Interview: Rosie Millard, BBC TV/Sunday Times (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
She became known for her flirtatious interviews, for dancing on camera during a news report, and for wearing the "best supporting dress" at the Oscars. But after nine years as the BBC's flamboyant arts correspondent, Rosie Millard has shocked colleagues by quitting over the corporation's new clampdown on freelance writing. How, they are asking, could Millard of all people have become the first BBC casualty of the Hutton Inquiry?
It is not as if her property column in The Sunday Times, or her cultural musings in the New Statesman, threaten to bring the corporation into Gilligan-style conflict with the Government. Had BBC management decided to make an example of Millard, embarrassed by reports of the vast compensat ion offered to John Humphrys and others to drop their columns? Or, as the newsroom gossip has it, had Millard simply overestimated her value, wrongly believing that threats to leave could also boost her salary?
Millard, sitting with her oneyearold daughter, Honey, in Soho's Bar Italia, insists that news executives forced her to make a stark choice - prompted, she suggests, by her editors' petty jealousies of high-profile reporters. "The guns were out for people writing columns, and they said you've got to give up all your freelance writing," she says. "And since I was earning more doing freelance writing than from the BBC, that wasn't attractive."
Besides, Millard will be glad next month to leave behind the "pretty dismal culture" of the newsroom - the rows over who covers which stories, the endless power struggles and bullying.
"The editors have always been cheesed off with certain correspondents having outside influence, and they do resent your profile," she says. After writing a recent piece in The Times about Hollywood facelifts, for instance, she was "hauled over the coals" by an editor who pointed out that she had travelled to LA as a BBC employee. "It sounds ridiculous, and it reflects a slightly uncomfortable culture within the newsroom," Millard says. "It's about power. The editors have power over the correspondents, and they exercise it - forcing you to do stories you don't want to do, and making you work intense hours." One producer, she says, recently had a suspected miscarby David Rowan riage, yet felt she had to remain at her desk.
The corporation will be even less happy with Millard's comments about its news priorities. Although a BBC employee until 13 February, she is outspoken in her criticism of what she sees as an obsession with showbusiness stories.
"The 10 O'Clock News is the honourable exception now, but on other bulletins, I'd find myself standing on the red carpet reporting on some film that everyone knew was rubbish, just because it has a celebrity in it," she says. "You weren't allowed to give your honest opinion, just told to talk about the stars. The film companies have finally got hold of the fact that if they organise a decent junket in London, they're going to get on the news. Celebrities came over for five red-carpets in November, and the newsroom would get overexcited about that, they would get dizzy. And I think a certain amount of news values have gone out of the window."
Millard, 38, has something of a reputation for speaking her mind. Three years ago, she was reportedly reprimanded by senior management after telling newspapers that she was "sad and disappointed" that Robert Nisbet had been made entertainment correspondent, covering part of her beat, without her knowledge. She says now that she has no quarrel with Nisbet, but that she was "bewildered and cheesed off" by the way managers handled his appointment.
YET she has had a mixed press herself. The Sunday Mirror called her "a blatant attention-seeker who has never been the same since Liz Hurley told her she had magnificent breasts", the Daily Mail labelled her "a gold-medallist self-promoter", and The Guardian has twice made fun of her in Pass Notes.
A fellow reporter sees her "larger than life" TV persona as evidence of Millard's fiery ambition: she stamps her personality on most of her stories and, unlike many reporters, employs a top showbiz agent. "There is a line you can't cross as a reporter, and she comes close," the colleague says. "But she gets away with it because it's only arts, not the NHS, that she's talking about."
She received her greatest publicity, of course, after Michael Buerk's onscreen remark about the outrageous-dress she wore to cover the 2001 Oscars. Was she hurt by his gentle mockery? "God no, it was hilarious," she says. "I was strapped into a Vivienne Westwood corset, for goodness' sake. It was a laugh." But wasn't it unusual for a BBC reporter to ask a fashion designer if she could borrow an outfit? "You can't take yourself too seriously - if you're covering the biggest showbiz event of the year, wearing an evening dress, you've got to wear Westwood," she says.
