Fiona Bruce: 'You don't ever want to become the story'

Anyone remotely interested in current affairs will have seen the actor Laurence Fox back in January, telling a woman in the audience on Question Time that she was a racist for, essentially, calling him a racist. Or the time when LBC host Iain Dale looked as though he was about to flounce off the panel because Scottish minister Ian Blackford wouldn’t let him get a word in.

Too many Ians on that night, you might be forgiven for thinking. ‘Certainly too many panellists,’ says Fiona Bruce, who, after much speculation, was appointed the show’s fourth host in its 40 years (and  the first woman) in late 2018. ‘I never think six is a good idea.’ It’s normally five. Is she consulted about who’s on? Naturally. ‘And I do my research so I knew the general shape of his [Fox’s] views. What you don’t know is how people are going to express it. Laurence was an example of the unexpected turn of events that happens on a live show like QT. You either thrive on that or you don’t. I think he does and I do, too.’

She must also enjoy the fact that all these exchanges went viral – and that those who suggested she was the soft choice for the job (Nick Robinson and Emily Maitlis were also in the running) now look foolish. Last month, Fox revealed he hadn’t had any offers of work since his QT appearance, actors’ union Equity disapproving of his right-wing views. For good or bad, Question Time has become a mirror of the country, and sometimes that’s not a pretty sight. But the figures speak for themselves. At the height of the Covid crisis, the programme was moved from its usual late night to a far more mainstream 8pm slot. ‘More people are watching,’ says Fiona, ‘so we’re doing something right.’

What I want to know is whether they all sit down together for a civilised supper beforehand without punching each other. ‘Let’s not get too carried away with the idea of dinner,’ she says in that perma-amused voice (part arched purr, part kind-but-firm headmistress). ‘Even in normal times, “dinner” is sometimes Domino’s pizza or a few curled-up sandwiches.’ Is she trying to deflect criticism from the BBC’s alleged profligacy, or distract me from the rows?

I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed anyone so like their TV persona which, in her case, is friendly, smooth and quietly lethal. One journalist remarked that ‘she seemed entirely devoid of internal conflict’. And yet: ‘I wouldn’t say that I’m calm and collected at all,’ says Fiona. ‘At the start, QT just felt extremely stressful.’

Today, padding barefoot around the study of her west London home, sliding open the doors to her garden to let her dog Molly out, she looks more or less the same as when she glides across the TV in her kitten heels and tailoring. Our conversation is like taking a trip in a high-spec Audi. It could be fast and the scenery might be unexpected, but you know you’ll get there safely and in a certain amount of style. And this, remember, is being conducted on Zoom, where no one looks that smooth.

It’s not that she’s dressed exactly the same. Her white cotton knee-length skirt is a bit creased. She’s not wearing one of the many jackets that are part of her TV uniform, but a stripy T-shirt. There’s probably less make-up than normal, and the hair’s in a casual pony-tail. But this is not a woman, I’d hazard, struggling to maintain standards in lockdown. Wrong. ‘I had a complete crisis with my roots. Then my husband watched a video on YouTube and coloured my hair for me. He didn’t help – he did it. He’ll be absolutely mortified I told you that.’

Somehow, I doubt that Nigel Sharrocks (her advertising-executive husband of 25 years) will be, or she wouldn’t have said it. A few years back, the press seized on the idea of her being a party animal. ‘If I can find an excuse to have a party, I will,’ she agrees, adding that most of her friends go way back to her school years. ‘I love dancing and drinking. Nowadays it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like… Apparently I was at Oxford the same time as Boris. But I never saw him.’ So no, she was not, even remotely, connected to the Bullingdon Club. ‘There were definitely people who were wilder than me.’

Despite the press’s best intentions to make her sound otherwise, debauched she is not. On the rare occasions she does something that doesn’t mesh with her public persona – such as accepting the Rear of the Year award in 2010 – she simply concedes a bit later, it was probably a mistake.

So here we are in lockdown, having to pivot as nimbly as we can. And you can see she’s rocked by some of the stories on Question Time. ‘You watch the ministers at the 5pm press conference say we delivered a billion items of PPE – and obviously it’s a Herculean task – but on QT we have members of the public saying, “Look, this is actually what is happening on the ground.” And those things I think are hugely valuable.’

And what’s also clear is that the occasional good-news stories of individual heroism have become totemic. Fiona’s own favourite is of the 17-year-old care worker who gave one of her elderly patients a cushion with a picture of his late wife on it. ‘When this delightful old man saw it, he just broke down, that was hugely moving.’

Adapting to home life – she’s in lockdown with Nigel and their two children, Mia, 18, and Sam, 22 – has been fine. Although Mia won’t be sitting her A levels this summer, she did manage to finish mocks, two weeks before lockdown, and Sam, who’s starting out in TV production, is working from home. She worries about their futures, but hopes by the time Mia’s ready for university, things will have sorted themselves out. In the meantime, Fiona runs, misses her horses, which she keeps at a friend’s place in Oxfordshire, and has not, so far, succumbed to sourdough making. ‘I’m a terrible cook,’ she says with the equanimity of someone who, at 56, has come to terms with at least some of their limitations.

