Laura Kuenssberg

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1:42Christmas is coming! Oh, but that's so next month. Let's live in the here and now. This is Rosebud.

2:09Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth. This is the Rosebud Podcast. And today we have a guest who is, well, she's a political journalist. She's an unusual political journalist. She's in the record books because she became the BBC's first female and youngest ever political editor a few years ago. She is Laura Koonsberg, and she sent me her book that she's just written. It's called Pay Attention, and it's really a book about what she's learnt covering politics over the last 20 years or so. And I find it very interesting, so I wanted to talk to her about that. But I also wanted to find out who she was, what her background is, where the name Koonsberg comes from, what is her story, who is she?

2:54I mean, I know her, I admire her, I like her, but what are her roots? What made Laura Koonsberg the really recognised, distinguished and admired, respected journalist and, well, presenter that she is? So that's the idea of this particular episode of Rosebud. It's a bit different from the usual. There's more politics than usual, but I like that because, believe it or not, once upon a time, I was a member of Parliament. So here you're going to get a mixture of family history, politics, gossip, tales of, well, going back to Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, coming forward to Tony Blair and Andy Burnham.

3:37Oh yes, and there's even a touch of a possible political threesome somewhere along the way. This is my kind of episode of Rosebud. Enjoy. Cue the music.

4:01Oh, Laura, this is all about firsts. Can you remember your first prime minister? The first Prime Minister you were aware of and then the first Prime Minister you met personally. The first Prime Minister I was aware of was Margaret Thatcher. So I was born in 1976. So as a kid, as I grew up in, I suppose you grew a consciousness of the world, I absolutely remember her. And I remember her voice being on the radio in the kitchen as a child when we were sitting around and having breakfast. We were one of those families, we had the news on rumbling in the background And so I remember her voice. And I think I remember as a kid looking at her and thinking, wow, that hair, this enormous great halo of hair.

4:47So Mrs. Thatcher was the first prime minister I remember. And the first prime minister that I met was Tony Blair. And what was your first impression of Tony Blair? Well, I, at the time, was a fairly junior political reporter and producer and all of those things. I mean, he was then as he is now. I mean, somebody who's incredibly polished, always taller than you think. I don't know if you think that when you see him. He is taller than he looks on the telly. Unlike quite a lot of celeb types who are often then tiny pocket people when in the movies or the TV. Or like Keir Starmer, a little bit shorter than you expected.

5:31Yeah. But Tony Blair was taller than I expected and incredibly possessed of himself, possessed of his message, very smooth or incredibly professional. People, for example, if their first president was Bill Clinton, almost everybody except one person I've met goes, wow, I was overwhelmed by him. I was really not to like him. I was, oh, that is a reaction to Bill Clinton. Did you have a personal reaction to Tony Blair? He certainly has. I mean, no, I don't think it was a personal reaction because I think, you know, I was already working for the BBC. Really, girl and woman, I've only ever really worked for the BBC.

6:10I have worked briefly for other people. but I think even you know by then I suppose I would have maybe done a short clip with him or something in about 2005 um you know by that point you're still already kind of absolutely stapled into your head that you don't have any personal feeling about politicians but you can have a you know as a professional feeling as someone with charisma with an element of star power and someone who definitely still does actually would come into the room with an air of power and grandeur. For what it's worth, to show what a different generation we come from, my first recollection of the Prime Minister is Winston Churchill.

6:48Well, how amazing though. And my first proper encounter being just a giant and making you feel, and in a sense, I think Margaret Thatcher did this, whatever your politics, making you feel that he was, in his time, the country and emblematic of the country, that there was greatness here. But now we've had so many prime ministers in the last 10 years. Will people speak about them in the same way? Like these sort of mythical, heroic figures, whatever their party politics. You talked about Tony Blair. And around Tony Blair, you had people like John Prescott, David Blunkett, George Robertson, Peter Mandelson.

7:30These were figures in their own right that were also household names and that we had views about. I don't feel that's happened in recent years. Am I right or wrong? I think it's true that awareness of people who occupy the great offices of state has faded. Part of it's really simple. It's just because we've spun through them so quickly. And I talk about that in the book about just how we've been through all of these different prime ministers. And therefore, of course, there have been more reshuffles than shuffling a pack of cards. It's been relentless. so in a way how could you expect that they would have time to develop you know huge personas and the public to feel like they knew them let alone could look up to them but I also think something something else has happened is that I think we've seen over a period of time that there's been a whole trail of big events that have each in their own individual way which collide together to really dent people's respect for politics politicians and our institutions and you know quite often at the moment people say oh yes well it's all because if brexit was this terrible big clash and it didn't make anybody happy and all these things and that's why things have gone completely bananas in the last 10 years.

8:54I think actually, and I've tried to do this in the book, is you go back to the Iraq war, which people often forget, a majority of people, polls suggested, supported to start with. Parliament voted for it. And then we all know what happened when there were no weapons of mass destruction. So too fell away a big chunk of public trust. Then you have the expenses scandal, which we don't talk about now that much. That was not just bizarre and farcical, but also really profound to people. They've been doing what on my dime? And that was really corrosive to the public's faith, such as it was in politicians.

9:31And the financial crash too, you know, when we didn't even over a period of days, you know, know if you were necessarily going to be getting your money out of the cash machine the next day. And that's even before you then get to the sort of Herculean Brexit struggles and how people felt they were misled over immigration and all of those things. So I think there's partly politics just so fast now in the way that modern life is so fast that there isn't a kind of time and capacity for people to develop a connection with politicians. But I also think there's been that real hammering and lots of different ways that has taken away or eroded people's trust in politicians.

