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| Not a flirt: Susanna Reid |
But – having warned me about the perils of the show’s notoriously squeaky sofa – the Good Morning Britain host is quick to hit back at claims she flirts with some of her more esteemed male guests.
Accused of using her feminine wiles to get the most out of guests including David Cameron – she playfully nibbled her pen as they talked – she begs to differ.
She is not flirting – she’s thinking.
“Any interviewer’s mission is to get the best from a guest,” she explains.
“I enjoy the interviews I do and it would be bizarre, wouldn’t it, if I didn’t laugh at a guest’s joke, or didn’t smile? It would just look rude.
“So I’d rather look like I’m comfortable, and enjoying myself than rude and stone-walling.
“With David Cameron, firstly I do not suck my pen because that would be weird. I’d end up with ink all around my mouth. I chew my pen.
“And that’s just what I do when I’m thinking. I do it with all my interviews, including those with women. I’m not accused of flirting with them, am I?!”
Commentators also noted that she didn’t flirt at all with Piers Morgan during his stint as a stand-in presenter last week.
On the eve of the ITV show’s first birthday – it replaced the much-maligned Daybreak – 44-year-old Susanna and team (Ben Shepherd, Kate Garraway, Charlotte Hawkins) are delighted with progress.
The show recorded its highest audience share to date last month and has a weekly reach of more three million viewers, so things finally appear to be on the turn.
More top-name guests could be one of the reasons.
In the past 12 months Susanna has grilled David Beckham, Tom Cruise and Avengers’ star Jeremy Renner. The poor girl was accused of flirting with all three.
Not true, she sighs. “I don’t get star-struck, because they’re just people, human beings. So I find it very easy to chat to anyone.
“Sometimes when you’re very relaxed with someone, and you’re having a laugh with them, like David Beckham, and he opens up about his family, about his children, then sometimes that gets reported in a mischievous way.
“The irony of that day is that my youngest son Jack was off sick from school so I’d dragged him to the studio with me, and David was so brilliant with him.
"He was far, far more interested in him than me or anybody else in the studio.
“He signed a pair of football boots for him, and was absolutely lovely. He was just being a fantastic dad, and somebody who is able to talk to anybody.
"I wouldn’t say I got upset to be accused of flirting. People got upset on my behalf.”
Now officially single, Susanna is of course free to do as she pleases.
After last year’s split with sports journalist Dominic Cotton, 48, her partner for 16 years and the father of her three sons, she has yet to be linked with anyone new.
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