It’s the deserted BBC news studio that she finds eerie. ‘I felt quite anxious in the first few days of lockdown – we used to hot-desk, so that had to change immediately.’ For someone hosting a programme that crackles with tension between its panellists and the unfiltered interrogation of the studio audience (‘I promise we don’t know what questions are going to be asked’), the current more restrained, sombre version must, ironically, be a daunting prospect.

Panellists sit two metres apart or dial-in remotely and audience questions are sent in via video. And the jeopardy – that sense that anything could happen, which she says she thrives on and made her want the job – has gone, for the moment.

So, what’s happening with hair and make-up? ‘Can’t you tell we’re doing it ourselves? I got this large bag of kit from the make-up people, with some instructions, and now I’m having to paint on my foundation with a brush. It’s literally as if I’m painting a wall.’

She seems genuinely comfortable, with her looks, her brains and discussing where she buys her clothes (Reiss, Me+Em, Sandro and, way back, Chanel; she still wears the jackets). When she got the job presenting BBC News at Six, someone arrived clutching swatches of material, saying, ‘pastels, pastels’. ‘Other than that, no one has given me guidance and I definitely made some howling errors… the main thing is not to wear something so ridiculous that it distracts the viewers.’

Does she ever find herself welling up when she’s reading some of those harrowing bulletins? ‘Of course, but you prep yourself beforehand,’ she says. ‘The last thing viewers want is me sobbing in empathy. You don’t ever want to become the story yourself.’ She says she’s never under any pressure to get a sound bite. So what is she after? ‘The truth,’ she says.

Initially journalism wasn’t on her horizon at all: at Oxford, she studied modern languages. She was the first in her family to go to university. Her paternal grandfather was a Scottish fisherman. Her father, who was brought up in considerable poverty, left school at 16 and worked his way from the post room of Unilever to become a managing director. His job took the family on spells abroad, living for a few years in Milan, but her formative school years were spent at a comprehensive in New Cross, south-east London.

Although she was taken aback by some of the entitlement she saw, she wasn’t a radical class warrior. She went on some Reclaim The Night marches, and suggested that her college introduce a designated member of staff for female students to talk to. Years later, when she was filming an episode of Antiques Roadshow in Oxford, she discovered the system is still in place today.

After Oxford, she spent a miserable year as a management consultant before plunging into advertising as an account executive. It was a wedding that transformed her career, however; because that’s where she met the producer of Panorama and then invited him to lunch. ‘I think he was rather taken with my expense account.’ Hmm.

She became an assistant producer at Panorama, then jumped to reporting in 1992 on Breakfast News, working her way up through a series of presenting jobs on local BBC networks, and Newsnight. So it’s odd that she was ever branded as a soft choice for Question Time – she also presented Crimewatch, News at Six and News at Ten. Maybe the doubters don’t realise that newsreaders write their own bulletins. Or perhaps it was the sideways shimmy into Antiques Roadshow – that doesn’t look like the game plan of a calculated career strategist. She just loved the show, she says.

Fiona is clearly playing the long game. She recently went on record to say that women have an extra pressure on TV to look as young as possible and have Botox. Except she didn’t. ‘I would be deluded if I said appearance doesn’t matter. But I don’t feel any pressure to do that [Botox]. I think what I said, certainly what I intended, was that there are quite a few people in the public eye who have Botox – and I see no issue with that – but what it can do is make you look, in comparison, pretty rough.’

She says that, contrary to how things were when she started out, there’s a collaborative support system among her female peers – Emily Maitlis, Emma Barnett, Kirsty Wark, Mishal Husain and Sophie Raworth. That didn’t stop her thinking she’d have liked to have had a crack at interviewing the Duke of York as she watched Maitlis skewer him. ‘But any journalist watching must have felt the same.’ They regularly WhatsApp to indulge in cheerleading, gallows humour and keep things between them as transparent as possible – Bruce says she was always supportive of the BBC publishing its top salaries.

I wonder why anyone would want to put themselves in the Question Time bear pit. She says that, ‘QT is without doubt the hardest job I’ve ever done. I thrive on having to be on my mettle and absolutely focused on what I’m doing. Feeling frightened is deeply unhelpful.’

David Dimbleby confessed, while he was still chair, that it was difficult to get women to agree to go on QT because of the levels of abuse they were subjected to on Twitter. I would suggest Fiona’s own elegant presence has changed that. ‘There are some women who say, “I’m doing it because you’re doing it,”’ she agrees. She’d love to get Michelle Obama on, and Emma Thompson. She’s about to add more names and then back-pedals slightly. ‘That sounds as though I’m suggesting I can reach the parts that David couldn’t and I’m absolutely not.’ See? Smooth.

Question Time is on Thursdays at 10.45pm, BBC One