10:15and I also just wonder and I'm wondering out loud because it'd be hard to measure this in any scientific way but I think that politics has become so brutal and brutish that actually there are all sorts of really smart people in the UK who in another era might have said yeah I'll give it a go and now they look at it and think not a chance and is there a missing generation? Well we'll ask that question we're going to come i want to discover the roots of your passion for politics and maybe answer some of those questions yeah and i've also i have huge admiration for people who put themselves forward i really do i don't i don't and also let's we shouldn't kid ourselves and think oh there was some halcyon days when politicians were all marvelous and they were all geniuses and actually if you really think about it exceptional or or you know truly towering prime ministers are the exception right think of the 20th century people got well like george Thatcher, Blair, Churchill who else would you put in that?

11:17Often a war is involved as well Moments of a real national emergency Well many people will put Clement Attlee in there but we'll play that game in a minute I want to get back to the roots of you though I should say that all those prime ministers that you talked of coming through I've got the explanation for this because you remember the day the late Queen died two days before she was saying goodbye to Boris Johnson and hello to Liz Truss this was deliberate policy at the time to rush through as many prime ministers as possible during her lifetime. Because otherwise Queen Victoria would have won the accolade as our sovereign with the most prime ministers.

11:51It was government policy to put Elizabeth II in the record books. If only that had been explained to people. If only that had been explained to people. And then that's the kind of joke that I think only someone with your impeccable connections would be entitled to make. Or else you'd be off to the terror. And it's interesting that you think it's a joke. I think it's actually a fact. Let's get back to the beginning. You are Laura Juliet Kunzberg. Yes, I am. Born on the 8th of August, 1976. What is your very first memory? So I think my first memory is climbing out from underneath some piece of furniture or other and cracking my head on a marble windowsill in our family's flat in Milan where I was a toddler, having been sent to play hide and seek with my older brother and sister who made me hide and then didn't come and seek me.

12:52And after a while as a two-year-old, I thought, well, I've had enough of this. And I came out from under whatever the furniture I was and then smashed my head. So not only abandoned, but then hurt. Now that may be a complete hokum, but that's what I remember in my bones. It's not hokum for a variety of reasons. you've combined two of the most common memories one is fear of abandonment and the other is some kind of physical trauma yes so it's not unusual yeah i accept that as your first memory yes you've got to tell us why you are in milan who your parents are and who these siblings are so my dad my parents were expats my father worked for a big international textiles company for a long time boy and man his name is nick uh and they lived all over the world they lived in south america they lived in lots of different European countries and then their last foreign posting as it was was in Italy and they lived in Italy for six years I think and then we moved back to Scotland when I was two so I suppose I'm from a family where you know being in other countries was a normal thing and having a world view of that the world is bigger than your own street and your own city and your own country was a normal thing we might come on to this part of that is because my father's father was a german refugee so and i and i think it's a great well come on to that now so who was your okay so my father's father was an amazing man and his mother so this that my great grandmother so yeah to cut a very long story relatively short um my great grandmother was jewish she'd married a christian man and they lived in germany she married a kunzberg yes and she was a samson and an amazing woman academic woman a young kind of you know trailblazing academic they essentially saw what was coming and my grandfather actually had then gone off to be a student in austria while he was a student in austria he and some other friends were helping Jewish people escape and get out.

15:01And then she, essentially, the family, essentially, one by one, my great-grandmother got her kids out. Anyway, he was the first to leave and he came to the UK. Forgive me, do you know how he left? Yeah, he left. I mean, he left on trains and ferries and things because this was before the war, so it was possible to, in the 1930s... So it was as if he was going away on holiday or something. But he left because it was difficult to get money out of Germany by the time he left. He had a hollowed-out hockey stick with money on the inside. A hollowed-out hockey stick? A hollowed-out hockey stick. So he was a young sporting type.

15:36He had his hockey stick. And a tennis racket frame, also hollowed out. You know those, like a press? Hollowed out so he could get money out to come to the UK and start a new life. And he arrived here, and he'd been a student. He was an academic guy, scientific, sporty, you know, blue-eyed. He was a ski across the Alps when skis were two and a half metres long, made of wood. You know, he was an amazing guy. He came here, banged on the doors of lots of universities, said, I want to be a doctor. I want to study here. And by chance, Edinburgh University was the one that let him in. And so begins then a life in Scotland.

16:18And how did he pay for that? From money from the... Maybe from the hockey state. Maybe he did. I don't know. But he left his mother and brothers and sisters back in Germany. And then one by one they got out, but she didn't get out. What happened to her? She survived the war. She was hidden for some of it by a friend of hers. I mean, literally hidden in a house so that the Gestapo and the Nazis couldn't find her. Well, I was recently, it was a very eerie thing recently. I found in a pile of papers her ID card with a big J on the front she of course had years when she didn't see her children and there were letters but she survived the war and she stayed in Germany and she then did a lot of work for the Red Cross and tried to reunify families and she was an amazing person I don't remember meeting her I know I did met her meet her and seen a family photograph where she's holding me as a baby but i i i don't remember her at all but then she was a remarkable woman she was an amazing woman an absolutely amazing woman and i wish i'd know i wish i'd known her you know i wish i'd known her and there are there are various kind of tributes to her and things in germany now for the work that she did because she she stayed after all of that that her family had been through and the danger that she lived in do Do you know how it affected your grandfather leaving his mother behind in Germany through the war?

17:48The impact I think it had on him, the whole thing, was he was a doctor. I was incredibly committed to his work. And I think that is what the impact that it had on him is I think he felt and I never spoke to him about it. But my sense is that he felt and I think it's something that was passed down, actually, in a way to everyone in the family. is just a massive sense of appreciation of, and in a way a sort of debt of gratitude actually to Britain to provide safety and opportunity. And then he gave back, to use this as a sort of cliched phrase, but enormously by, you know, I think working all the hours God sent.

