Interview: Mishal Husain, BBC World (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
SHE is the global television star from Britain you may not have heard of - the glamorous face of an international network who has been profiled in Vanity Fair, praised as "spellbinding" by the Washington Times, and drooled over by Canada's Globe and Mail for her "enormous, beguiling brown eyes".
Website polls have voted her one of "the world's sexiest anchors", and strangers stop her in American shopping malls. Yet as she strolled down Hampstead High Street on Monday after a prewedding hairdressing appointment, Mishal Husain did not attract a second glance. Mishal who? As the main evening news presenter on BBC World, Husain, 30, can be seen in 200 countries, but not Britain. Based until this week in Washington DC, she is also a BBC news correspondent and from tomorrow will present a documentary series on US public television alongside Jamie Rubin, the former Assistant Secretary of State.
So what is it like, after establishing a career as a BBC business reporter, to find yourself suddenly treated as a hot new celebrity? "It takes some getting used to," Husain admits with a diffident smile, her still unaffected manner suggesting that the buzz has surprised her as much as anyone.
"I was quite bemused to see the gossip columns, and being stopped in the street is a bit strange. I've been in Bloomingdales, on the phone, when a woman passed me a note, asking, 'Are you Mishal Husain?' She was a staunch Republican who had firm views about how we were covering the war, and wanted me to know that we weren't being fair to the President." The BBC mischievously claims that Husain's evening newscasts are "seen by a worldwide audience of over 256 million" - a distortion worthy of Alastair Campbell's attention, considering that Husain herself understands her nightly US audience to be "almost a million".
Still, since last September, when she arrived as the corporation's first Washington-based anchor, her profile has grown along with the network's as viewers have scrabbled to find informed foreign news.
Iraq, she recognises, has been her lucky break. "The BBC has been in the right place at the right time in America," she says. "Everything that's happened to me in the past couple of years I could not have predicted. I have no expectations." Mishal Husain was born in Britain to Pakistani parents, and at two went to live in the Emirates, where her father was a surgeon. While reading law at Cambridge, she found work experience at the BBC, followed by stints at The Times, the Telegraph and Pakistan's daily paper, The News.
After taking a master's in law at the European University Institute in Florence, she found a job at Bloomberg TV, where she wrote, produced and occasionally presented. Then came a producer's job at BBC World, where she was first tested as an anchor three summers ago.
Live television, she says, delivers "the greatest adrenaline rush". She is as comfortable interviewing the US Deputy Defence Secretary as the Rwandan president, but occasionally there are hairy moments. Last March, she was chatting on air to a colleague while awaiting a George W Bush press conference when the BBC broadcast a live feed of the President having his hair brushed as he practised his speech. The White House was not amused. "We apologised. Profusely," she says.
BEING a US anchor carries other demands. "The line between being a journalist and a celebrity is much more blurred than here," she says. "They expect you to behave in a certain way - to appear in glossy magazines and talk about your personal life." The Los Angeles Times has remarked on Husain's "low-key style - not even a necklace in sight", and she certainly favours a casual if smartly spoken image, rejecting the traditional "big hair". "Some American anchors' hair allowance is the equivalent of a fulltime salary," she says. "If I told a US anchor that I do my own makeup, they would be horrified."
Her rising profile has also brought fan mail. "I've had the odd 'Are you single?', but the nicest was from the sheriff in Bexar County in Texas. A package arrived with a note making me an honorary deputy sheriff." Her suitors will be disappointed, though. This Saturday, Husain is getting married at the Foreign Press Association in Carlton House Terrace before honeymooning for a week in Malaysia. She will continue working for the programme from London. Her fiancé, Meekal Hashmi, whom she has known since childhood, is a lawyer with Barings Asset Management.
It will be a Muslim wedding. "Being in the States and having an obviously Muslim name has made me much more conscious of my Muslim identity," she says. " Honestly, it's a terrible time to be a Muslim there. Here, we accept the fact that society is diverse." She now actively publicises her faith, "to change people's perceptions".
Husain has also become something of a spokeswoman for the BBC on US chat shows, particularly over the current political row about weapons of mass destruction. "You normally point out it's not unusual for an organisation like the BBC to have differences with the Government, and that publicly funded isn't the same as government-owned." She has also had to answer accusations of BBC "bias". "We're perceived to part of the 'liberal' media - liberal in a derogatory sense. There's such a lack of awareness there of media consolidation, and it's really hard to offer an opinion that's against the government line without being called unamerican. During the war, someone wrote a piece in the Washington Post calling the BBC 'unpatriotic'. Is patriotism part of our job?"
Is she a liberal? She shrugs. "God knows. I'm reluctant to use any type of tag." The strongest opinion she will offer - during a long conversation peppered with rather gushing remarks about her "hugely interesting job" - is that she detests reality television. "Please let someone say it's had its day." She herself prefers watching The Office, even if she is sure that "loads of Americans think it's a fly-on-the-wall documentary".
It's all very BBC, and her bosses clearly see Husain as an asset to promote. Still, she does have one reservation about BBC World: "I only wish it was seen in this country," she says.
