Will Mishal have the last laugh on Humphrys?

She once memorably inspired the headline that she was ‘Putting the Phwoar!! into Radio 4’.

Now Mishal husain is about to be anointed — if not quite crowned — the queen of the Today programme when veteran broadcaster John humphrys steps down later this year.

Forty-six-year-old husain (below), who is married with three sons, has been part of Today’s presenting team since 2013. But it has been a part-time role — one that she has juggled with her duties as a presenter of BBC’s flagship News At Ten.

Soon, though, her exact enunciation will be heard almost exclusively on Today. ‘She is cutting down her commitment to News At Ten to concentrate on Today,’ I’m told. ‘ It’s truly a change of era. She’s seen as able to fill John’s shoes and will be central to the programme’s future, but she cannot be called “lead presenter” because it risks putting fellow presenters’ noses out of joint.’ It’s praise that husain will surely find particularly sweet, given how she tangled with the combative humphrys when she appeared on Celebrity Mastermind a decade ago. ‘You’re a newsreader and a very good-looking woman,’ remarked humphrys. husain thanked him, only for humphrys, 75, to add: ‘But there’s a “but”. Are you doing your job only because you are good-looking?’ When critics subsequently accused him of ‘ humiliating’ husain, humphrys retorted that it had been ‘ a perfectly reasonable line of questioning’ for which he would not apologise. husain reputedly did not speak to him again until she joined Today four years later. humphrys’s impending departure means that, in future, all Today’s presenters, including Nick Robinson, Martha Kearney and Justin Webb, will have been privately educated — in husain’s case, at Cobham hall, Kent, alma mater of the Duchesses of Wellington and Northumberland. The BBC declines to comment, saying that it is ‘not confirming anything to do with [News At] Ten at the moment’.