‘I WANT WOMEN TO FEEL IT’S THEIR PLACE TO HAVE THE MICROPHONE’

We meet broadcaster and journalist Emma Barnett

refore journalist and broadcaster Emma Barnett logged on to Zoom for our interview, she’d been doing her research. She tells me so, soon after our conversation begins. ‘Having looked into you, if you don’t mind, I think you’ll be interested in this,’ she says, before divulging some information she received about a Jewish event. Indeed, I’ve written a fair amount about my Jewish identity and the event is, in fact, something I’m interested in.

I will admit that I’m slightly taken aback to learn that the woman I’ve been researching for the past few days has been researching me in return, though perhaps I should have expected nothing less. This is the new host of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour,

after all. Barnett is renowned for coming prepared, often more so than many of the politicians she grills, from Matt Hancock to Theresa May. During her decade on air, she has built a reputation for being a formidable interviewer; for prioritising her listeners, even if that means aggravating powerful people.

As she appears on my screen in her trademark thick-rimmed specs and a black floral dress, a millennial-pink velvet chair and a retro radio behind her, I’m nervous about turning the questions on her. But I discover a woman who is spirited, playful and unafraid of vulnerability. She swears frequently and, as we speak, often leans forward, elbows on the table, giving the impression that we are, actually, two friends having a chat in a coffee shop.

I’ve no doubt this ability to connect with others across boundaries, real or imagined, holds the key to Barnett’s broadcasting success. By the age of 26, she was presenting on LBC Radio, and began making her mark as an occasional presenter on Woman’s Hour, the youngest in the show’s history. By 31, she had her own named programme on BBC Radio 5 Live, before becoming a regular presenter on BBC Two’s Newsnight,

which she continues to present to this day.

And now, aged 36, Barnett has become the main presenter of Woman’s Hour, replacing former hosts Dame Jenni Murray (who had held the role for a staggering 33 years) and Jane Garvey. No one is more aware of the enormity of the job than Barnett herself. ‘These things don’t come around very often,’ she muses. ‘It’s exhilarating, and a huge gift to be given this opportunity.’

The show – which regularly covers subjects as varied as cooking tips, mental illness and terrorism – turns 75 this year, and continues to be one of the most revered daily radio shows, with approximately 3.7m weekly listeners. It’s stood the test of time, Barnett believes, because,

‘It keeps its eye on the things that others may take their eyes off. It gives a platform to the most powerful and least powerful in society, and it holds a mirror up to society that is incredibly honest. And it has the ability to have real warmth and humour.’

Already, it’s obvious the show is in safe hands. Her first broadcast won over its long-standing audience instantly, beginning with a special message from Her Majesty the Queen, whom

I suspect Barnett contacted herself (‘I get very involved,’ she tells me), as well as compelling interviews spanning current affairs (with Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin, and MP Jeremy Hunt), and a thoroughly joyful chat with The Crown’s future queen, Imelda Staunton.

Naturally, Barnett is keen to put her own spin on proceedings. ‘I feel it’s important to get more men on the programme, and their voices and experiences reflected where appropriate,’ she explains. Though she does have one overarching goal: ‘I want women to feel it’s their place to have the microphone.’

This goal, in fact, underpins one of her other big passion projects: breaking the taboo around periods. In 2016, Barnett unwittingly became the first person to announce on live TV that she was

‘IT’S A HUGE GIFT TO BE GIVEN THIS OPPORTUNITY’

menstruating, and in agony. A few weeks later, she learned the pain owed itself to the debilitating condition endometriosis, and by not speaking about her periods and accepting her pain as normal for so long, she’d been ‘sleepwalking into infertility’. It struck Barnett that her own inability to advocate for herself medically was a much larger problem. ‘A lot of women accept pain, because they think women and pain go together like bread and butter,’ she says. It was a realisation that led her to tackle the great menstrual taboo head-on, with her 2019 book, Period. It’s About Bloody Time.

The book combines humour, history and real women’s stories resulting in a fascinating and heartfelt read, but its subject matter has been met with some confusion, particularly from – yes, you guessed it – men. ‘On my book tour, one woman told me her husband was a big fan of mine, and he would’ve come that night but then he heard what I was speaking about and said, “Why hasn’t she written about a more serious subject?”’ Barnett recalls. ‘It felt like a bit of a boycott and I couldn’t even respond to it. It made me feel a bit rubbish, actually.’

But later that night, Barnett gathered herself. ‘I realised: no, that’s the exact problem here,’ she says. ‘This happens a lot with what are deemed “women’s issues”. We talk about things like football – that are not life or death, but are deemed of male interest – like they are so important, yet topics such as fashion are considered girlie or not serious.’

