When I interviewed a bloke wearing a balaclava on Newsnight. He refused to remove it and halfway through our interview he forgot he was wearing it, took a sip of water and couldn't find his mouth. It's quite hard to hold it together when that happens.
— Emily Maitlis
Somehow we have to be able to indicate to our audience that we know how frustrating it is when the answers they are hearing are necessarily the answers that the person speaking them believes.
I think what I notice now is that a lot of the things that are said to us on camera on air are not particularly believed and quite often not true and its an extraordinary position to be in when you've had WhatsApp messages, text messages off record.
The hour or so I spent with the ninety-year-old David Attenborough was one of the most beatific of my life. An oddly religious term, I know, for a man who doesn't have much truck with religion, but it was the serenity of that time that will stay with me most.
I hear some horror stories from other channels, and I think what a blessing to work with a team of people that you're genuinely happy to hang with. I don't feel I need to dominate 'Newsnight.'
I hope somewhere to break down what seems to be a kind of robotic communication between those in power and those who are understanding power.
I was a terrible reporter. The only advantage was I made all my mistakes in a place and at a time where I didn't know anyone, but I literally made every mistake in the book.
There's no point meeting somebody with a meat cleaver the moment they open their mouth - because they're going to clam up, you're going to have lost your impact and the audience is going to hate you for not allowing anyone to say anything.
A friend and me took the slowboat from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1993.
The first time I went to the cinema was with my father. He was a huge fan of Peter Ustinov, so we went to see 'Death on the Nile' at the Hampstead Ionic.
The people I enjoy most are the ones who don't stick to script.
My second TV assignment ever was to go to Cambodia to look at the state of the country in the dying days of the Khmer Rouge. I was naive, awkward, and not very good at writing to pictures.
I find I process the news by listening to someone else's report.
To switch off, I will take a sleeping pill if I have to. I also found myself realigning things.
I'd like to get up and instantly have perfectly blow-dried hair.
I have to listen to the midnight news and I have to see if any of my interview lines have been picked up.
I think increasingly I really come to appreciate the people, the politicians, the interviewees, of any stripe and size who are able to answer a question. It seems such a small, gentle thing to demand in 2019 but it has actually become the biggest ask that we can make.
I have facial blindness. It's hugely embarrassing as it makes me seem supercilious or snobbish.
I don't want to be cosy with the guy who I know isn't saying the truth to the viewer.
I suddenly realize why David Attenborough is the giant he is. It is not just his geographic curiosity, not just his anthropological understanding, not just his gift for narration that simultaneously calms the soul and inspires the mind. It is that behind it all there is such a deep thinker.
Some interviews wind you up. Some test your mettle. Some reduce you to a gibbering wreck.
It's arguing, in a very good and positive way. It's sort of sitting down and pulling an argument apart. I think that's a very oddly Jewish thing. And it's the chaos of family and a slight sort of cosy messiness of it all.
We're not robots. There isn't a perfect formula for an interview and there are days when you bring too much of you and there are days, quite honestly, when you don't bring enough of you.
There are those moments when you know that you are up against a tricky customer who is not being forthright with the truth, and there is no way you're going to let them off the hook.
Is television a lookist industry? Of course it is.
Fanny and Alexander' blew me away. I was visiting my sister in her first year at university. It was my first foray into something dark.
I love a daily deadline.
Women often seem to have a fear of being 'found out'. Of thinking they've pulled the wool over their boss's eyes to get a job they don't deserve. I thought like that for years - but I'm massively over it now.
I did everything the wrong way round. I started in an odd place, with the wrong skill set and arguably worked backwards. I began my television career in Hong Kong, making longer format films from around Asia, then I went to the other extreme - presenting local London news.
I was covering the Manchester attack and was asked to stay another day and do the programme from there. But I had promised my little boy I would be at his sports day, and I had this really sharp sense that I needed to be there.
What appears on the screen is what people see. Everything else is just interpretation.
If you interrupt somebody too early, if you miss it and don't interrupt at all - that's the difference between a good interview and a bad interview. It's about the absolute moment.
I have three different groups of girlfriends and I swear to you, we put the world to rights between 8.15 and whenever we end. Some days there's a lot of running and a bit of talking, some days there's a lot of talking and a bit of running. But by the end I'm oxygenated and body-tired, as opposed to mind-tired.
It starts with denigrating experts so people don't trust facts, then it destabilises institutions, then it works to get its message out in the media, so that's what people cling to.
I remember the Silver Jubilee clearly because we had a fancy dress street party in Sheffield. I dressed up as a Japanese girl with a too-big red kimono - cultural appropriation hadn't been invented in 1977. I was six.
The stuff we have been told off record tends to be the stuff that is true and the stuff we are told on record on camera tends to be the stuff that is not so true.
I have heard somewhere an argument that if the Industrial Revolution - economic development - had started in Africa rather than Europe, then sun and wave technology would now be at the forefront, not the old fossil fuels.
I actually think in a funny way, I feel better at TV now. As I get older, I know what I think and I know what works and I enjoy it more.
My eldest son you know, in his short life so far, he's experimented with Corbynism, Communism, Brexit. He's now Welsh nationalist and libertarian.
I think you go into a debate trying to be fair minded and trying to be balanced but occasionally there will be a sense where it feels like the moral imperative is pulling you one direction or another.
I certainly don't want to be part of a media that forces confessions from people who are not going to behave any differently the next time round.
I have worked out I can quite happily jog the distance to work as long as I hail a cab first and leave my high heels on the back seat.
When I was 11, I was terrified about the world.
I don't think I would move into politics, but our job is often about pulling things down. It's about why something won't work, which I think is valuable, but it's not always constructive.
I moved from current affairs to daily news over the Asia crisis of 1998 - mainly because the news agenda demanded I become economically literate.
Always come to a conversation armed with two drinks. Then if it's dire you can pretend you were on the way to find someone else. And if it's interesting, you can stay and down both glasses without moving.
The only routine I have is going for a run and a swim with the dog in the morning, between 8am and 9am - that is my head-clearing space. I am religious about holding on to that time: whatever happens, I don't want to know about it until after that.
I've ended up in prison a number of times, once in Cambodia, once in Cuba - for hours rather than days.
You sort of assume that everyone knows how television works, but they don't actually, why should they?
What I notice now is that a lot of the things that are said to us on camera, on air, are not particularly believed and quite often not true. It is an extraordinary position to be in. It is a really weird position to be in as a journalist.
