mic boy on The Wright Stuff before joining The Independent in 2007.

In 2013, aged 29, he became the paper’s editor, which made him the youngest editor of a broadsheet title in Britain.

On BBC’s Would I Lie To You?, viewers were shown an example of the comic strip, which saw a topless Rajan in bed next to a woman who appears less than impressed with his lovemaking

In 2013, aged 29, Rajan became The Independent paper’s editor, which made him the youngest editor of a broadsheet title in Britain