At 6.32pm at the ITN studios on London's Gray's Inn Road, preparation for the 7 o'clock Channel 4 News is already in full swing.
A cacophony of ringing phones and fingers tapping on keyboards echoes around a room crammed with journalists all hurriedly working towards one aim: to stack up their stories in the next 28 minutes.
It’s here that I meet Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman, who is having her make-up touched up before she goes on air. “Today is a bad hair day,” she laughs, while trying to tame a stray curl with hairspray. “People always ask if my hair is naturally curly and I say to them, do you think I would make it look like Pot Noodles on purpose?!”
Like Newman herself, the studio feels friendly but focused. The atmosphere flicks like a switch as soon as the team discuss an important story – tonight, among others, it’s the alleged 'honour killing' of Samia Shahid.
As they are prepping the package Newman turns to the journalist who secured it to say, quietly, “Well done for getting this on.” It’s clear that it means something to her to tell stories like this one.
“Eight minutes, eight minutes,”one voice says; “Are you comingCathy?” says another. The latter isJon Snow, Newman’s popularfellow presenter, who is waitingfor her on the purple-lit set.
Apparently there’s a wardrobemalfunction with her full A-line skirt,but while this might ruffle some,Newman laughs it off, walking ontoset as if she’s meeting old friends fordinner rather than about to be beamedinto hundreds of thousands of livingrooms.
Suddenly voices hush; someone says, “Go titles.” And they’re off.
Cathy Newman and Savile Row's first women's only tailor Phoebe Gormley, photographed in the Gormley & Gamble studio
Bright-eyed and curious, Newman, 42, wears her intelligence without arrogance.
She also masters a polished, playful style; one of the reasons we asked her to model the latest workwear, including a dress designed by Phoebe Gormley, founder of Savile Row’s first female-only tailors Gormley & Gamble.
“I love having fun with clothes and colours,” she tells me later over scrambled eggs. “You don’t want to draw too much attention, but you want people to know that you’re wholeheartedly dedicating yourself to that hour of television. There is a sense of occasion, and your clothing has to reflect that.”
A straight talker, Newman is known for her ability to elicit truths from interviewees – even slippery politicians – which is one of the reasons Channel 4 now sets the agenda for the evening news (it averages 645,000 viewers and has increased its share by 6% year on year).
Newman’s role requires a delicate mix of compassion and aggression: she has to know when to show guests empathy, and when to push them. I wonder how she’s honed her technique. “When I started I thought, I’ve got to do it like all the blokes always have... I’ll be a bit of a Paxman. But now I’ve altered my style; I want to be forensic, not aggressive.”
She rigorously researches to make sure facts and figures are at her fingertips at precisely the right moment (case in point: her skewering of George Osborne in a pre-election interview). “You don’t always get it right,” she admits. “Sometimes a politician will be droning on and the only way to get in there is to shoutily interrupt. I think for women it’s harder... if you’re aggressive people say, ‘Oh, you’re shrill.’”
Despite having worked in the industry for 20 years, Newman’s passion for journalism remains undimmed.
It began the moment she saw Kate Adie wearing a flak jacket in Baghdad on TV: “At the time it felt like men did the exciting jobs, then I saw her and thought: that’s whatI want to do. It became a family joke that I was going to be Kate Adie... my dad would say, ‘This is Cathy Newman, reporting from Baghdad.’”
She believes her parents, both chemistry teachers, instilled her with an enquiring mind. “I’m always asking questions,” she admits. “I’ll even walk down the street and think, ‘Why has that shop gone bust and the one next to it hasn’t?’”
As a teenager in Guildford she “wasn’t happy in my own skin. I was bullied at school and never really talked about it. I suppose that’s given me a sense of solidarity with the underdog. If I see someone suffering in silence I want to help”.
After hitting her stride at Oxford, where she studied English and met her husband, John (a journalist and novelist), Newman progressed in journalism on the strength of her scoops – she’s only applied for one job in 20 years. The rest came to her.
