LIBBY PURVES: I warned Emma that Today might not be fun. That car-crash interview with Kemi proved my point

The car-crash aggression of Thursday morning’s Today interview between Emma Barnett and Kemi Badenoch bothered me, stirring up both personal memories and misgivings about current media.

If it had gone well – by which I mean the interview was civil, forensically critical and produced actual information – I would have been pleased to have her do it.

Though still a bit surprised, because this was the prestige 8.10am interview with the Leader of the Opposition. It promised to be hot stuff following the new Prime Minister’s remarks about defence versus social welfare.

I would have expected it to go to 62-year-old Nick Robinson, a political editor through three premierships, and 11 years as a Today presenter.

You may find him annoying – I sometimes do – but he has depth of experience and tactical understanding of political interviews. Instead, he talked with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, respectively the author and illustrator of The Gruffalo, while 41-year-old Barnett was entrusted to interrogate the tough, articulate Badenoch.

It didn’t go well. You can taste the dismay online, even from the Left, at a chance wasted.

And the question hovered: Why was the least experienced presenter given it? Did she ask for it? If so, who listened? Perhaps someone in editorial authority reckoned that setting up one strong-minded forty-something woman against another, sidelining the old white bloke, would be a grand flourish of female power. Who knows?

What I do know is how it feels to be in that studio. Forty-seven years ago, I was the youngest and first female regular Today presenter, for three years doing four early mornings a week – more than any presenters since.

Alongside me was either Brian Redhead or John Timpson: They only worked together on Wednesdays, a real odd-couple.

I had risen through the ranks, first as a Today producer, directing through the glass, and then for years a reporter. I had done recorded interviews (can’t tell you how frightening Denis Healey could be) and written cues and briefings on the night shift for bleary presenters as they arrived.

So I knew the mechanism of this grand machine, and by the time it was my turn to get up at 4.30am and present, understood it.

And one thing I grasped – being not quite 30 – was the hierarchy. Redhead had served 25 years in newspapers and TV current affairs. Timpson, even older, came via the BBC newsroom.

For the heavier political stories they had not only briefings but long memories, and had survived years of obfuscation and hostility.

So while I sometimes got the star interview (once presenting live from Beijing) and fought my corner when the item was on something I knew a lot about – such as shipping, or women, or the Pope – I knew when it made sense to step aside for senior colleagues, especially Brian.

When everyone knows their role, the atmosphere sings. We all joked about each other, as did the producers. It was a good gang. I met my husband there.

I have watched it change: more live interviews, more bantering and an undue reverence of personality, but the same live news tension, the same punishing early mornings.

I met Emma Barnett when she was weighing up the Today offer, and I warned her it mightn’t be fun.

Not with a young child and health problems, and particularly not if she were to lose the degree of editorial control she was then using to change and energise Woman’s Hour.

I admired her vigour, ambition and basic decency, and still do, but I didn’t think that, unlike the calmly thoughtful Mishal Husain, she would easily find a happy track through the dawn, and its difficult encounters both on-air and off.

I hope her next stage is happier.