Lifestyle You’d think Emma Barnett would want to put her feet up when she gets home from her 4am to 9.30am Today Programme shift, but the truth is that by the time most of us would be heading for a nap, she’s only getting started. After a morning interviewing the day’s top news stars from industry leaders to prime ministers, the esteemed broadcaster — the BBC’s newest Today recruit and former Woman’s Hour host — then begins her latest side-hustle: scouting out new London landmarks, liaising with designers and — until recently — stuffing envelopes with copies of the new series of London colouring books that she and her husband, Jeremy Weil, launched last year from their kitchen table in Brixton.
“Our daughter’s bedroom has been the stock room...
There are boxes of books all around her cot — safely stacked, of course,” Barnett, 39, tells me over a coffee at Brockwell Lido — one of 16 landmarks in the Herne Hill edition of the couple’s book series. The project is titled Colour Your Streets , with each book in the series designed to be a hyper-local love letter to a specific neighbourhood of our capital city. “It’s very much a family business at this stage — our son [aged six] has even packed some envelopes,” Weil, 40, a seasoned entrepreneur, chimes in.
He laughs, recounting a recent blunder which saw their son pack a book he’d already started to colour in. ”Thankfully [the recipients] took it very well”. The couple, who met back when .