'BBC colleagues feel under attack, but they should feel proud of their work'

To stroll through Herne Hill and Brockwell Park in southeast London with Emma Barnett and Jeremy Weil is to see a seemingly ordinary London district anew: and for the two of them, that’s the whole point.

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“When we moved here, before we had kids, we only ever turned left out of our house to go to Brixton, for lovely food and cocktails and whatever else was going on,” Barnett says. “Or we'd get on the Tube, and it was just 12 minutes to Soho, which is where I was living my life then.” But first one longed-for baby, and then another ~ and then Covid - opened up a whole new world.

On a drizzly autumn afternoon, Barnett and Weil are taking time out from their staggeringly busy lives to wander through the place they not only love, but which planted the seed of their company, Colour Your Streets. It’s a range of 175 colouring books and counting, each filled with a selection of local landmarks to colour in, closely focussed on the places we call home - from Barnsley to Basingstoke, Eastbourne to Exeter, and London boroughs that take in the whole AZ.

This is all pretty good going, especially when you consider Barnett’s side hustle as a presenter of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. At 40, her career in the media has run ona relentlessly upward trajectory. She was the Telegraph's first digital editor and launched the paper’s Wonder Women section, but she really made her name in broadcasting, from Hit List on 5Live to taking over the BBC’s Woman's Hour on the show's ‘75th anniversary in 2021.

She moved to Today in May last year. Meanwhile, she’s written two books, Period: It’s About Bloody Time and Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave. She’s now also the host of a BBC podcast, Ready to Talk, which features long, open conversations with the likes of comedian Chris McCausland, and Georgia Barrington, born without awomb, whose friend Daisy Hope helped her to have a baby.