18:33What was his first name? Eka. Eka? Eka, as in Eka Hart, but yeah, Eka Kunzberg, yeah. What do you think he gave your father? What does Nick, your dad, have from him? Massive work ethic. And you've got that too? I suppose so, yeah. And I think that's probably not unusual. I mean, I suppose families and, you know, there are many, many families in Britain who somewhere down the line you've got a refugee story.

19:01And I think that does give you a sense of drive and that things are worth doing. and a desire to pay back and maybe a belief in service. What's in you that Nick has? What does Nick, since we're dealing with your father now, what's he given you, Laura? What have you got from Nick? I suppose, well, there's two things. Well, there's so many things I could say.

19:30He nearly always said yes to things. And I think I got that from him in a kind of, well, there's an opportunity. Your default is to say, yeah, sure. why not? Rather than saying, oh, I don't know about that. You know, he was probably irritatingly positive. And I think some people who know me well would probably say that about me too. You know, come on, let's do it. That kind of thing. Not, might be difficult. And how did you meet your mother? Oxford University. Yeah, they met in the, well, actually that's, they were both at university together in 1961 and they met, but they met in the Christmas holidays after their first term.

20:09at a fancy dress party where my mum was dressed in a sack that said Golden Wonder 9 and 6 or something. She was dressed as a sack of potatoes. But a sack's not very long, is it? If you're tall with long hair and amazing legs at the age of 19 or whatever she was. And my dad was dressed up as a co-respondent, which you might want to explain to people. Well, there we are, as in shoes. No, as in the kind of person. Oh, and illicit. Oh, my gosh, I will explain to people. Yes, because that's not from my era. That's your era, not my era. In the era when there was divorce with blame, you had to show that there was somebody who had caused the adultery, which was going to give the judge grounds on which to say, yes, you were divorced.

20:53Who is the correspondent? Who is the other person who has been in this case? Yes, so my 19-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed father, I was dressed in his pyjamas and my… Yes, because it ought to be explained. the correspondent would go to a hotel room, often in Brighton, and would position himself in bed with the lady who was wanting the divorce. To then be caught. And then they would be caught. Somebody would step out of the cupboard and would take a photograph, and that would be the correspondent and the lady in question. And you could hire these people, or you could genuinely be having an affair.

21:25Right. So yeah, this was like a great gag for my 90s. How marvellous. So he comes in. I'm liking these people. He comes in as a correspondent. Yeah, and my mum was in it. And she is. She's dressed as a sack of potatoes. But you like, if I may say so. It basically is a mini dress, I suppose. I'm with them, this is the 60s. Yeah, exactly. But the early 60s, right? And I think that there's a, I think there's a difference between people who came of age. I talked to my mum about this years ago, actually. I hadn't thought about this conversation for a long time. But I think there's probably a difference between people who came of age in the early 60s, who remembered the war, and then people who came of age in the late 60s.

22:03And, you know, my dad used to tell a story about rationing and because one of his naughty little sisters got into terrible trouble once, but because for eating the sugar and raisins that had been saved for a long time for a birthday cake. And he always used to tell that story, probably if we didn't want to finish our dinner or something. And he used to tell that story. But I think there's a difference between the first. You're so, Marseille said so well observed. The beginning of the six and the end of the six is one of the big differences. was the advent of the pill. Right. So that people's relationships in the 60s are quite different from the end of the 60s.

22:40We're ranging wide and far. This is great. But this is social history. Yeah, well, it is. It's social history. So how did they get on together? Oh, well, I think it was... I mean, I think it was... Like that. That was like that. Yeah. So are you the first to be born? No, I'm the youngest. You're the youngest. So who are the other siblings? I have... My brother is the eldest and my sister is the middle. Very good. Yeah. how do you picture your parents together though give me a flavor of us of them together not just I mean they were well but give us an example of them at their best together oh their best together they loved their whole time together they loved Italy so much and if I think of their best I think because we used to go back all the time so we came we moved back to the UK when I was two but we used to go to Italy on holiday a lot and if I think of them at their sort of best and happiest I think of them on a lovely terrace in an Italian villa having invited some friends and family to go and stay for a few days with them and sitting outside laughing and looking around at beautiful views and being very easy and relaxed and probably having an argument but not an you know, an argument about politics or, it sounds pompous, but I suppose debate, right?

24:02And they're funny as well. Well, my mum was really funny. It's really, really funny and sharp. And her mum was very funny as well. So it was kind of Dorothy Parker kind of, you know, sharp. Oh, yeah, sharp. Really sharp. Really funny. But this is a lovely childhood to have because these are intelligent, entertaining people. Oh, God, we're so lucky. I mean, we had to, yeah. I mean, if I said to you, just to show there is some shade as well as light, the worst moment you can remember until you were 13 at home is that a bad moment that suddenly springs into your head? I was in a bus crash that was a terrible thing that happened because my cousins were in a bus crash that tipped over also I stole my sister's chocolate bar once tell us about the bus crash I still haven't told her the truth about it she's a Rosebud fan so she's going to hear about it now but let's deal with the bus crash first yeah that was really bad with my cousins and we were on a Sunday school trip because my mum and dad had gone away for the weekend, I think for their wedding anniversary or something.