DID that mean she saw herself as a celebrity in her own right? "Not really, no," she answers, wearing an elegant check twopiece suit and pointed pale-blue suede shoes when we met. "That's modern- day reporting. The reporter is looked at, certainly at the BBC, as part of a family of familiar faces who viewers can trust. Hopefully, people will trust what I say about the arts. If you have a massive ego, there are many more ways of being a bigger fish than being a reporter, when you're spending so much of your time just chasing the story. It's about telling the story, not being on screen."
Millard's love of the arts was nurtured at Wimbledon High School and, after studying English and drama at Hull University, she took an arts-journalism course at the London College of Printing. She failed to win a BBC traineeship after telling interviewers that she wasn't awake for the Today programme ("Well, I was a drama student"). Instead, she worked her way through the regional ITV companies' arts programmes.
She became a researcher for Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan on This Morning, where she met her husband, Pip Clothier, a BBC documentary-maker who produced Donal MacIntyre. As well as Honey, they have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, and Millard says she would like a fourth child.
Her relationship with The Sunday Times began two years ago after she wrote about her buy-to-let "nightmare". She accepts that her BBC persona helped clinch the column, but points out that she was a newspaper freelance long before becoming a TV reporter. Besides, she is also something of a property impresario, with two houses in Islington (they are moving from one to the other), a couple of East End buy-to-lets and a flat in Paris.
"We are sad property people, addicted to property porn," she admits. "We're so in debt, and it's all a huge gamble. But the day job is also a gamble."
Yet she has no regrets about giving up her BBC security. "I'm grateful to leave," she says. "I have had a really hilarious nine years, travelled round the world and interviewed lots of people at a time when arts news mattered. But I didn't want to do the job without being able to write, nor having to pass my columns by these higher bodies."
Besides, Millard adds, "newspapers are nicer to me. There's no kind of weird stuff. Broadcasting has too many issues."
(Evening Standard, January 14 2004)
She became known for her flirtatious interviews, for dancing on camera during a news report, and for wearing the "best supporting dress" at the Oscars. But after nine years as the BBC's flamboyant arts correspondent, Rosie Millard has shocked colleagues by quitting over the corporation's new clampdown on freelance writing. How, they are asking, could Millard of all people have become the first BBC casualty of the Hutton Inquiry?
It is not as if her property column in The Sunday Times, or her cultural musings in the New Statesman, threaten to bring the corporation into Gilligan-style conflict with the Government. Had BBC management decided to make an example of Millard, embarrassed by reports of the vast compensat ion offered to John Humphrys and others to drop their columns? Or, as the newsroom gossip has it, had Millard simply overestimated her value, wrongly believing that threats to leave could also boost her salary?
Millard, sitting with her oneyearold daughter, Honey, in Soho's Bar Italia, insists that news executives forced her to make a stark choice - prompted, she suggests, by her editors' petty jealousies of high-profile reporters. "The guns were out for people writing columns, and they said you've got to give up all your freelance writing," she says. "And since I was earning more doing freelance writing than from the BBC, that wasn't attractive."
Besides, Millard will be glad next month to leave behind the "pretty dismal culture" of the newsroom - the rows over who covers which stories, the endless power struggles and bullying.
"The editors have always been cheesed off with certain correspondents having outside influence, and they do resent your profile," she says. After writing a recent piece in The Times about Hollywood facelifts, for instance, she was "hauled over the coals" by an editor who pointed out that she had travelled to LA as a BBC employee. "It sounds ridiculous, and it reflects a slightly uncomfortable culture within the newsroom," Millard says. "It's about power. The editors have power over the correspondents, and they exercise it - forcing you to do stories you don't want to do, and making you work intense hours." One producer, she says, recently had a suspected miscarby David Rowan riage, yet felt she had to remain at her desk.
The corporation will be even less happy with Millard's comments about its news priorities. Although a BBC employee until 13 February, she is outspoken in her criticism of what she sees as an obsession with showbusiness stories.
