Have I Got News For You

Guest Interview

Fern Britton

Much to our surprise, Fern insisted on answering all our questions through the medium of conceptual dance, which we have then clumsily reinterpreted below using some old-fashioned 'words'.

Q1.To paraphrase Kirsty Young, hosting the show as a woman can feel a little like being the only female fish in a very male pond. You're outnumbered four to one tonight, so what's your strategy?: The air is thick with testosterone in here, and it is a bit scary, so in my mind's eye I think of them about the same age as my sons and then I can handle it.
Q2.You come from quite a showbiz family. Was TV the obvious choice for a career? What do you think you would have ended up doing if it hadn't worked out?: Television wasn't an obvious choice and it actually took a long, long time to get into television in terms of my decision. My early career plan was to be an elephant trainer, then dolphin trainer, then riverboat policewoman, then nurse, because I had my appendix out when I was about ten or eleven and the nurses were so nice. Somewhere in my mind I did want to be a newsreader, but at that stage there really weren't many women newsreaders around, and I thought it would never be possible.
Q3.You're famous for a very easy-going and upbeat approach to your job. Do you have a very long fuse? Or just no fuse at all?: I've got a long fuse, but even I sometimes don't know when it's going to go 'Bang!', and it does go 'Bang!'� occasionally. Irritants in the days are things like opening an envelope and it's full of glitter, or opening newspapers and magazines and loads of freesheets fall out, or packaging that you can't open until you've put you're glasses on, found the scissors etc etc and when you open it up lots of straw and bits of polystyrene fall out. I can't bear that. I don't like it when my daughter tries to get on my shoulders, and she's usually carrying some sort of liquid in her hands so it falls down the back of my neck. There are lots of things that actually make me go mad.
Q4.If Phillip Schofield were to take a sabbatical from his This Morning duties, who would you rather filled his shoes - Ian or Paul?: I would have both of them. Definitely. I'd like Ian because I think he'd be brilliant as the soap-opera expert, with his finger firmly on the pulse of popular culture. For the same reason I'd think he'd be marvelous doing fashion - he could be our fashion expert. I also think he'd be very good at cookery. Paul I think is ideally suited for medical items and as our Agony Aunt.
Q5.This interview is set to be an internet exclusive. Are you pretty clued up on the advances of modern technology?: No. I'm a total technophobe. I don't wish to learn about them. I stopped with video machines in about 1982. From then on I don't want to know anything, and so I'm grateful I have sons who do it all for me.