24:57And there was a giant gust of wind. There were kind of more than 40 children on the top deck of a bus because kids all choose to go up to the top. And genuinely, it was a big gust of wind and the bus went over into a field. If it had gone the other way, it would have gone into a lane of oncoming traffic. But it went the other way into a field. And then it was, I remember the noise actually, crack of the seats and things coming off the floor. And of course the world turned not upside down, but on its side so suddenly the wall was the ground and the seats were what it was terrifying out of the back so if you ever think why did they have exit doors on the back window of a bus it's because what happened was we walked along the wall of the bus which was had become the floor and then we were bashing the window at the back and eventually a lorry driver remember because we were little we couldn't get it open i remember being with my cousin we were like hammering on door um about seven or something it was really frightening and me and my cousin and we were because we were very tight families to hang out with our cousins all the time they actually still do somewhere and but i remember seeing a lorry driver because obviously all the traffic stops a lorry driver a man with a check shirt and a big beard i can't picture his face but i remember seeing this kind of giant it looked like coming towards i remember seeing him wrench the door which was the window at the back of the bus and then we got out and then we were taken to salt police station and it was all very very dramatic it was terrifying so that would be a bad thing yes and the chocolate bar did you end up in the police station for that no what happened i will do now what what did you do i just took it you took your sisters when you were the youngest you were the golden child i would never have kept a chocolate bar so only my sister and i i loved my sister dearly only she would have had the self-discipline to have a crunchy it was a Crunchy.

26:48I mean imagine not just eating a Crunchy. If there's a Crunchy anywhere near me I'll just eat it. But my sister had kept it. She'd kept her Crunchy and she used to have this like cloth kind of hanging thing. Do you know the things I mean? Like little kind of pockets? Yes, you do now. And she had her Crunchy in that. I must have been about six and I went and took it and ate it. And if never she accused me and I denied it. Probably with chocolate all around my little face.

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29:36Who's your first friend outside the family? My first, well, I mean, I'm one of these people, I'm lucky, my old friends are kind of still my best friends, really. My first friend, my first friend is probably a woman called Lindsay, who's still my sort of best old friend. Yeah. Was she at school with you? Yeah. So I have a group, like in a gaggle of, a gaggle of friends. There's a group of seven of us. We call ourselves LB's Finest. It's our very modest name on our WhatsApp group. LB's? Yeah, well, our school was called Laurel Bank, which is now defunct, tragically. And Laurel Bank was a primary school, secondary school?

30:13It was both. Yeah, we had such a nice time. What was special about this school? Oh, we just had such a nice time. Where is the school? It's in the west end of Glasgow. So Glasgow, which is my, you know, the kind of city that's in my bones. The finest place in the land. Why did the Koonsburg end up in Glasgow? my dad got that was where we went back to because of my dad's work fine um and it was there my parents sort of adopted home really um and it was just we just had a really nice time you know it was benign it was fun it wasn't too serious we did kind of just we had a and i was just lucky i had a great group of friends right so serendipity is is is all isn't it in our lives and it's sort of the way and i know i'm meant to be talking about this that's how i ended up doing the job that I've done really was chance rather than design and I think part of life isn't it is you take the things happen by accident and the question is whether you're open to it and you say hooray but I was serendipitously but these there was just a great group of girls in my class at school yeah give me an example yeah of how you got on well give me a game that you played a game or music that you listened to oh my god well we were all deeply in love with aha so do you remember Oh my God.

31:30First love of my life, Morton Harkett. We loved Morton Harkett. And it was the age of, I think we were nine. This is rather alarming. People I knew. They had to be people that you as a little girl were worshipping. Did you know Morton Harkett? Yes. What? Do you still know Morton Harkett? I'm afraid not. I wasn't very interested. But anyway, that's by the by. That tells more about me than it does about you. Go back. We loved Morton Harkett. And I remember having the album, Hunting High and Low. I remember having the album. and we would sort of just carry around the album. You know, I mean, this was a big deal.

32:00We were kind of nine or ten and we had the album and we just sort of carry it around and look at it. And we would just sort of look at the album and be like, it's just so exciting. And we loved them. I mean, we just loved them. And we enjoyed sort of loving them together, you know. And then we got up to a lot of mischief. Give me an example of mischief. Well, of course, we were all quite interested in boys and then we were quite interested in cider and then we were quite interested in trying to get into nightclubs and trying to get into bars. Well, you know. When was your first awareness of politics?

32:39I think I was 11 when I actually became actively involved in politics. When did you become involved, interested in politics and what prompted that? Well, in a funny way, I wasn't. Oh. So it's all a bit of an accident, really. So I wanted to be, I wanted to make TV, right? Because I'm nosy and I love watching TV. This is when you're a teenager. Yeah. And what did you love watching? Everything. Dallas, love Dallas. Neighbours, love Neighbours. Liked documentaries. I liked, you know, Panorama, World in Action. Loved Dallas so much. Did you watch with your parents, your brother and sister? Yeah. Neighbours was something we used to, we used to tape Neighbours and then watch it after school before it was on.

33:21and then they have to, I mean, just nonsense. But I just love watching TV. Watch anything. You know, you put on what was on because there were four things to choose from. And I wanted to work, I sort of thought, I might want to work in TV. And I'm very nosy. And if you put those two things together, then becoming a TV journalist is quite a good thing. At school, what were the subjects you were good at? English and history and languages. I did the school magazine. You know, I was one of those people. Yeah, it's a bit obvious, but why not? It's a bit obvious. Sorry to be dull. I've been there, done that.

33:53Absolutely. But yeah, writing, speaking, you know, all of that. Was there a teacher who was particularly influential? Well, I did a history degree because our history teacher was the nicest teacher. And what was she or he? She was called Miss McFarlane and she's a lovely woman. And she's still, I don't know if she listens to Robust Bud, but I know that she's still alive and well. And she was very young. Did you have a young, a teacher who was close to you in age? Miss Whiting, who actually was a history teacher at our school as well. Well, there you go. so I did a history degree because of her really and then the year after school What did she have?