"The 10 O'Clock News is the honourable exception now, but on other bulletins, I'd find myself standing on the red carpet reporting on some film that everyone knew was rubbish, just because it has a celebrity in it," she says. "You weren't allowed to give your honest opinion, just told to talk about the stars. The film companies have finally got hold of the fact that if they organise a decent junket in London, they're going to get on the news. Celebrities came over for five red-carpets in November, and the newsroom would get overexcited about that, they would get dizzy. And I think a certain amount of news values have gone out of the window."
Millard, 38, has something of a reputation for speaking her mind. Three years ago, she was reportedly reprimanded by senior management after telling newspapers that she was "sad and disappointed" that Robert Nisbet had been made entertainment correspondent, covering part of her beat, without her knowledge. She says now that she has no quarrel with Nisbet, but that she was "bewildered and cheesed off" by the way managers handled his appointment.
YET she has had a mixed press herself. The Sunday Mirror called her "a blatant attention-seeker who has never been the same since Liz Hurley told her she had magnificent breasts", the Daily Mail labelled her "a gold-medallist self-promoter", and The Guardian has twice made fun of her in Pass Notes.
A fellow reporter sees her "larger than life" TV persona as evidence of Millard's fiery ambition: she stamps her personality on most of her stories and, unlike many reporters, employs a top showbiz agent. "There is a line you can't cross as a reporter, and she comes close," the colleague says. "But she gets away with it because it's only arts, not the NHS, that she's talking about."
She received her greatest publicity, of course, after Michael Buerk's onscreen remark about the outrageous-dress she wore to cover the 2001 Oscars. Was she hurt by his gentle mockery? "God no, it was hilarious," she says. "I was strapped into a Vivienne Westwood corset, for goodness' sake. It was a laugh." But wasn't it unusual for a BBC reporter to ask a fashion designer if she could borrow an outfit? "You can't take yourself too seriously - if you're covering the biggest showbiz event of the year, wearing an evening dress, you've got to wear Westwood," she says.
DID that mean she saw herself as a celebrity in her own right? "Not really, no," she answers, wearing an elegant check twopiece suit and pointed pale-blue suede shoes when we met. "That's modern- day reporting. The reporter is looked at, certainly at the BBC, as part of a family of familiar faces who viewers can trust. Hopefully, people will trust what I say about the arts. If you have a massive ego, there are many more ways of being a bigger fish than being a reporter, when you're spending so much of your time just chasing the story. It's about telling the story, not being on screen."
Millard's love of the arts was nurtured at Wimbledon High School and, after studying English and drama at Hull University, she took an arts-journalism course at the London College of Printing. She failed to win a BBC traineeship after telling interviewers that she wasn't awake for the Today programme ("Well, I was a drama student"). Instead, she worked her way through the regional ITV companies' arts programmes.
She became a researcher for Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan on This Morning, where she met her husband, Pip Clothier, a BBC documentary-maker who produced Donal MacIntyre. As well as Honey, they have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, and Millard says she would like a fourth child.
Her relationship with The Sunday Times began two years ago after she wrote about her buy-to-let "nightmare". She accepts that her BBC persona helped clinch the column, but points out that she was a newspaper freelance long before becoming a TV reporter. Besides, she is also something of a property impresario, with two houses in Islington (they are moving from one to the other), a couple of East End buy-to-lets and a flat in Paris.
"We are sad property people, addicted to property porn," she admits. "We're so in debt, and it's all a huge gamble. But the day job is also a gamble."
Yet she has no regrets about giving up her BBC security. "I'm grateful to leave," she says. "I have had a really hilarious nine years, travelled round the world and interviewed lots of people at a time when arts news mattered. But I didn't want to do the job without being able to write, nor having to pass my columns by these higher bodies."
Besides, Millard adds, "newspapers are nicer to me. There's no kind of weird stuff. Broadcasting has too many issues."
(Evening Standard, January 14 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, January 14, 2004
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