Correspondent and presenter Ayshah Tull is used to shaking up conventional narratives in journalism and beyond but how did the support of her family shape the way she navigates the world?

Dhruti Shah, Hi, I'm Dhruti Shah, and this is my

podcast Have You Thought Abou.t I'm a writer, and I love to find

out about what passions people are pursuing, especially if

they're managing to blend together their skills in unusual

ways. In each edition, I'm chatting with someone I find

particularly interesting, and who's managed to fit things

together in their life or profession that you might always

think of as an obvious match. You're about to hear me chatting

with correspondent and presenter Ayshah Tull.

Now we've known each other a while, and you

worked in journalism for a pretty long time with pretty

much all of the major broadcasters. So first off, what

is it about journalism that keeps you going, that keeps you

in what is a pretty volatile industry right now?,

It's so difficult. Thank you so much for having me. I think last

time we met was at John Schofield, and we just gave each

other a big, massive hub, and then sat down and ate loads of

food together, and then everyone came over to us. I loved it. It

was brilliant. Speaking about journalism being volatile. It's

so difficult out there. I read an article the other day that

specifically talked about black female journalists and them kind

of leaving the industry, and just how difficult it can be.

And it broke my heart, because it's an industry that I

absolutely love, but it is so tough we're recording now in the

election period. I tell you, I have been to Birmingham,

Liverpool, Leeds twice, Manchester, all in the space of

absolute weeks. So it's just so grueling. Sometimes it's mental.

So when do you have a breather moment? Or do you

I think it's taken me a really long while to

know, is it literally just boom, boom, boom, and then at some

It's really important to take breaks and

point you will hope, fingers crossed, that you will have

Ayshah time.

stuff, because that is really important at the moment, it's

quite difficult, because you've got loads of things going on,

and you kind of realize in these five weeks, when you've got

elections and there's stuff going on and and there's stories

realize that the only person that you can be is yourself. One

to chase down, you kind of realize these five weeks are

going to be crazy. They're just going to be crazy. Everything

else kind of takes a backseat. Fifth of July, just hoping

everything kind of calms down a little bit so that some of us

can take a bit of a breather and a break. But breaks are really

important. Like this weekend, I had off, and was just with my

best friend, with my best friend's birthday. We went out

to this gig, top gig. I was like, What am I doing here? I'm

way too old. But then had a really good time. So, yeah,

of the worst bits of advice I got was kind of back in the day,

that's really, really important to do as well. So important.

You're one of the few black British broadcasters

visible on screen. Now, our industry is not the most

representative of the audiences we serve, so that is actually a

lot of responsibility to shoulder. What's your heritage

and also, how do you navigate this path?

Yeah, that's such a good question. I was born here,

but my parents from the Caribbean. So my mum is from

Guyana, which is next to Brazil, which is part of the Caribbean,

but when I want to sound like fancy, that's what I'm like.

It's next to Brazil, it's in South America. Thank you very

someone said, you know, when you're doing the news, you don't

much. And my dad is from Barbados, and they met here. I

come from a really working class family. I was on preschool

meals. My mum was a stay at home mum at one point because my

brother had special needs. So there were times struggling to

make ends meet, going without a lot. I didn't have any of the

games and stuff like that or whatever. There was a lot of the

hand me downs and whatever. But I knew from a really young age

that I wanted to be a journalist. I just knew that

that's what I wanted to do. I had to do loads of free work

sound like your authoritative, like, put on a voice and

experience, but then also work at the same time. I remember I

was like working at Marks and Spencers and then doing like

hospital radio in my spare time, just to kind of get any sort of

experience in this industry. And it's something that I'm really

passionate about. And I think without passion, you can't stay

in this industry, because it can be really, really tough for the

draining.

The thing is, our industry is not the most

representative, whether you're talking about socio economic,

whatever. And I think that lasted for about two days. And

whether you're talking about from more underrepresented

backgrounds, but you're surviving or it appears that

way. So how are you coping? I guess, because back me alone

space.

So with Newsround for any international listeners,

then I realized, because I kept tripping up, I kept tripping up

over my words, and I was like, What is going on? This isn't me.