34:26Given you're giving us the kind of Jean Brodie of your lifetime It's my favourite book She was fun She seemed to I think she was just really nice and she seemed to us not like the other teachers She was sort of more on our side somehow Were you quite popular at school? Was it a girl school? It was a girl school, yeah, which is really good because if I'd been at a mixed school, I would have paid a lot less attention. You would have been distracted. I mean, were you distracted by boys at that time? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it was fun. And, you know, I suppose, yes. Well, I don't know because I was one.

35:03So I don't know what the effect was, I'm afraid. Well, I was social, right? I'll put it that way. I was social. Were you outgoing? Because you came from an outgoing. And were you funny like your mother? I'm not as funny as my mum. but I don't know am I funny if I've been funny I think um I was very social and I still am sort of very social I'm a very sociable person I like going I like being with other people I like spending time with and I like meeting new people and I think you know I get a lot of energy from was that comfortable for you were you yeah you were at ease with that so you're yeah so if I say you know do you remember your first crush your first kiss your first it's it's all easy you don't have any trauma some people go oh god yes or oh i think i mean you have a fair share of heartbreak and drama of course but i mean that's sort of part of you know life's rich tapestry isn't it well i mean you know i suppose if you're at 17 and something goes terribly wrong whatever but i i you know i i i think my growing up was largely you know i feel i was very fortunate it and and i think very i think a gift that my my parents given are growing up and being in a having that lovely group of friends where everything was always pretty stable and that allows you then to feel well you know what well i can go and take on the world and when i was 18 i went to go and live in paris for a year after i left school wow yeah on your own yeah i remember a conversation with my parents they said do you think that you might kind of rather maybe go and be an au pair or like you know something that where i was like no i just really want to go and live in paris and i want to work in a bar there's the glorious gap yeah oh it was great and i it was and i was working and i felt like an you know i felt like i was and i felt like an adult i had a job and then i went home and i got a job in a restaurant in glasgow and blah and then i went to university in edinburgh and what did you read i did history and did that it was that transformative Are there transformative years at all?

37:01Going to France was. And then the next year that was a really big, really important one for me was actually not the years in Edinburgh. It was my third year. I did one of those cunning switches where I did the third year in Washington, D.C. Georgetown. I know that. I went to Georgetown. I mean, I visited Georgetown University. Yeah, and that was so cool. Georgetown is so cool. It's so cool. It's like Paris and Washington, D.C. It was wonderful. and America is, I don't know, I've always been, as a teenager, I loved like St. Elmo's Fire and all those kind of films about, you know, campus life and American teenagers and young people.

37:35And then suddenly I was there. I was like in St. Elmo's Fire. Yeah. But the crucial thing then, the crucial, crucial thing was I answered a little advertisement in the Hoya, which was the Georgetown campus newspaper to be an intern on an NBC TV political program. and I went and did that and I worked on a show called McLaughlin one-on-one and John McLaughlin was a bit like the kind of Andrew Neil of the states at that particular moment and that was that was transformative so suddenly I was in working on a news program about American politics exposed to these people sitting in a room taking the coffee onto the set for the conversations and the things that were going to happen between the you know the democrat in one corner the republican the other and the host and them all going each other and that was i was like oh okay and those anchors those hosts were treated like demigods i was a friend of Walter Cronkite.

38:41You weren't. Yeah, exactly. Did I just break the microphone? Yeah, exactly. Seriously? Absolutely. So I know that generation. And people won't understand the giants that these people were. I think that's right, yeah. And your man was in his own way in that school. And there was a presence about them and they were treated like demigods. And the whole thing was on a scale. So this is suddenly introducing you to this world. It's suddenly introducing you to that world. can i say yeah yeah and and and that was just now you've had the crack cocaine of no but that's what it is and you've been hooked on it ever since yes well i i knew then that tv was the thing i didn't know then that politics was the thing still so i thought i want to work on tv and i want to be a journalist and because it's like if you want to get to tv and make documentaries and things it makes sense to be a journalist i was not at that point super like oh i'm definitely going to do politics at all although it was a very exciting year it was when clinton got caught with lewinsky and all of that was going on but i came back thinking i want to work in tv i want to work in television and i want to work in journalism somehow but i thought i wanted to work in documentaries and then i came back and i'd done student radio and all of those kinds of things which were great fun um and then i came back i got a job at uh live tv do you remember that cable tv station uh while i was a student i worked there and then i did my last year university and i just started applying for everything that goes but this explains everything to me because you had no your role models you discovered when you were in dc and the way of doing it and i can i say it was like you know live tv is electrifying it is of course but i've seen you in action i've to be the guest on your sunday morning program and i've seen the way you bestride the studio Oh, goodness.

40:33No, I have. And you belong to that tradition, the authority that you give it. Thank you. Which is very interesting. I now understand totally where it comes from. John McLaughlin, one-on-one. Absolutely. And one behaves like that. I mean, how long have you been doing this? Mostly being a reporter, initially for the BBC, then you go away, then you come back. So I started, I was a BBC trainee in 2000, but which does not include my time working on the Teletubbies magazine in Wood Lane which was a formative experience making sure that the adverts for Postman Pat were delivered on time. But yeah I was a BBC trainee from 2000 and then I did general news and lots of different things for a few years which I loved loved loved loved.

41:20And how did you get to be you were the youngest ever political? Yes I was I was the youngest ever political editor. And how old were you then? 39. Very good. Yeah, that's quite scary. It's funny, if I think about that now, I think, God, that's really scary. Were you scared at the time? Were you apprehensive? Yes, of course. Of course. But you didn't hesitate to say yes? No, of course not. This was the completion of your destiny? Well, it's not a job I'd ever thought I would end up in. I mean, I think it was not at all. I think some people go into careers and they are like an exosent missile. It's like, when I'm going to grow up, I'm going to be an astronaut.

