LIKE a retired headmaster, David Dimbleby controls BBC's Question Time each week with a stern yet fair hand.

Vastly different in style from more ebullient political broadcasters such as Jeremy Paxman, the veteran broadcaster and writer has been chairing the show for 16 years.

Yet the 71-year-old confesses that he gets nervous before every live programme, whether it be anchoring the election – which he will be doing this year – or presenting Question Time.

"I live on them (his nerves). I feel that unless I feel a bit nervous it's not going to work, but if I do feel a bit nervous it will work. It's a theatrical thing and I think actors and politicians have the same thing," he says.

"With Question Time, on the afternoon of the day, I get this slight feeling of 'I wish I was somewhere else'."

He calms his nerves away from work by going for long walks near his £1.5 million Sussex farm which he shares with his wife, Belinda Giles, and their 11-year-old son, Fred. He has three other children with his first wife, the cookery writer Josceline Dimbleby.

However, life on the farm isn't always as tranquil as it might be. Last year he missed Question Time for the first time in 15 years because he was charged by his wife's bullock, which knocked him out.

"It charged me while I was holding a fence trying to get it into a gateway. I just fell back on my head and was knocked out so I know very little about it."

He had stitches in his skull and was in hospital for three days with concussion, which forced him off Question Time that week.

"It was a shock lying in bed and watching Question Time without me being on it," he reflects. John Humphrys filled in, for which Dimbleby remains grateful.

"I rang him up afterwards to thank him. He'd been up all night and then done the Today programme, so I was really grateful and I thought he did very well," he says.

Aside from live debates, Dimbleby has also done documentaries on the landscape of Britain and will be looking at history through art in his new seven-part series, The Seven Ages Of Britain, starting on BBC One on January 31, and accompanying tie-in book.

Towards the end of the book, he describes the "artistic chaos" of the 20th century which reflects Britain as a society uncertain about its goals.

"We're not necessarily a more unhappy nation now, just more chaotic," he says.

"There's deep disillusionment about politicians and a general disengagement and a feeling that the political world is unrepresentative of what the country thinks and is going its own way."

But that feeling makes for a better Question Time, he agrees. "It beautifully reflects the state of mind of the country as a whole."

Last year, Question Time celebrated its 30th anniversary.