In the past, Mishal Husain has railed against programmes where female presenters are handed lightweight interviews while the male anchors get the meat.
But the BBC’s golden girl certainly doesn’t have to worry on her own account.
The 44-year-old Today programme host was handpicked by Prince Harry to host what will become a historic interview.
Presumably he was drawn to Miss Husain’s ability to combine the gravitas required by this sort of occasion with a very human touch.
BBC insiders speak highly of the married mother-of-three as being down to earth and unstarry.
Forty-four-year-old Today programme host Mishal Husain was handpicked by Prince Harry (pictured with fiancee Meghan Markle) to host what will become a historic interview
Presumably he was drawn to Miss Husain’s (pictured) ability to combine the gravitas required by this sort of occasion with a very human touch
BBC insiders speak highly of the married mother-of-three (pictured) as being down to earth and unstarry
Her colleague Justin Webb has also praised her for being highly organised – perhaps a necessary attribute for a woman who juggles bringing up three boys – including twins – with fronting the BBC’s highest profile current affairs programme.
Even before Prince Harry’s endorsement, Miss Husain had become the Corporation’s de facto default presenter for major news events – especially those where delicacy is key.
She first became a household name in 2012, as one of the anchors of the BBC’s coverage of the London Olympics.
Later, she would go on to moderate one of the key debates in the European referendum, the leaders’ debate in the last general election, and front the BBC’s coverage on results night.
The Corporation also chose her to grill director general Lord Tony Hall on air at the height of the row over the gender pay gap.
It was a memorable episode not least because the subject was so close to Miss Husain’s heart.
She first became a household name in 2012, as one of the anchors of the BBC’s coverage of the London Olympics. Later, she would go on to moderate one of the key debates in the European referendum, the leaders’ debate in the last general election, and front the BBC’s coverage on results night
The television and radio presenter earned between £200,000 and £250,000 last year, whilst her male co-hosts Nick Robinson and John Humphrys were paid up to £300,000 and £650,000 respectively.
The disparity must have been all the more galling for Miss Husain given she beat Mr Robinson to the job when she was first appointed to Today in 2013. He followed some years after.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Miss Husain was one of the 40 high-profile women presenters who signed an open letter to Lord Hall demanding immediate action.
It was an unusually insubordinate move from a woman who appears to be as skilled at diplomacy behind the scenes of the BBC as she is at prising answers out of people on air.
She was born in Northampton to Pakistani parents, but grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia where her father was a doctor
It was not her first brush with controversy, however. Earlier this year, Tory HQ telephoned BBC News boss James Harding to complain after a particularly prickly interview with Boris Johnson on the Today programme shortly after the London Bridge attack.
Her critics accused her of parroting Jeremy Corbyn’s line under the guise of ‘setting the record straight’, and of rudely silencing Mr Johnson by saying: ‘No, no, please stop talking’.
She also raised her head above the parapet in 2014, using her position as the BBC’s most prominent Muslim presenter to urge other ‘British Muslims’ to speak out and condemn the Islamic State terror.
‘I would really like to see…scholars taking to social media to refute the awful arguments we see put forward in those videos,’ she said.
Miss Husain comes to the subject from an interesting perspective.
After cutting her teeth behind the scenes at Bloomberg, Miss Husain (pictured) quickly moved in front of the camera at the BBC World News – where producers no doubt appreciated her glossy good looks as much as her ability to speak Urdu and a small amount of Arabic
She was born in Northampton to Pakistani parents, but grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia where her father was a doctor.
There her mother – a former TV producer turned teacher – was forced to cover herself completely, whilst Miss Husain wore a black, floor-length ‘abaya’.
Miss Husain’s parents objected to the lack of religious freedom and sent her to the £33,000-a-year Cobham Hall boarding school in Kent from the age of 12.
Later, she read law at Cambridge, choosing a safe, solid subject to please her family before embarking on a more precarious career in broadcasting. Her parents were alarmed at the move but they needn’t have been.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are pictured outside Kensington Palace yesterday ahead of their interview with Miss Husain
After cutting her teeth behind the scenes at Bloomberg, Miss Husain quickly moved in front of the camera at the BBC World News – where producers no doubt appreciated her glossy good looks as much as her ability to speak Urdu and a small amount of Arabic.
The shift of world politics towards the East worked in her favour, and she got her lucky break working in New York just after September 11.
She was also on air from Washington the night to that the Iraq war was announced and quickly became one of the key faces of that conflict, before eventually moving to Newsnight and Today.
At the same time as charting an impressive career, she got married to Meekal Hasmi, a lawyer whom she had known as a child.
Their mothers were at college together in Lahore and remained family friends.
Mr Hasmi has joked in the past that it was an arranged marriage – arranged by his wife – but Miss Husain insists that they were never childhood sweethearts and it just panned out that way.