41:52Or when I grow up, I'm going to be an MP. Or when I grow up, I'm going to be a political editor. That was not my plan at all. And I didn't want to cover politics until I had a boss. And I think lots of people have a kind of formative boss. And I had a boss who was starting a new programme, with Andrew New, who said, I want people who haven't covered politics before and I want them to come and work on the show and bring sort of fresh pair of eyes to Westminster. And I was like, I don't really want to cover politics. I think Westminster is full of weirdos. I wasn't necessarily wrong. Who was the weirdest weirdo you ever came across?

42:26Oh, nice try. uh my explicit job though initially was to cover politics and not be in westminster so i used to go around the country trying to find interesting and important stories that people wanted to raise and then we would put it to mps and i even used to truck a truck about with a cardboard cutout of tony blair and go up to people in the sort of you know marketplace in ashby de la zoos and say what would you like to tell tony oh so the problem with the cardboard cutout is in a british winter and in the end it gets a bit so soggy but i didn't you know i didn't choose to become a sort of inhabitant of westminster so when eventually i arrived in the lobby you know which is the press pack and in westminster i didn't know anyone you know some people arrive there straight out the box they've been in the oxford union their friends are all researchers for mps or they've been a special advisor or whatever and i didn't know anyone and i didn't know looking back i didn't know anything um but i suppose i you know i worked my way up and i did various different things and then i suppose it's about 10 about a decade or maybe 12 years after that i became the political editor which and what was the best and worst moment of those years the worst day undoubtedly and the worst day of my career was the day that joe cox was killed um it was a a terrible chilling distressing time and it was right at the height of the brexit referendum nearly at the day of the vote when the arguments had already got very divisive very noisy a lot of distress on both sides um also a lot of people excited by debate it's good when people are passionate about political ideas but the tone of that referendum everybody listening will remember if you were in the UK at that time was tipping into nastiness and I'll always remember the day I was on the road um we were working in Sheffield working away and it was you know we're covering a campaign there's a lot of trains and planes and automobiles and bad sandwiches and you know and take away coffee and late nights and so by that point everybody's already pretty strung out and worn out and wrung out and and you know hugely lucky to be doing the job but I'll always remember that day my phone rang and it was the news testing had I heard because we were starting to get reports that Joe Cox the MP who everybody kind of liked uh had been hurt and had I heard and could I find out try and find out more and even that was such a massive shock and then it was okay right well I'm gonna have to get back to London because obviously this is going to be a huge story you know and there's that tension between being a human being and someone who knew Jo who was a delightful person I mean I'm not friends with politicians but you could see from a thousand miles off she was a delightful person so you have that tension between a human being and then also being a journalist and then being a journalist that's got to find out what's happened is going to have to make a plan go on the new what are we going to say what are we going to write write a script do the whole thing and so I sort of was rushing back to London as fast as I could to get there and there was a second phone call when I was sitting on the train platform in Sheffield waiting to find the London train and it was packed with people um and the new cess phoned again and it was one of my various close very close colleagues who told me that she she had died and this the strangest feeling I remember having I did started crying I was so shocked and sad and but I just remember this really curious feeling was that I knew that within a few hours all of the people who were going about their business busily in the station with bags and kids and trying to get to work or trying to get home they would all in the next few hours hear this terrible news and I knew it would be a huge story I don't want to say story but it would be a huge story um but I knew and they didn't and I remember having it was almost like a sort of out-of-body experience it was so weird.

46:58Why for you is this a seminal moment? Because there'd been the tragedy of MPs being murdered before. There had and of course if you go back in time you know erie neve and other i think i think something had bubbled probably about kind of the early 2010s i suppose and then of course you started having a real ugliness emerging in politics and in in the kind of center of politics so you're absolutely right it's silly to say there was never any threat or never any danger to British politicians. But in our kind of communal debate, if you like, in our collective conversations, there were tones of nastiness.

47:51And you feel this has gone on? You feel this is still with us? Yeah. And it's been enabled by social media, undoubtedly. People talk to each other in a way that they just wouldn't. You now have, and I talk about this a lot in the book about how the kinds of language that politicians use has changed the kind how far they might go if you think about how politicians now talk about immigration and race you know when i started and arrived in westminster most politicians in the mainstream we should always you know i'm talking about most politicians would be so careful not to say anything that could even remotely be construed as offensive now a lot of people would argue that went too far it meant that people didn't always tell the truth, that they didn't acknowledge enough people's concerns about immigration, for example.

48:41But now you almost have a situation at the other end where you see politicians really happy to have debates in a very controversial way. And if we just think about two examples, at the moment you've recently had the very divisive debate in the Green Party about antisemitism. And of course, there are all sorts of contested positions on that. And I am not going to take a position. I'm a BBC journalist. I'm not going to take a position on that, clearly. But it's fascinating to me that that was obviously controversial, right? When we did an interview Zach Polanski recently, and I talk about some of this in the book, he said, it's not controversial.

