Emily Maitlis has revealed a savvy trick she deployed to ‘get noticed’ during coverage of the 2017 General Election on the BBC . The journalist, 53, said she purposefully wore a brightly coloured outfit to command the attention of fellow host David Dimbleby, 85 , and secure screen time. Speaking about her on-air tactics during the last election, Emily told Tatler : ‘The most important thing was a bright colour so that I would be in David Dimbleby’s eyeline the whole time and he couldn’t ignore me.
‘I ended up going for red, because it made me feel like I could just stand there at the corner of the studio, going, “Hello, can you please put me on air?”’ David was the lead presenter of the BBC’s 2017 General Election coverage and was joined in the studio by Emily, Mishal Husain, and Jeremy Vine. Huw Edwards took over from David the following day. The election ended in a hung parliament with the governing Conservative Party, then led by Theresa May, remaining the single largest party in the House of Commons.
To stay in power, the Tory minority government formed a coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. On July 4, Emily will present Channel 4’s coverage of the General Election along with former Strictly star Krishnan Guru-Murthy. It comes two years after she quit the BBC to front her The News Agents podcast with Jon Sopel.
Over on the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg and Clive Myrie are taking on General Election hosting duties. It was previous.
