The woman who arranged the infamous Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew will be in Guernsey this coming weekend.
Sam McAlister is one of the guest speakers at the Guernsey Literary Festival.
Her talk on Saturday evening at St James will cover some of the BBC’s “most shocking interviews” including that one with the Prince who claims he doesn’t sweat.
Ahead of that, Neena Dhaun interviewed Sam McAlister for Express.
I jumped at the chance to interview Sam McAlister when the Guernsey Literary Festival offered her to Express.
Ms McAlister is the author of 2022 book ‘Scoops’ that is part memoir, part autobiographical, and tells the story of how a team of women at BBC’s Newsnight programme managed to pull off one of the most exclusive interviews in recent history.
Yes, we are talking about that interview with Prince Andrew, and the woman who convinced him to a sit down interview.
I’m not a royalist, but who in the UK or indeed anywhere does not have awareness of the news stories surrounding Prince Andrew? Ms McAlister’s book was the catalyst for the film, that focuses on Prince Andrew’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier, and child sex offender who died in custody.
In 2019, an episode of the BBC’s Newsnight programme devoted 50 minutes to Emily Maitlis’s forensic questioning of Prince Andrew, the main topic being his friendship with Epstein. The prince maintained then and to this day that he is innocent of any crimes, but the entitled tone and language of his denials turned many viewers against him.
So going into this interview, my first thought was if an audience member has watched ‘Scoop’, maybe watched Ms McAlister’s TEDx talk online, and even read some new articles of the chaos that ensued for the Royal family (especially that infamous claim by Prince Andew, that on a night when he was alleged to have been with one of Epstein’s victims, he was actually in a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking), what else is there to hear?
I asked Ms McAlister just that: “What are you bringing to Guernsey that is going to be slightly different?”
Pictured: Sam McAlister was the guest booker on BBC Newsnight.
I hasten to add to people reading this, the Netflix film Scoop, also explores the delicate balance of skills that bookers and indeed producers need to possess to make news happen, and that was indeed what McAlister opened with.
“It took 13 months, and people only see the interview, and not the time it takes for the complex negotiation over many, many months and even years. And so what has been so fantastic about Scoop has been that it’s put a light on the behind the scenes work of countless producers and journalists across the country who are just trying to pursue something very beautiful that we call the truth and accountability. And while this story is specifically, of course, about Prince Andrew, even if you have no interest in the Royal Family at all, it’s really a story of what matters in Society, in terms of journalism and truth seeking and accountability and democracy and scrappy underdogs who try and bring the powerful to account, and that’s the story we can all understand.”
McAlister went on talk about what she wants to tell audience members this coming weekend at the Literary Festival.
“When you do a TEDx talk, you have only 14 minutes, and also you have legal restraints in terms of what you can say, you have to be pretty careful. The joy of a literary festival, of course, is unlike a TEDx talk, you get all of the extra juicy information, all of the behind the scenes of my personal experience in Buckingham Palace, about the backlash about working with Netflix and Gillian Anderson and Billy Piper. And you also get access to asking your own questions, because TEDx exists in a bubble. But a literary festival has a particular type of magic, and that magic is direct access to the person who was in the room who made basically the most important journalistic scoop of the past 30 years happen” she said.
McAlister’s memoir which will be available to buy on Saturday at St James, delves into her life, detailing how she was able to achieve such a career after being the first person in her family to attend university. How she trained as barrister, and then indeed worked out how that career path was not for her, all the while being a single mum of one.
I know for some Royalists out there, the ‘juicy’ behind the scene narrative of being in the room with Prince Andrew and hearing his defence of one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, claims of his sweatiness must be enthralling. After all Prince Andrew claimed she must have been mistaken because “I don’t sweat”…that in itself made me think Royals really are ‘not of this world’, if viewers were indeed to believe him.
But in speaking to Ms McAlister, my juicy bits were how did she even get to be in a position to be a booker for Newsnight, how did she get there? Because for an ex – BBC journalist like me, BBC Newsnight really can be Valhalla, for a 28 year old news junkie. The hallowed newsroom, made me feel like imposter syndrome central, when I did some trial producer shifts there back in the mid 2000’s. So I asked her, how did she own it and how did she goto work everyday for nine years? How did she not walk?
“I was only about 29 when I got to Newsnight, but yeah, I think the thing is that there were assumptions, and sometimes it was pretty rough working there, but ultimately, I knew the journey I had made to be there. For me, a very long journey, and for many other journalists, it had been a very short, non meritocratic journey. So I knew I was there on merit, and that is what always puts rocket fuel under me. Being somewhere on merit, that is the confidence that you should take forward with yourself because your dad didn’t call to get you the job. Yeah, or because your uncle knew someone or because he was working in the BBC. You got there on merit.”
Pictured: Sam McAlister will be speaking at St James during the Literary Festival this Saturday.
In her memoir, Mcalister delves into her life, which included her childhood spent in Guernsey from nine months of to fourteen, when she attended Melrose and Ladies College.
Her memoir details how she was able to achieve such a sensational career as the first person in her family to attend university, a trained barrister and a single mum on top of her journalistic endeavours. Honing her skills and learning the ways of the British media to become a master of persuasion.
“The truth is that you are facing an uphill struggle, and there are certain ways to help yourself with that struggle, and most of them rely on education, and most of them rely on resilience, and most of them rely on people feeling comfortable around you despite the fact that you’re different to them. And sometimes it just doesn’t make any difference how much education and hard work you put in, you’re not going to be able to push through what I call the class ceiling.”
She’s now a Visiting Senior Fellow at The London School of Economics and Political Science, teaching non legal negotiation module aspart of the course in negotiation.
Going back to her social mobilty journey though, I asked her about what many critics have commented on. Brand Sam McAlister. Her look, her attitide. Did she not want to code switch to fit in along her Edinburgh, and City University, barrister journey, not even when she got to the BBC?
“I suppose when people used to meet me the first thing they would usually say to me is, ‘oh, you’re not very BBC’. What they mean is, we don’t expect someone in sassy clothes, wearing high heeled boots and snake print and leather. They expect someone who has a nanny or an au pair or a husband, and I had none of those things. it must be exhausting pretending to be something you’re not. And so I have no other way to be other than fully use that horrible word authentically myself. It would have had repercussions for me.”
“To be frank, I think I would have advanced in the BBC further if I had conformed to the more BBC type stereotypes. But I don’t give a jot, because if you can’t live your life as yourself, then that’s a pretty depressing situation to be in. So I took a decision early on that perhaps wasn’t even sentient. But you know, when I started at law school, and people were sneering at which school I’d gone to, or which university I’d gone to, or the fact I hadn’t gone to little Cambridge, you can choose to let yourself be defined by the way people perceive you and judge you, or you can choose to look at yourself and say, Do you know what I know I’m a good person. I know I’m clever, I know I’m a hard worker, and I’m just going to get on with those characteristics and not give to what other people think about me.”
The word ‘scoop’ in itself, is a bit like ‘hack’…it’s synonymous with journalism… it means ‘a piece of news published by a newspaper or broadcast station in advance of its rivals. McAlister is the personification of newsroom drama in a nutshell. She’s edgy and indeed Scoop is the best name for a book written by a woman who has set up interviews with the likes of Julian Assange, Elon Musk, Justin Trudeau, Benjamin Netanyahu and Stormy Daniels.
She’s one to listen to or indeed meet. McAlister will be signing copies of Scoop at the Writer’s Block, Commercial Arcade 13.00 on Saturday 26 April.
For detail of the event see HERE
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