Day I caught Bill Clinton leafing through the Kama Sutra, by Emily Maitlis
EMILY Maitlis has revealed she once saw former US president Bill Clinton browsing through a copy of the Kama Sutra.
The host of BBC2’s Newsnight was in Jaipur, India, in 2014 to interview the politician about his charity the Clinton Global Initiative.
After a preparatory dinner with Mr Clinton, during which they discussed Genghis Khan, Miss Maitlis visited a ‘plush’ hotel gift shop.
‘Although I feel uneasy perusing high-end luxury items during a guided tour of India’s most impoverished, a rather beautiful cashmere pashmina has, unfortunately, caught my eye,’ she writes in a new book.
‘I am trying on the offending item when who should walk into the gift shop but the president himself. I am so mortified to be caught shopping that I wrap the thing entirely around my head so I am unrecognisable.’
Writing in Airhead: The Imperfect Art Of Making News, she says she initially thought Mr Clinton was reading up on Indian history – only to find he had other interests.
She said: ‘Then I watch. He, of course, does not go for the cashmere. Not the knick-knacks. No Taj Mahal lighter for him. No, Bill Clinton goes straight for the book section.
‘My embarrassment deepens as I assume his foray into the gift shop will yield a new understanding of Mogul India, or Fortress Jaipur. But I am wrong.
‘As I glance down at the book in his hand – heavily decorated, beautifully illustrated and somehow familiar – I realise it is, in fact, the Kama Sutra.’
Miss Maitlis recounts that she went on to interview him the next day, but did not feel able to press him about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
She also writes about meeting Donald Trump on several occasions and says she regrets not questioning him on lies he told her at the time – such as bragging that his Miss USA beauty pageant was the most-watched show ‘anywhere in the world’.
She says that when she met Mr Trump six years ago she was taken aback when he shook her hand despite his reported ‘germophobia’.
She writes: ‘He explains with a casual flap of the wrist, “Oh I’ll shake hands with you, you’re fine. It’s them I worry about”. Them being the general public... the voters.’
Miss Maitlis also talks about her 27year stalking ordeal. Edward Vines, who had harassed her since university, was jailed for nearly four years in 2018 for breaching an order banning
‘Beautifully illustrated’
‘I regret I didn’t wear eyeliner’
him from contacting her. The broadcaster, who gave an interview to Emma Barnett on 5Live about her the experience, said her biggest regret was not wearing eyeliner and concealer for the chat because she did not realise she was being filmed.
She writes: ‘What I am now regretting more than anything is not the intimate detail of what I said, or what I left out...
‘No. What I am regretting is that I didn’t put eyeliner on. That if I was going to be pasted around the media for 24 hours as a victim, then, honestly, I just wanted to be a pretty victim. All my principles, all my sound advice, my wise words offered up to the world, crumble with recognition that what I needed most was a vital bit of superficiality and a dab of under-eye concealer.’