The root of Barnett’s apparent fearlessness, both on and off air, can be found in her schooldays. Raised in Manchester as an only child, she attended Manchester High School for Girls, where the Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst sent her daughters. ‘We were encouraged to not just be the same as men, but to be better,’ she says. Though she initially wanted to be an actress, she gravitated towards journalism and, after studying History and Politics at the University of Nottingham, she landed her first job at Media Week. She would go on to become The Telegraph’s first digital media editor, then women’s editor, before launching her career in radio and TV.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In 2010, Barnett’s father, Ian, was sentenced to jail for keeping brothels and controlling the prostitution of a woman trafficked from Lithuania. ‘I’m still traumatised by what happened, and have become an old soul before my time,’ she has previously written. These days, she prefers not to speak about the ordeal, but I imagine the experience lit a fire inside Barnett, helping create the

fierce yet empathetic interviewer she is today. In fact, I can still recall one of her interviews from a 2017 episode of Woman’s Hour, in which she took former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to task over not knowing how much one of his party’s policies would cost. ‘You’re logging into your ipad here,’ she boldly narrated. But the most notable part came afterwards. Like me, Barnett is Jewish, and she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a deluge of antisemitic abuse, so much so that Corbyn himself stepped in to condemn the response.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident; while researching Barnett, I came across innumerable antisemitic comments, and I wonder how this must feel for her. ‘I don’t look, so you’ve probably seen more of it than me,’ she says. But as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Barnett couldn’t look away when the rapper Wiley posted an antisemitic tirade on social media last July. A few days later, Barnett spoke out about it on her Radio 5 Live show. ‘Those words burn,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘They burn deep.’

‘I couldn’t believe I actually needed to say why it hurt, but I felt I needed to,’ she reflects now. ‘But I do feel that it is additional labour for Jewish people to have to explain why something is antisemitic. And if I’m honest, I can’t be bothered. It’s not my job to explain it to you.’ Does she think anything is changing, improving? ‘I think Jewish people had this idea of, “Oh, there’ll always be antisemitism, it’s a bit crap,” but last year they sat up and said, “No, this is actually not all right.”’

As we compare our similar Jewish upbringings, talk turns to family life. Barnett met her husband (whom she prefers not to name) at university. ‘I remember meeting him and thinking, “Sh*t, this is too early to have met you. But you are the guy. And now I’m just going to have to nail this down,”’ she laughs. Clearly, she’s still smitten. ‘We’ve really enjoyed supporting each other’s goals and we push each other to be the best versions of ourselves. I love him for all sorts of reasons. I just love his face. I could eat it,’ she smiles. ‘He’ll be so embarrassed that I’ve said that!’

The couple tried for two-and-a-half years to get pregnant, before Barnett’s endometriosis diagnosis led them to IVF. She remembers her fertility journey as an incredibly testing time. ‘You are the worst version of yourself,’ she says. ‘I’d go to a very bad place if someone told me they were pregnant. It’s very isolating; you retreat into yourself. Every time I got my period, it was like an email in my pants that I didn’t want to receive, saying, “You didn’t do it again.”’

When she became pregnant after her first cycle, Barnett wouldn’t allow herself to believe it was really happening. ‘I was obviously excited and I could feel things changing, but I basically stayed in denial until about six months,’ she says. But when her son, now two, arrived, the emotions came flooding. ‘It felt like I met him as opposed to had him. I just felt like, “There you are! It’s you! You were always meant to be our baby.” If I want to eat my husband’s face, I want to devour my son’s head. Do you know what I mean? That kind of love.’

On the day of her C-section, though, Barnett did something she now describes as ‘really stupid’ by signing the book deal for Period. ‘I thought I’d have time on maternity leave,’ she laughs, ‘which obviously, I didn’t. I mean, what the f*ck did I think was going to happen on maternity leave?

‘I do love myself for doing it, in a way,’ she adds reflectively. ‘I love that I wanted to throw myself a rope to hold on to something real. You can feel like a stranger in your own life, and that book was a bit of a friend during the long days and nights.’ She describes the balance of work and motherhood now as a ‘frontline battle’; ‘to keep a sense of yourself and keep your job, and keep your mind on it, and keep everything else going.’

As our conversation draws to a close, I wonder where Barnett’s ambition will take her next. She laughs. ‘I really just have to focus on Woman’s Hour. This is a big thing. I’m interested in building up projects for myself, things I feel passionate about. But I’m not like, “Okay, next!” That’s not where my head is.’ One thing’s for sure: whatever she decides to take on, she’ll do it with conviction, compassion and care. Period.

Period. It’s About Bloody Time (HQ) by Emma Barnett is out now in hardback, ebook and audio book

‘WE WERE ENCOURAGED TO NOT JUST BE THE SAME AS MEN, BUT TO BE BETTER’