And that was why it was because I was just putting on this app,

and then I realized that that's just not the way to go. I will

mention Newsround, like several times, like you should have,

like, a news round bingo, just in case.

because we do have international listeners, it's a children's

television program. It's been around for many, many years,

I went to the 50th anniversary party that was fun.

It's absolutely groundbreaking, and has

definitely helped children all over in terms of understanding

the news. And it's not patronizing. It's brilliant

program to look out for. So Ayshah has come from a brilliant

pedigree, to be perfectly frank with you. So continues, but just

in case, that's very good. No, they're just a cake. No one

knows what that is.

Well, it helped me, because when you have to speak

to kids who are six to 12 years old, you can't help but be

yourself. You can't help but put yourself into things. And I feel

like when people go to kind of I call, I used to call it adult

news for the longest time. It sounds really seedy, but it's

not. But when you go into some of these bigger kind of

newsrooms, like BBC and ITV and Channel Four, Channel Five,

because I've had like, such a grounding in children's news, I

was always myself. I've always been myself. And then I project

that onto anything that I do, and I feel like sometimes when

you go into like, these kind of bigger spaces that you haven't

had, that you haven't had that kind of training ground, it

definitely helped me. I was a shy kid actually. I think, like,

my natural state is to be an introvert, which no one agrees

with. When I say this, everyone's like, No, you're not.

You're really extroverted, you're really this, you're that.

But I learned that if you don't, kind of project some sort of

something that people will just kind of walk over you and won't

listen to you. So I learned how to do it, and felt much better

doing it. And I also think that, you know, going back to

authenticity and being myself, it's really important for me to

be that representation for others. I had Charlene White, I

had Trevor McDonald, I had Moira Stewart to look up to. And I

hope this doesn't sound too egotistical, but I know that I'm

representation for others that are coming up, and if I'm not

being myself, and if I'm being someone else, then I'm not being

genuine. I think you kind of see through that really quickly. One

of the best compliments I had was for my wedding coordinator

when I got married in 2022 and she met me for the first time at

my wedding venue, like, a couple of months before we got married,

and she said, You're exactly like you are on TV. And I was

like, yeah, thank you.

Something else that's really important with

you. Your family is really, really important. What do they

make of all of this?

I think they're proud. My dad never really says

that he is proud, but then tells everyone else he's proud. And

I'm like, Okay, fair enough. I think that's just, you know,

it's dad's prerogative to not get so that I don't get a big

And so I kind of take up these stories, and I make sure that I

head. It's like, oh well, you know, make sure that she keeps

grounded. I'm not going to tell her, but I'll tell all my mates.

But I think that's exactly what our dads are like, but it's

pretty. I know my mom, she's so supportive. She's just always

just there, kind of lifting me up whenever I built out. She's

do them to the best of my ability, and I listen to people,

and I kind of go in knowing the background of all that. So my

parents were struggling to get him diagnosed. He was kicked out

of his special needs school. He was excluded from his primary

just amazing. And I think she she still buys me Sunday papers

special needs school, like they just went through so much, and

they were fighting every step of the way. I kind of don't tell

people that that's what I went through, but when I'm listening

to them, I can relate. And then when I am in the edit suite,

every weekend so that I can read and catch up with everything so

kind of scripting and stories, I have all of that knowledge, and

I think that really helps, and that that for me, is the best

legacy that I could have, or that Rob could have, is just

that everything that he went through wasn't in vain. So yeah,

she'll go out, which is really cute. And now I have my husband

I want to make sure that that's that's what I do.

I think that's absolutely beautiful. And I was

diagnosed as autistic in December, very late diagnosis.

And it's not easy finding people from basically experiences that

who is also really, really supportive and just there

I find it often white, and it's really hard to understand what

role culture plays in it. Where you can get support to hear this

from you, and you know, thank you for sharing. It really makes

me even more amazed by by the person that you are and how your

whenever I'm having crazy mental day. Or one person that is sadly

family is has brought you to where you are as well, including

Rob and keeping your parents. It's absolutely brilliant,

because it's not easy. It's really hard trying to navigate

this path, and the fact that your family's done it for so

long, and you're continuing Rob's legacy. It's honestly

not with us anymore who was also a support was my brother, and he

absolutely wonderful to hear that with that empathy, though,

one thing again, I think is quite important, when do you

find time for you? Like, what do you do that helps you have a

little bit of respite and helps you maintain your own identity

died in 2021 - he was only 36 and so it was such a such a big

as Ayshah.

