Mishal Husain is the presenter of BBC One’s Sunday Evening News at Ten and the BBC World News show Impact Asia. She was in Times Square after the attack on the World Trade Center, in Pakistan after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. We caught up with her when she came to Shanghai to present live from the World Expo.

Does the BBC choose newsreaders the same way Beijing chose Olympics hostesses – for their “elastic skin”, “a plump but not fat body”, and strict ratios “between the width of the mouth and width between the pupils”?

Gosh, well I hope the BBC never brings in requirements like that. If you look at our onscreen presence I don’t think you could say that it’s a look, actually. I certainly don’t see any pattern. In the olden days of the BBC, 30 years ago, you’d have had to have a certain accent but that’s not the case now. Regional accents are very, very in. I think I should develop a regional British accent. I think it would be very good for my career.

What else are they looking for?

I think you need to have a journalistic background. I can’t see any presenters on the news who don’t have a journalistic background because frankly when the government suddenly falls in Turkey, or you have to deal with some really unusual scenario, you really have to know your stuff. I was on air when Boris Yeltsin died and he’d been out of the public eye for 10 years then and it was the case that there were a few younger people in the newsroom who were like, "Who?"

Is it a compliment to be one of the most blocked news sources in the world?

Occasionally we get told, oh we’re being blocked in such and such a place but to be honest it’s not something that we think about in the newsroom, partly because we’re just too busy but partly because it wouldn’t make any difference to what we did. We would just carry on doing whatever we think in that editorial meeting is the most important story of the day, whether it’s being seen in the place that is being referred to or not.

Is there a greater responsibility to dig for stories where the national news media isn’t up to the task?

I don’t think so. I think the news agenda is really the day’s news agenda. I’ll tell you what might make me think we should definitely do this story is not because their national media won’t do it but because this just hasn’t got enough attention, and this is a miss for us. You know the day that the ash story broke in Europe…

Sorry to interject but do you know how to say the name of the volcano?

Oh! Do you know, I was practicing it last week. Ay-ah-fla-yak-lik-kill? We have a pronunciation unit in the BBC. They spell it out phonetically for you and then you can also press a button and hear someone say it, although that’s usually the point where I give up because it will be an Icelandic person saying it. And at that point I just think, come on. I’m never going to say it like that, let’s face it guys.

So, yeah, the ash story. I said this will never happen again and of course then it lasted six days, and I learnt an awful lot about volcanoes in the meantime.

Have you ever considered how you’d go about interviewing yourself?

Ha! I haven’t. I haven’t ever thought about that.

What questions would you ask?

I suppose I’d be guided by the things people ask me. The single thing I get asked most often is “Do you write your own material?” And the answer is yes, for the most part I do. And the second thing is “Do you get your make-up done professionally?” And the answer is yes – except in Shanghai.