The BBC news presenter on being rushed to hospital in Rome, hitting the dance floor at her 60th party and her debut novel.
Reeta Chakrabarti is a journalist, correspondent and presenter for BBC News.
The 60-year-old from London has published her debut novel Finding Belle and she spoke to Saga Magazine about her life, her career and how attitudes towards race have changed in the UK.
You can read the full interview in September’s edition.
I had an enormous party in the crypt of a church in Clerkenwell, London. I have friends from my different eras at the BBC, from university, from north London where I live, and my family, so I had that worry – nobody knows each other, is it going to gel?
But I knew from the first half hour it was going to be fantastic. I’ve never enjoyed a party of my own as much as that one.
I thought, “Am I too old at 60 for dancing?” Apparently not. I think I danced more than anybody else.
Well, you can never say, “Not, ever, ever,” can you? But I don’t think I can read the news and do Strictly.
Some of my colleagues, particularly those who do BBC Breakfast, which is less formal, have done it, but I don’t think I could.
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We were not terribly close, and she died a while ago. I am a very, very attached and ardent mother.
Some of the feelings that I’ve put into my lead character [in her book] are an imagining of what it would be like for my children if I wasn’t fully present.
I did find myself – not necessarily deliberately – mining my own feelings about being an Asian child in Britain. If you were a little brown girl, then Britain was a harsher, cruder place in the Seventies than it is now, and I’ve reflected that in the novel.
When I was growing up, I was teased a lot for my long “funny” name, Chakrabarti. But when I became a mother, my children took it. Their surname is actually Hamilton-Chakrabarti, but you can’t go through life with a seven-syllable surname, so they use mine.
I’m not saying they may not have had challenges being mixed race – I think they have – but I’ve never once heard them say they have been teased for their name.
I got appendicitis at the grand old age of 57. I woke up one morning and couldn’t get out of bed. I had such a terrible pain in my tummy. I took myself to A&E where I was diagnosed with gastritis. Several days went by and I started feeling like a hypochondriac, so I just tried to busk through it.
Then I went to Rome, and I was in a taxi with my husband and the pain became so great I lost consciousness.
I was lying in a corner on my own for hours, I kept calling out, but no one came. There was a bit of me thinking, “OK, I’ve made it to my fifties and Rome is a lovely place to go”.
Being a 60-year-old woman and not sleeping terribly well! If News at Ten has been a very fraught programme, the instinct is to reach for a glass of wine, but that would just make things worse.
Sometimes, I’m a really racy beast and have a cup of peppermint tea.
At 49, I was given the opportunity to reinvent myself within broadcasting by moving from being a correspondent to a presenter.
I remember doing my first Six O’Clock News, one of those pinch-me moments, and thinking I can't believe I’m here.
Now I’ve written my debut novel, Finding Belle, and that’s coincided with me turning 60. It feels like a next stage. I’m still very driven by news, but it is wonderful to be able to diversify.
Finding Belle by Reeta Chakrabarti (Harper Collins, £16.99)
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