Newsnight’s Emily: The toughest question I ever posed...to my husband
AS THE formidable new lead presenter of BBC Newsnight, she conducts fearless interviews holding prime ministers and presidents to account.
But Emily Maitlis says her ‘best-ever question’ was asking the man who would become her husband to marry her.
Speaking in an exclusive interview in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine today, she even reveals how investment manager Mark Gwynne had the temerity to take his time before accepting.
Talking about the moment she popped the question on a beach in Mauritius 19 years ago, she says: ‘We’d flown out on millennium eve. It seemed the right place to ask. I’d packed a little white beach dress and I was like, “This will be great? We’ll just get married on Friday!’’ ’ But Mark stopped short of marrying her there and then.
She says: ‘Mark was like, “No, my mum has to be there” which is very sweet but, actually, when we got back she was the first one to say, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, you should have eloped.”’
Ms Maitlis, 48, also reveals the one question she regretted not asking. In 2014, while accompanying Bill Clinton on a trip to India, she refrained from pressing the former US President on his affair with Monica Lewinsky. She made the 11th-hour decision after Clinton’s aides told her he had just had a ‘funny turn’ and might pull out of the interview altogether if ‘anything happens on camera’.
She says: ‘I was trying to read between the lines, thinking, “What are you saying?” There were all these sorts of things stacked against us that we had to weigh up. The fact that he wasn’t well, that we had travelled all this way to get the [interview] – and if they pulled the tape, I would come away with nothing.’
Ms Maitlis – who has two children, Milo, 14, and Max, 12 – was speaking ahead of the publication later this week of her new book Airhead: The Imperfect Art Of Making News, about her experiences both on and off camera during her 13 years working on Newsnight.
‘YOU SHOULD HAVE ELOPED,’ SAID HIS MUM FULL INTERVIEW IN