LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE:
My guest this week is the journalist and broadcaster Reeta Chakrabarti.
After two decades producing and reporting for the BBC, Reeta became a news presenter at the age of 49. She was the main BBC presenter in Lviv in Western Ukraine and is now one of the chief presenters of BBC news at 6 and BBC news at 10.
Brought up in Birmingham, as a teenager Reeta went to school in Calcutta before returning to the UK to go to university.
She joined the BBC in 1992 where she started on Radio One Newsbeat and presented news bulletins for the legendary Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright in the Afternoon. (Just talk amongst yourself kids!)
Heading into 50 she took an a whole new role and at 60 she’s done it again, only this time she’s written a book, a novel, Finding Belle, that takes us from Mombassa to Milton Keynes to Calcutta.
Reeta joined me to talk about family, belonging, growing up the only brown girl in the class and being a lifelong good girl. We also discussed the importance of failure, learning to become a yes person, in the best possible way, getting bolder as she gets older and why she has no plans to be in the newsroom at 70.
Listen to the full episode here:
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• If you enjoyed this episode, you might like to know that there are over 240 more episodes, all free to listen. Here are a few you might like:
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