There are big-hitters on her wish list (Trump; Hillary; Michelle Obama), but it’s the lesser-known interviews that stick with her, like Tony Nicklinson, a man who was paralysed from the neck down and spelled out each letter by blinking at a board.
And through stories like the Rennard case (Lord Rennard was suspended after Newman exposed claims he sexually harassed women within the Liberal Democrats), she’s unearthed sexism in Westminster and beyond. “As a woman in the media I feel a duty to make sure we report those issues. I’ve always wanted to right injustices; I suppose what’s changed is I’ve now got a keener sense of how journalists can hold power to account.”
Was that her aim when she made Jeremy Hunt squirm over his junior doctors contract claims? “That interview nearly didn’t happen! Beforehand his special adviser said, ‘The Secretary of State will only answer three questions and he won’t sit down’. We had a bit of an argy bargy.” (When I rewatch the clip I notice Hunt sat down and answered more than three questions; Newman clearly got her way.)
If she rarely looks nervous during interviews like these, perhaps it’s because she imagines she’s talking to her mum, “someone interested and intelligent, who needs the story to be explained clearly, not patronisingly”.
Of course, there have been hairy moments, like the time early on that a camera and autocue weren’t working. “There was about 15 seconds of me looking from one screen to another, my voice shaking,” she recalls. “Afterwards I came out of the studio and cried.” These days she worries less because she knows “nothing is ever going to be 100% perfect”.
In 2016, the stakes have never been higher for news presenters – there have been leadership contests, leaked emails and endless surprises (Brexit, a new prime minister, the rise of Trump). Newman can’t remember a time like this in 20 years. “There have been stories that you wait 10 years for that have happened in a blink of an eye.”
So how does she switch off? “We have a rule that we don’t use phones at the table. And the moment I walk through the door and see the kids’ stuff strewn around then that becomes a whole new job.”
The scrutiny she faces, particularly on Twitter, seems not to bother her. “The trolling is relentless. Mostly it’s water off a duck’s back.” When it comes to her daughters, though, it’s a different story: “Scarlett sometimes sees horrible stuff that’s been written about me. It upsets me that she gets upset by it.”
But there are upsides: Newman’s daughters seem proud to see her on TV. “I want them to see that as a woman you can do anything. I’m always saying to them: you can build the Shard, you can be prime minister. There’s so much sexism in the world and it starts at school. My youngest daughter said she wasn’t allowed to be a knight in the play because it had to be a boy. I did complain about that!”
After waking at 6.45am, Newman makes sure she spends 30 minutes having breakfast with her husband and daughters – Molly, seven and Scarlett, 12 – because it’s “the only time we’ll all be together on a work day”. She does herkids’ hair, then clears the cereal bowls while listening to the Today programme before heading to work to read the papers.
“If I didn’t have kids I’d read them over breakfast but... when you’re a working mum you realise you can never be as perfect as you were at work, and you can never be a perfect a mum if you’re working. You have to compromise. I’m a perfectionist, so that’s hard for me, but you just have to.”
Her husband writes from home and looks after their girls until she gets back at 8.45pm. “He’s made quite a few sacrifices to be the one who does the main childcaring,” she admits. “It matters to have a feminist husband.”
Away from the show, she loves to potter in the garden or play the violin. “We’re a bit like the Von Trapp family at Christmas, singing carols in different parts.”
When she mentions her family, I’m reminded of the photo above her desk. She’s on a beach with her daughters, laughing as her hair whips in the wind. It’s a far cry from her persona on screen. Which version of her is closer to the truth? “I feel I am the same person in the studio as I am outside. When I started it felt more of an act – but people see through that. They have to see the real you.”
Watch Newman on your TV at 7pm, seamlessly segueing from one story to the next, and you’ll witness her dogged determination to pursue the truth.
It’s quite a feat to persuade someone to reveal something of themselves on live TV, but after meeting her I can see why Newman isso good at it. Because the personyou see on screen is the real her.
There's no mask, no act; just a woman who wants to know why.
