The Big Questions: Kay Burley on hopes for the next PM, showing weakness and whether she’d go into politics-Mel Evans-Entertainment – Metro

Welcome to Metro.co.uk‘s The Big Questions, where we ask, well, the big questions (and the smaller ones too) and this week, we’re diving deep with Kay Burley.

The British broadcaster and writer is a staple of UK TV and has been a presenter on Sky since its inception in 1988, currently hosting Kay Burley, the coveted breakfast slot on the channel.

Holding MPs and senior government members to account is her modus operandi and next week we’ll see her in action as the host of the latest Tory Leadership Debate in which Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss will go head to head in a battle to be the next Prime Minister.

‘What’s most important is that the questions are being posed by our studio audience, we have a live studio audience of 100 people who all have a question to ask,’ Burley, 61, enthuses. ‘You could ask a question that could change the course of British political history, by influencing who is the next prime minister, how can that not be exciting?’

From the upcoming debate to whether she envisions a time of retirement where her alarm won’t go off at 3.17am on a weekday and, yes, her feelings, in hindsight, about her time off air following a lockdown rule breach in 2020, we caught the TV stalwart in between meetings for some big questions.

Well, Kay, all talk is on the Sky debate coming up. After Truss and Sunak previously backed out, as Ed Miliband said, ‘they’re all running scared from Kay Burley’, how are you feeling about it?

I’m very excited. I love politics. It’s been a major topic of my journalistic career since 1979, when I covered the first General Election that Magaret Thatcher won. It’s exciting. I did the first live, General Election, back in 1997 with Tony Blair. It was a series of firsts. All sorts of questions buzzing around in my head.

Burley is a stalwart of UK broadcasting (Picture: Amer Ghazzal/REX/Shutterstock)

Are you hoping to do anything a little differently than the other debates?

Yes. Am I going to tell you? No. We are innovative and we’ve got new ideas.

It’s such a pivotal time, it’s fascinating to watch.

It is fascinating. So many people, right from the very beginning, have been saying ‘who do you think is going to win?’ I’ve been asked to put a couple of documents together, from our business angle, and send the sketches even before we knew who was going to run, to ask me who I thought would run, why I thought they would run, and who I did I think would win. I’m still more or less there at the moment.

I thought that Nadhim Zahawi was out quicker than I anticipated, but I think the rest I probably more or less predicted. But as I also said, our favourites never win.

No matter who comes out on top, what changes would you love to see in the next government?

I just like politicians to be as open as possible, I like them to be accountable. I see them as public servants. 

The journalist will host the next debate between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak (Picture: JACOB KING/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

I have respect for all politicians, of whatever flavour, because they go into politics to make a difference. Nobody goes into politics to make money, they go into politics to make change, and so I do admire them for that, but I do hope that they realise that it’s incredibly important for them to answer the questions that the electorate wants answers to. 

Does going through a period like this, but also, day in day out, sitting across from MPs, asking them questions, turn you off the idea of going into politics yourself?

No, no, I think that our politics, as I said, is absolutely fascinating. Would I ever go into politics? Never say never.

But I’m certainly in the privileged position at the moment where I can ask the important questions of senior members of government.

The media is always accused of bias – fake media is a buzzword – are you mindful of that when you are working? Or is it something you’ve really got to push to the side of your mind?

Of course. I’m always very aware of people [who] suggest that we’re biased or ‘scum media’, or whatever else they call us on social media, the point is that we are heavily governed by Ofcom, who’s a very strict regulator. 

If we did show any bias, then we would potentially lose our license. And that would be a bad thing. So we don’t do that.

You went off the air for six months in 2020 after apologising for breaking Covid lockdown rules. With everything that’s happened with the government in the past few months, do you feel the backlash to you and Sky political editor Beth Rigby [who was off air for three months] was in any way disproportionate?

Not for me to say. We were held accountable, I stepped back for a period of reflection. I was sanctioned by my business, I’ve gone back. 