49:26I remember. So whatever you think of the subject, it is controversial. controversial but even to say to to tell people it's not controversial is it is is so far from something you might have had 20 years ago where people have quite carefully said of course this is a very sensitive subject and we must all be and by the same token in the aftermath of the awfulness of what happened to that poor family the novacs henry novak um there is a really important debate to be had about whether or not some well-meaning attempts to correct sort of historic wrongs and discrimination might have in some instances had weird consequences there's a really interesting debate to be had about that and politicians in all parties including you know had a conversation with David Lammy about it was a very prominent Labour politician sort of saying yeah maybe things have in some areas we need to look at this very carefully but in the aftermath of that you then have Nigel Farage writing an essay about about whiteness in a way that many people would find very offensive now I'm not judging any of I'm just pointing out that's a real distance traveled from where we were in our political debate what I think's fascinating about your book is you depict all this very clearly indeed very lucidly but you don't offer a resolution you are reporting on the state of play i'm a reporter um but in your head is there an answer to this are we just to feel a bit depressed well no the first the first thing is and in a way this is why i've i mean this is absolutely why well there's i've written the book to try and help people understand right we've had so much in the last 10 years we're particularly in the last five years but we're going to throw in their hands up and gone goodness me it's all crazy bonkers is the new normal what i'm trying to do is say let's dissect that let's open it up let's work out you do that very effectively thank you i'm but i'm asking you as somebody who observes this on a daily basis if you've come to any conclusion well the first step where we go forward the first step is to understand it isn't it right you can't hope to understand to try and come up with solutions if you haven't really understood or paid attention ha ha ha which of course is the title of the pet to how you got here you know it's just that sort of diagnosis and i suppose what i'm maybe what i'm trying to do is challenge both citizens and all of us to take to be conscious of it and conscious of these changes and also for politicians to pay more attention to the public's concerns you know one of the things that has happened that i document is that politicians have chosen to spend a lot of time debating things that they are very, very interested in that maybe don't interest most of the public.

52:24And their focus has not always been on the things that are the top of most people's list. Do you ever, when your head hits the pillar at the end of the day, worry that you haven't been as impartial as you ought to be, that you're natural, and I mean this positively, liberal with a small l, instincts, the kind of way you were brought up, comes over as being perceived by some people as not being as neutral as you would like. Well, being neutral isn't being impartial. No. So impartial is, but I'm glad you've asked me about that because impartiality, so there are a lot of earnest tomes written about impartiality, and a lot of ink has been spilt by impartiality.

53:05I want to ask you, if your head ever hits the pillow, and you feel, I'm just doing what you do. Because that was the question. Yes. And don't answer it with what you want to say. But answer the question. The question is, does your head ever hit the pill and you think, I didn't get that quite right today? And what do you do about it? Oh, look, certainly I've been a reporter for 20 years during some of the most contentious periods in our history, right? Do I ever get to the end of the day and think, oh gosh, could I have phrased that better or could I have done that? Yeah, of course I wouldn't be a human being if I didn't think that there were some times when I might have been able to do it better.

53:39I think there's, I mean, there's one thing I think that people don't talk enough about, which is really important, is that, you know, I have always, pretty much always, maybe not 100%, but the vast, vast majority of the time, I'll be surrounded by really brilliant colleagues. And my team during those kind of really intense periods, particularly around Brexit, but not just around Brexit, was so tight and i think that i'm getting i'm getting to the point i promise in a newsroom you have a constant conversation it's a constant constant constant constant conversation about oh do we describe this like this or what about that and what about that so it's a sort of collective conversation so although if you are the political adversary there's a fairy on top of the christmas tree of course it's you know my sentences and my phrases that are the ones that are out there and that are exposed but you're kind of always being uh sense checked and challenged and argued through and are we articulate where are we how are we going to pitch this is it is it you know are we in the right place and so look of course we don't get everything right and of course there've been moments when i thought oh god or or or even just oh i stumbled over that word and that's really annoying um and i put my teeth back in um but it's like you know it's a constant challenge and you have to just be having that conversation all the time all the time all the time all the time are you kind of in the right place but i think that it's been odd to me that there's a lot of high profile people and i don't judge them for this but there are a lot of high profile people who have sort of said that impartiality is basically impossible at the bbc and they want because you should be able to give your view and this that the other i see it completely the other way as a journalist if what you're interested in is facts and insight and helping people understand the world impartiality is like a complete it's like it's like a liberation it's an insurance policy because all you're doing is following the facts and trying to work out what's true and then explain it that's all you're doing without fear or favor whoever it is whoever the politician is whatever the subject is and if you think about it the other way you know i've got friends who work for different publications and who have had stories that they want to pursue and they've kind of been nudged away from that or they know that they wouldn't get it into their paper or onto their website or whatever so for honestly I'm you know glad to have the opportunity to say that for me in Partiality it's like a freedom ticket because all I'm trying to do is find out what's true get more facts get more information and then explain it to the public so I don't think people say oh it's this repressive thing and I'm so desperate to tell for the world and I don't think that people were desperate to know what I think I think I hope that they're eager to know what I can share with them about what the information that I have right not what does that does that make sense it does make sense there's this difference between insight based on information and work.

56:46I'm signing up my dad now. And then just saying, oh, yeah, this is what I think. Yeah.

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59:16I'm coming to my last three questions. Oh, no. No, no. No, no. They're all easy. Easy. Oh, good. Right. Well, I've spent my life in two worlds because I have been a politician and also been a journalist. And I know that politicians are naturally mistrustful of journalists. on the whole with their individual exceptions we don't like them or trust them is that true of journalists or politicians do you think obviously the ones you like but on the whole are you a bit wary of them i don't think i'd say wary i think look everybody transaction is the wrong word but it's professional okay and it's something i always say because it's true is i'm not friends with politicians there are politicians who are very nice people who i get on with well there the opposite is also true but you it's a professional thing it's a professional arrangement you know they're certainly not trying to help me why would they and i'm not trying to help them i'm there for the public i'm trying to hold them accountable so it's a profession you know there's always going to be a sort of gladiatorial gladiatorial not always gladiatorial what was the mp was offering a threesome oh lord well that's um well i'm not going to tell you No, Cheryl, don't tell me.

