we now? Twelve-ish? Could not remember the first headline
from this morning,” she says, laughing.)
At 4.40am, a car picks her up from her Manchester crash
pad (her main home, where she resides four nights a week
with her husband – James Haggar, a TV director – and three
cats, is in north London), and she’s at the BBC’s Salford
studios by 5am. “We tackle the headlines, look at the script,
rewrite, put our ideas in...” What’s the additional time-tax
for women re glam and wardrobe? “Well, this hair is done,”
she says, pointing to her zero-maintenance crop. She says
she spends 15 minutes in make-up (the men spend five). In
fact, she still has this morning’s face on, giving her a hyperreal
glow. It’s a wonder they can get that much make-up on a person
in a quarter of an hour, I tease, and she bashes my knee.
She finds the make-up chair soothing, a last chance to gather
her thoughts. “The point is we are there to ask the questions
that our viewers want asked.
Especially on something like
Brexit. We’re not Newsnight.
We’re not Question Time. We
are for people digesting the
news as they’re cracking on
with their day.” And so, at
6am, the red light flashes
and Munchetty and one of
her presenting partners – Dan
Walker, Charlie Stayt, Louise
Minchin – go live, all before
the majority of the population
has stirred from its slumber.
It sounds exhausting. She
snorts. “Not once have I woken
up going, ‘Ugh, I just can’t do
it today.’ I am so grateful that
I do a job that I absolutely
adore. I’m bouncing every day.”
At this, she jiggles up and
down in her seat. “Literally
bouncing.” With her wry
broadcaster’s tone, her gaze
lightly amused and cool with
confidence, there is something
superhuman about her. Nerves
simply don’t appear to factor.
They do, she counters, but
she learnt to suppress them
early on. “My parents are
immigrants who came over
here in 1971,” she says, of her father and mother, Mauritian
and Indian born, respectively. They met in Wales, fell in love
and moved to London to start a family, while working as
nurses at various hospitals. “They worked for the NHS.
Worked and worked and worked.”
Munchetty was in many ways the quintessential child of
this set-up, she says. Loving, strict parents full of ambition
for her resulted in top grades and a host of skills, including
the ability to play the jazz trumpet. When, with zero
contacts, she flouted parental expectations to forge a media
career, making the leap from working-class Streatham to
the University of Leeds to, eventually, a junior role on The
Observer’s business desk in the late ’90s, almost all the other
journalists were white and middle class. It was a culture
shock. “It made me not only feel inferior and ignorant, but
so out of my depth. The only thing I knew I could rely on
was my work ethic, which I’ve inherited from my parents.If you were to say to me, ‘What do you absolutely know you
are good at?’ It’s working hard. And doing my best.”
Naturally, she spotted Breakfast’s looming Trump item
straight away in her briefing notes. Was it an instant red flag?
“Absolutely not. I have a personal opinion on every single story
we do – I’m a curious human being. But my job is to get this
person’s story, and make it relatable.” The person in question
was Jan Halper-Hayes, a former Trump campaign staffer,
brought in to give her take on the president’s latest incendiary
tweet. Dan Walker did the interviewing honours, during
which the guest insisted Donald Trump uses inflammatory
language in order to start important conversations.
If you haven’t seen the clip of what happened next, do
look it up. Walker asks Naga for her take, and her entire
body tenses with control. “I think I became more controlled
because I was very aware of not slandering anyone,” she
says. What was going through
your mind? “Let me tell you
this. I’ve tried to explain to
friends why racism hurts more
than sexism, than classism, for
me personally – I can’t speak
for anyone else.”
She takes a rare pause, then
speaks softly and deliberately.
“My mum has been told, ‘You
Paki bitch, get your hands off
me,’ when she’s cleaning
someone. My dad has been
told the same thing. When
they’re cleaning someone’s
arse. A racist person’s arse. My
parents have always been
absolutely professional and
caring as nurses. They came
to a country that wasn’t always
welcoming to people of colour,
to be the best they could be.
And they were told to go
home all the time.”
And you were, too?
She nods. “I grew up in
Camberwell, then Peckham,
then Streatham. Went to
school in Tooting. I lived in
south London until eight
years ago. And I have been told
many times, ‘Why don’t you
just f**k off to where you came from?’ The words I used on
Breakfast were ‘to go back home’,” she adds, dryly. “So trust
me, when things touch you, sometimes you physically can’t
let that go. If you’re saying you saw me sit back – frustrated,
angry – it’s inevitable when you’ve had these experiences.”
“Was it unprofessional?” she wonders. “I don’t think so.
One of the balancing acts of being a Breakfast presenter is
being comfortable enough to show who you are and your
personality. You have to show empathy. You cannot sit there
and be a robot on that sofa. It was in relation to what the
campaign person had said. And I do stand by it. It is not
OK to use offensive language, or to skirt around offensive
language, to make a point or to get attention. That’s a fact.
It’s like if you saw someone being beaten up on the street
and you didn’t go over.”
Breakfast, aware it was TV gold, posted the clip of Munchetty’s
reaction on Twitter, where it met its fate to go viral. > 332THIS PAGE:
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