(Evening Standard, July 16 2003)
SHE is the global television star from Britain you may not have heard of - the glamorous face of an international network who has been profiled in Vanity Fair, praised as "spellbinding" by the Washington Times, and drooled over by Canada's Globe and Mail for her "enormous, beguiling brown eyes".
Website polls have voted her one of "the world's sexiest anchors", and strangers stop her in American shopping malls. Yet as she strolled down Hampstead High Street on Monday after a prewedding hairdressing appointment, Mishal Husain did not attract a second glance. Mishal who? As the main evening news presenter on BBC World, Husain, 30, can be seen in 200 countries, but not Britain. Based until this week in Washington DC, she is also a BBC news correspondent and from tomorrow will present a documentary series on US public television alongside Jamie Rubin, the former Assistant Secretary of State.
So what is it like, after establishing a career as a BBC business reporter, to find yourself suddenly treated as a hot new celebrity? "It takes some getting used to," Husain admits with a diffident smile, her still unaffected manner suggesting that the buzz has surprised her as much as anyone.
"I was quite bemused to see the gossip columns, and being stopped in the street is a bit strange. I've been in Bloomingdales, on the phone, when a woman passed me a note, asking, 'Are you Mishal Husain?' She was a staunch Republican who had firm views about how we were covering the war, and wanted me to know that we weren't being fair to the President." The BBC mischievously claims that Husain's evening newscasts are "seen by a worldwide audience of over 256 million" - a distortion worthy of Alastair Campbell's attention, considering that Husain herself understands her nightly US audience to be "almost a million".
Still, since last September, when she arrived as the corporation's first Washington-based anchor, her profile has grown along with the network's as viewers have scrabbled to find informed foreign news.
Iraq, she recognises, has been her lucky break. "The BBC has been in the right place at the right time in America," she says. "Everything that's happened to me in the past couple of years I could not have predicted. I have no expectations." Mishal Husain was born in Britain to Pakistani parents, and at two went to live in the Emirates, where her father was a surgeon. While reading law at Cambridge, she found work experience at the BBC, followed by stints at The Times, the Telegraph and Pakistan's daily paper, The News.
After taking a master's in law at the European University Institute in Florence, she found a job at Bloomberg TV, where she wrote, produced and occasionally presented. Then came a producer's job at BBC World, where she was first tested as an anchor three summers ago.
Live television, she says, delivers "the greatest adrenaline rush". She is as comfortable interviewing the US Deputy Defence Secretary as the Rwandan president, but occasionally there are hairy moments. Last March, she was chatting on air to a colleague while awaiting a George W Bush press conference when the BBC broadcast a live feed of the President having his hair brushed as he practised his speech. The White House was not amused. "We apologised. Profusely," she says.
BEING a US anchor carries other demands. "The line between being a journalist and a celebrity is much more blurred than here," she says. "They expect you to behave in a certain way - to appear in glossy magazines and talk about your personal life." The Los Angeles Times has remarked on Husain's "low-key style - not even a necklace in sight", and she certainly favours a casual if smartly spoken image, rejecting the traditional "big hair". "Some American anchors' hair allowance is the equivalent of a fulltime salary," she says. "If I told a US anchor that I do my own makeup, they would be horrified."
Her rising profile has also brought fan mail. "I've had the odd 'Are you single?', but the nicest was from the sheriff in Bexar County in Texas. A package arrived with a note making me an honorary deputy sheriff." Her suitors will be disappointed, though. This Saturday, Husain is getting married at the Foreign Press Association in Carlton House Terrace before honeymooning for a week in Malaysia. She will continue working for the programme from London. Her fiancé, Meekal Hashmi, whom she has known since childhood, is a lawyer with Barings Asset Management.
It will be a Muslim wedding. "Being in the States and having an obviously Muslim name has made me much more conscious of my Muslim identity," she says. " Honestly, it's a terrible time to be a Muslim there. Here, we accept the fact that society is diverse." She now actively publicises her faith, "to change people's perceptions".
Husain has also become something of a spokeswoman for the BBC on US chat shows, particularly over the current political row about weapons of mass destruction. "You normally point out it's not unusual for an organisation like the BBC to have differences with the Government, and that publicly funded isn't the same as government-owned." She has also had to answer accusations of BBC "bias". "We're perceived to part of the 'liberal' media - liberal in a derogatory sense. There's such a lack of awareness there of media consolidation, and it's really hard to offer an opinion that's against the government line without being called unamerican. During the war, someone wrote a piece in the Washington Post calling the BBC 'unpatriotic'. Is patriotism part of our job?"
Is she a liberal? She shrugs. "God knows. I'm reluctant to use any type of tag." The strongest opinion she will offer - during a long conversation peppered with rather gushing remarks about her "hugely interesting job" - is that she detests reality television. "Please let someone say it's had its day." She herself prefers watching The Office, even if she is sure that "loads of Americans think it's a fly-on-the-wall documentary".
It's all very BBC, and her bosses clearly see Husain as an asset to promote. Still, she does have one reservation about BBC World: "I only wish it was seen in this country," she says.
(Evening Standard, July 16 2003)
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