1:00:30You don't need to tell me. I was once mistaken. Esther Ransom had to call me one day to say, I'm sorry, people think it's you in the story about me and the affair with the MP because he wore colourful clothes. They think it's you. Oh, dear. And who was it? It was Sir Nicholas Fairbairn. Oh, Nicky Fritt with the tartan trues. With the tartan trues. Gosh. Didn't always keep them on. Dear me. Well, that's a whole other podcast. It is. The tartan trues. But what is this story? just unpick that for a moment okay so well one look one of the things i'm trying to do in the book is explain how westminster is a strange place and the lines between what's professional what's personal for some people are often very blurred and i'm explaining my position in that in my view it has to be different you know politicians and journalists are not close and and sometimes people look outside and think oh it's terrible she's all friends with all of them well no anyway uh there was a party conference you know where they're like there's a lot of long nights, long hours.

1:01:28Perfectly normal for a journalist to have meetings with politicians in a hotel room expecting that their staff would be there. Done it many times myself. You knock at the door, you go in, you would expect advisors might be a couple of advisors, perhaps a press secretary, someone like that around. However, on that occasion, I knocked on the door, said minister answered the door with rather too many buttons undone on their shirt, asked me in. I partner was there rather than their assistant or researcher or advisor or press secretary uh i sat in a very hard chair for about 10 minutes and then i made my excuses and left because it did not feel like an encounter that they had imagined as a professional one now i do not know if that was their intention uh an impression was given an impression was given and i left quite quickly i thought it was more sensible to leave so i left all right before i ask you my last three questions is there anything more you wanted to say?

1:02:22I thought that was for the last three questions. No, no, the last three questions were these. Oh, okay. All right. A moment of joy in your life. Just a moment of joy. It comes into your head. Oh, when I got married. Lovely. That's nice. Well done. Was that a while ago? Yeah, 2005. Good. I imagine it's going okay, otherwise it wouldn't have mentioned it. No, that is what came into my head. Good. That's lovely. A moment of joy. Although, actually, my other half would always say, if your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, then why are you marrying that person if it's going to be downhill from there?

1:02:52No, because you want to sustain it. You want to maintain it. Oh, it was the opposite of my life. And actually, every day since. And every day since has been full of joy. Yes. What you say, what's the first thing that came into your head? That is the point. That's the first thing that comes into my head. So this is perhaps more tricky. Yes. A moment of sadness. Oh, well, it's not tricky. But we, yeah, I mean, my father died three and a little bit years ago. And that was a hard, that's a hard thing. That's a hard thing. Yeah, it's so, so tough. All right. And finally, what has life taught you, Laura?

1:03:33That it's there for the taking and you and saying yes to things you thought you would never imagine doing is often a great choice. I'm so glad you said yes to coming on Rosebud. You know, I swore I would never write a book, and I did. So I hope in a few weeks I'll still be happy that I made that decision. It's a fascinating book. Thank you. Congratulations. Well done. Laura Koonsberg, on Rosebud. You're brilliant. Thank you for having me.

1:04:08Oh, I really enjoyed my time with Laura Koonsberg. and I loved the moment when I felt, and I think she felt it too, that I caught the moment that her life was defined when she was there in Washington, D.C., working on that show as really as the runner and seeing the way politics was covered in America. And anyway, it was, for me, a really interesting and rather different episode of Rosebud. It's nice to vary it. And she really is very distinguished. Laura Koonsberg there. So I look forward to being on her program, Sunday with Laura Koonsberg again. And actually, I must listen to her podcast, too.

1:04:45She's got one called Newscast. I do recommend her book. It's called Pay Attention, and it's published by a publisher I know, and I better come clean here. He is also, he's called James Gerbert. He also published a book that I wrote, which was a novel, a murder mystery called Jack the Ripper, The Final Solution. I actually solved it. Case closed. Jack the Ripper, case closed, published by Corsair. Might as well plug my book. It's where it's plugging hers. It's a murder mystery. It really is a murder mystery, but it's based in truth. Victorian murder mystery. There's a voice in the background saying you're meant to be plugging her book.

1:05:25That's Harriet reminding me that I am indeed plugging Laura Koonsberg's book, Pay Attention, published by Corsair, who incidentally also published my murder mystery, Jack the Ripper, Case Closed. Available now in paperback. okay that's that well it isn't quite that because i've got an email that i want to share with you before i go it um it comes from australia it's wonderful we have this international audience from susan in perth western australia uh she says hello harriet and giles i hope this finds you both well it does my first memory is from when i was two or three i was at a children's birthday party my very first, and we were given pots and pans and wooden spoons.

1:06:09My memory is that we were marching round while the Beatles were singing Yellow Submarine. I think it must have been a version of musical statues because it's also my first memory of failure, as I was yanked out of the parade for a reason I didn't understand. Another very early memory is my first day at infant school, so it would have been three. The school was new and modern and had slopes instead of steps. The smell of school lunch and an enticing glimpse of the Wendy House area is strong and still appears in my dreams occasionally. Well, let me take the opportunity to thank you for inventing Rosebud.

1:06:49I hope you're very proud. It's marvellous. Lots of love, Susan in Perth, Western Australia. Well, I invented the idea, but I have to tell you, Harriet, my producer and friend, she thought of the name Rosebud. So it's a team effort. And thank you for being part of the team. If you want to join our family, then you get ad-free listening and extra episodes on a Sunday. To do that, you simply go to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com forward slash Rosebud. You'll find us here though every Friday and every Tuesday. We come to you with lots of love from the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane in London. Thank you for your company.

1:07:30Cue the music.

1:07:49Thank you.