It's really hard the thinking when, when do I

find time? When I do find time, though, is just with my friends.

And it's really funny, because I think it's actually really

red It was horrible. So without him, things are things are hard,

important to step out of the news bubble, go and speak to

people, and then I'm saying all this stuff. They're like, Wait,

what happened? I don't even watch the view. I hate when my

friends say that. I'm like, What are you doing to me? I don't

even watch the news. I don't even have a telly. I'm like,

but he also had so much joy and laughter and was just this

Shut up. You're so horrible. And they bring me back down to life

in such a humbling way. It's amazing. But I think they really

kind of helped me in those moments of kind of like stress

amazing person that what I do now I'm kind of doing for him. I

and anxiety and and all that sort of stuff. They're just

like, it's only Telly, and, you know, I didn't watch so what?

What difference does it make? So that that actually really helps

me, and I think that's the main thing. And music and festivals.

want to make him proud of what I'm doing with your brother, and

I love festivals. I love going to any sort of festival. I went

to a Girls Aloud concert recently, and sung my heart out

with my friends, and it was just such a joyous thing. And I think

that's how I find my downtime, is just spending loads of time

he does sound absolutely amazing, that grief, that his

with them wherever I can. And sometimes I feel really bad,

because I can be a really flaky friend when stuff comes up that

I'm just like, you know, I can even be a flaky wife. When I

told this story, when I got married, the Queen had passed

legacy in your legacy, how does that help? Not just within your

away a couple of weeks before I got married, like about a week

or two before I got married, and I was sent to Jamaica to do the

Commonwealth response. And. I would be back, like, a couple of

days before the wedding. And I remember just going up to my

journalism life generally, I think once you lose something so

husband and saying, Okay, I've got good news and bad news. Good

news, I'm going to Jamaica. Bad news, I'm going now. And he his

face was just so grateful. And he said, Are you going to make

it back? I said, I made it back. It was fine, but that's kind of

precious to you, it changes you. It changes you. I think that I

what I quite like, the chaotic energy of journalism life. I

love that I'm just like it. It's mental, and I quite like it.

But your husband's not everyone. I was gonna say

I'm just a different person. I'm completely different. I i listen

your husband's not in journalism, right? Like he's,

he's,

yeah, the two of us could not. No, I No, very like

nice bite, very much structure, like being at home, like with

our dogs, and, you know, it's very much a homebody, whereas

more. I listen more to people. I want to make sure... Rob had

I'm like, Okay, bye, see you.

But this is the thing. You are doing some

amazing work. You are bringing some amazing original stories.

Your journalism cannot be but I'm not going to criticize it.

It's pretty, it sounds but one thing that also makes you you is

autism, and so stories with special educational needs are

that you're, I think all journalists a little bit weird.

I just think that's the way that we are, in order to be able to

identify and also look for this subversive now, for you, though,

very dear to my heart.

humor, tell us more about your I'm not gonna say comedy

aspirations, but your humour.

I do you know what? I think humor diffuses a lot of

situations. As journalists, we're going into. Sometimes

you'll go into positions and places where people just don't

want you to be there, right? And so that can be quite difficult.

And I went into this choir, this wonderful choir in Harrow, and

they were having this rehearsal, and then it's just me, my

cameraman, Deborah, and my producer, Amelia, and we kind of

woke up and we're just here at this rehearsal. And not that

they didn't want us to be there, but they're just kind of like,

Who the hell are you? And I kind of just walked in and was just

like, hi, so we're from Channel Four News. This is what we're

doing. We're talking about the election. We're asking our

politicians getting the right notes. Because it was a choir,

terrible jokes, terrible jokes, not going down well, but they

laughed anyway. But um, and, you know, it automatically put

people at ease. I can hear people in the room going,

because I think we turn up with a camera, or you turn up with a

notepad or whatever, and it puts people's backs up sometimes. And

so what you have to do is know how to diffuse the situation.

