"I was scared that I’d live in a toothpaste factory for the rest of my life"Chris Williamson

Newsnight presenter and newsreader Emily Maitlis, who studied English at Queens’, talked about the power of television, women in the media and BBC bias at the Union on Monday. I wanted to find out what her life was like as an undergraduate at Cambridge and what pushed her to follow a career in journalism.

I didn’t do any journalism at Cambridge. I did a lot of plays, theatre and directing and I played a lot of squash with Des the barman. I thought for ages I was going to go into theatre or directing but I never thought about journalism. In all my time here I only wrote one theatre review.

When did you start to leave theatrical aspirations behind and move towards journalism?

It was when I realised I was a rubbish actor and when I worked out I didn’t want to live in a suitcase. I never would have thought about journalism if I hadn’t been working in Hong Kong. I was there in 1992, three or four years after Tiananmen. It was the politics of China, the UK and the handover, this massive geopolitical crunch time and I just sat there living and breathing it, thinking: “God this is amazing. I want to talk about this the whole time.”

Were you interested in global politics and current affairs while you were at Cambridge?

Not at all. I was so small-minded! I did what you do at Cambridge which was fine. I was lost in the classics, I read loads of plays, I studied literature, I read amazing poems and I talked long into the night about religion and the reason of being.

Would you really call that small-mindedness?

Maybe small-minded isn’t the word, but it was nothing to do with the real world. Cambridge was my world and it was that big. It was a bubble and I was so scared of leaving that I actually used to apply for jobs in college libraries so that I wouldn’t ever have to leave. I mean what madness! I applied to be a St John’s librarian.

What were you scared of?

I was scared that I’d live in a toothpaste factory for the rest of my life, I don’t know what I thought would happen. And then a week after leaving I was like: “Oh my God, this is great. There are people out here who are making me think and breathe and opening my mind in a totally different way”.

Is that why you went into journalism, to expand your mind?

Do you know what I honestly think? This is a really unfashionable, unpassionate thing to say so forgive me. People always go: “Follow your passions, follow your passions” but I think that’s a really hard thing to say to young people because actually if you’re at all broad minded you’ve got loads of things you might try. After university I could have gone off in three ways. It’s like the Sliding Doors thing? I got offered an internship in Sacramento as a theatre director, a job in Hong Kong, and a job working in a developing school in South Africa. As it was, I took the Hong Kong thing, and that was brilliant for me then.

How much did it help you to have Cambridge on your CV?

I think that’s what this does, isn’t it? It’s such a centre of privilege. It’s ridiculous, the doors it opens. But then we’re the ones who are mad if we’re not making the most of it.