In this career memoir, Jeremy Vine reflects: "In broadcasting, the only unforgivable sin was to be smug. There was no danger of that."

Certainly there isn't. Admiring quotes on the cover range from Andrew Marr and Joan Bakewell, to Andrew Neil and Mark Lawson. However, It's All News to Me, written to mark Vine clocking up a quarter-century at the BBC, is the antithesis of smug  almost a primal howl of self-deprecation. Of Vine's self-imposed set of "rules", the first is: "No matter how important you think you are, you are not that important." Throughout, his tone is of the sidelined observer who must "embrace humiliation".

Chapter one, That Bigoted Woman, starts with Gordon Brown with his head in his hands over the Gillian Duffy encounter, on Vine's Radio 2 show (for which Vine won a Sony Radio Academy award). From there, Vine takes us through his career, from paying dues in regional papers, his BBC traineeship, becoming the youngest person to present Today, getting shot at in Bosnia, being appointed Africa correspondent, joining Newsnight, and inheriting Jimmy Young's show  if "inheriting" is the right word for what Vine portrays as a Radio 2 version of the knifing of Caesar.

Vine keeps personal biography to a minimum. He had a great childhood, there was some youthful messing about in rock bands, one of his siblings is Tim (the comedian famed for one-liners), and he's a happily married father. This is all dealt with fairly briskly, with an air of "this is not what we're here for". Vine is never better than when he is dishing on Beeb sub-hierarchies, skulduggeries and unseemly backroom scuffles. He eschews cloying media luvvie-dom (everybody is mysteriously "wonderful", even as they are stabbing you in the back), preferring a wry candour that never tips into spite.

If insider gossip is what you're after, Vine delivers with keeneyed portraits of all the darkly hilarious situations, career banana skins and lovable monsters he has encountered in media and politics, from the "support-sabotage" of fellow political correspondent ("pol-corr") John Sergeant ("Vine is excellent; his sense of judgment will come") to the unscripted gems of radio phone-in callers ("Gary Glitter should be humanely destroyed"). Vine talks with as much enthusiasm about the likes of his African housekeeper, Paulina, as he does the well known. He also shines a spotlight on some of the BBC's great hidden eccentrics, such as one-time Radio 2 head Jim Moir opining at his leaving do: "I sent a car for Nicky Campbell but, sadly, it missed."

One chapter heading muses: "Can I be friends with Peter Mandelson?" Vine decides, no, not really, though seems to have fun finding out  monitoring Mandelson and other New Labour big beasts, during their rise to power, Vine seems to have a bad-boy crush on Mandelson (no, not in that way). In a scene to be savoured, Mandelson furiously denies to Vine that he is manipulative: "I am not Machiavellian, I am not plotting or planning, and I am definitely not spinning." Mandelson's outburst is interrupted by his mobile phone. Mandelson hisses into the mouthpiece: "This. Must. Be. Defused."

As one who believes in "light and shade", Vine delivers some vivid portraits of 9/11 and Aids in Africa, while a piece on the mothers of dead servicemen left me almost in tears. As for his time on Newsnight, Vine describes it as "more testing than joining the Hells Angels". His eyebrow-arching nemesis Jeremy Paxman's first words to him are: "What are you doing here?" Looking back on being publicly dubbed Paxo's "mini-me", Vine thinks of another "rule": "Never join a current affairs programme if someone else is called Jeremy."

Of course "Auntie" is the second main character in this book, if not joint first, and Vine's account keeps us ever-mindful of an old BBC fading, while a new BBC dawns. Joining Radio 2 at a time of upheaval and modernisation was "like trying to watch a game of Twister in a nursing home". The chaotic nature of Young's removal is nothing to do with Vine, but appears to leave him feeling guilty, to the point of mild obsession. In a very odd moment, Vine attends Young's lecture tour, disguised in beret and false moustache, in case his predecessor's fans lynch him.

The book isn't perfect  it could have done with just a little more fleshing out of Vine the human being, and, though timely, there is rather too much worthy chin-stroking on journalist ethics. However, this is an engaging, skilfully paced tome, full of heart and cracking anecdotes. Going by this, Vine could afford to feel just a little bit smug.