I think I do a good job of holding politicians to account, I’m not responsible for who they are.

Burley believes you can’t look at viewers in the same kind of linear fashion as you may have been able to before (Picture: Finbarr Webster/Shutterstock)

When you are doing your job in the public eye, and with such a massive social media presence, over half a million Twitter followers, does it make your role trickier?

As long as I’m fair and balanced I see social media as an opportunity to show a bit of my character and personality. Potentially I do let my hair down a little bit more on social media, although, I don’t think at the moment Ofcom regulates Twitter, but I behave on Twitter as if they did. 

With Piers Morgan’s new show, Uncensored, it’s said there’s an overall focus on social media rather than just ratings. Do you agree? Are ratings still an important facet?

I think that it depends what you mean by ratings. I don’t think that you should look at viewers in a linear fashion that we used to before Sky was set up, when we had four channels, and then five, and people would sit down to watch the news at one o’clock and then 6pm and then 10pm. That doesn’t happen anymore. 

We can get our news in all sorts of ways. I read recently that a lot of people, the only way they get the news is via Instagram. So I try to be pretty active on as much social media as I can – I draw the line at TikTok, that is not for me – YouTube, and Instagram, as you said, half a million people follow me and, thus, the show, on Twitter. 

So we do put a lot of our clips, of our guests, on Twitter, and on occasion, it will go viral and we’ll get millions of hits for one clip of two minutes 20. 

You can also watch our show live on your phone as you go to work or live via Twitter, because we stream live when the show goes to air. 

While she wouldn’t rule out a career in politics, Burley, here with Boris Johnsin in 2019, knows it means she won’t be able to ask the politicians the hard questions as a journalist (Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)

There’s lots and lots of different ways, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a look at the overnights every morning. The breakfast show does incredibly well. Our audience figures are great. We’re very proud of our audience and we appreciate them being so loyal.

Having been at Sky now for 34 years, is retirement something you ever contemplate, or do you just not even fathom a day where you wouldn’t be doing this?

What can I say, I get up at 3.17 every morning, because 3.15 is too early. You know, on occasion, if I’ve been doing a long stint of day after day after day, recently, because I was prepping for the show, I did 18 days in a row. This is my third incarnation of breakfast and when I was 23, 24 when I did TV-am it was a bit easy to get up then, than now I’m 62…nearly.

You previously shared an anecdote where, in response to a man running his fingers down your back, you told him you’d ‘punch his lights out’ if he tried it again. Have you always had to deal with shoddy characters as a woman in broadcast?

Newsrooms that I worked in the 1970s, when I first became a young journalist, are unrecognisable from the newsrooms that I work in.

Looking back on the past couple years, she believes she’s become a better journalist (Picture: Zed Jameson/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock)

[On whether she’s always been one to call out BS] I’ve previously said that the best feminist ever met was my father and he taught my sister and I to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. So he always taught me that, you know, everything is achievable. 

And to do that, you have to always…I’m not always completely confident, but I think that you have to appear to be completely confident, because, certainly when I was younger, not so much now because I’m a bit more experienced, if you show weakness, then you make yourself much more vulnerable. If you appear to be confident, and self-assured, then you’ll probably be able to carry yourself through most adversity.

Do you think there’s a misconception about you?

I don’t know. What’s the conception?

Well, if you’ve seen anything about you in the past you’ve thought was b*****s.

I don’t know. I don’t know what people think about me. But I know what my friends think about me, and my family, and my dogs, and that’s what’s most important to me. My mum used to say, ‘some people will love you, some people will hate you, most people will be somewhere in the middle’.

What is the biggest way you think you’ve changed in the past few years?

I’ve got more wrinkles than I used to have, and a few more pounds. I’ve become a better journalist, as I’ve got older. I’d like to think I’m a good mum. And I like to think that, you know, a good friend and all of that comes from life experience.

The next Tory leadership debate will air August 4, 8pm on Sky News, while Kay Burley airs Monday-Thursday, 7am on Sky.

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