Know how to make people laugh. And just say, actually, this is

really weird. We're coming here with a camera, and we're

sticking it in your face, and we're asking you to pretend that

the camera isn't there. That's weird. And like, let's just,

let's just call it out for what it is. It is odd. It is very

strange. And even when we have to do you've done them before,

like, reverses, so you only have one camera, but you have to get

like, the other angle, so you have to kind of stand there, and

you have to put the camera on the other side as well and do

the same questions that you've done before. Hope I've explained

that all right, hopefully I have, and it's just really weird

because you're asking the same questions again, and people are

like, you just asked that question. And I'm like, but we

don't have two cameras, and it's the whole thing is weird. The

whole thing that we do is weird, and it's really odd, and you

just have to just explain it's really weird and whatever, and

it's funny and it's funny, and your mates might laugh in the

pub seeing you on telly saying something isn't that funny.

Sometimes humor doesn't work. Sometimes it really doesn't.

Nine times out of 10, it works. And I think it's really

important just not to take yourself too seriously, because

at the end of the day, it's only Telly, it's only this is true.

This is true. But going back to something you said earlier, that

you you're introverted, you that you know, is this something you

have to learn? Is this? Are these like mechanisms that you

you've basically taught yourself or observed others and thought,

Okay, I'm nicking that I'm borrowing, that I'm using that.

And the reason I say that is I actually went to go do in

classes because I thought that would help me be a much better

public speaker. So when I have a moment of freezing, now it's

less scary because I'm like, No, I can. I can improv. It's fine.

So with you, with these techniques, with the humor, is

that something you basically taught yourself as you've got

more experience, I think it's definitely something that I've

taught myself is just being able to kind of speak in that moment

and do things, and improv is such I'd love to do an improv

class that would be so much fun. I watch a lot of RuPaul drag

race, and they do improv in loads of different things, and I

always just think it's absolutely amazing. So I think

that's a really good tip. One of the things that I kind of

realized in early in my career was that I. Sat in lots of

meetings, and I kept really quiet, I didn't say anything.

And then I realized people were saying the ideas that I had, and

I thought, actually, how, how much better is it that I just

come up with these ideas and that I say them and I articulate

them? And when I started doing that, it was so much it was so

much easier. And like bosses, recognize that I actually had

all these ideas and I wasn't just silent, and it also helped

me stick up for myself a lot more. I think when you're

introverted, sometimes people kind of speak for you. And I've

always been the person, no, I'm going to speak for myself. I'm

going to advocate for myself. I work as a mentor for the John

Schofield, and one of the the things that I'm kind of talking

to my mentee about is confidence and being able to articulate

your own ideas. There's one tip that someone gave me once

because I was really struggling with meetings and I hated them.

I'm still not a fan of them. I don't you know I'm my natural

instinct is to just be quiet. But someone said, like, say

something really early on, even if it's like, just agreeing or

yes or something, just say something really early on. It

takes the pressure off. Helped me out so so much, because I

just think, Oh, I've said something once, I can just say

it again. It's fine, because in Channel Four News, we have,

like, these big beasts of journalism. We've got Krishnan

Guru-Murthy , Matt Frei Cathy Newman, Jackie Long, and then

little old me. And I always think, Oh, God, anything I say

is gonna sound really stupid, but I say it anyway,

so I'm like, what I have been in situations, not

always in newsrooms. Actually, I've been in situations where

you've had professors, you've had academics. People are very,

very cerebral, and maybe it's the journalism in that, you

know, there's no such thing as a stupid question. Like, I

actually think it's better to ask and deal with it. And so

I'll be like, I just want to understand this. And then

afterwards, they'll come up to me after and say, I'm so glad

you asked that, because I didn't know either. And I was like, but

you're so much cleverer than me, like I don't understand why?

Fine. I'll be the stupid one. If it makes me sound stupid, it's

fine, but I would rather understand what it is that we're

doing. And I think in a lot of spaces, people, they're too

scared to ask, and I think it's really important.

I think there's a lot of assumed knowledge as

well, right? So much assumed knowledge people assume, like

you, and especially working in news, we're just assuming that

people are watching every single bulletin, and they know every

single thing, and they know all of the kind of terms and

phrases, all of that fiscal drag like I always have to get Helia

Ebrahimi, who's our economics correspondent, just to be like,

what does this again, explain to me, I don't mind looking a

little bit silly or a little bit simple. I really don't. I don't

care, because I think that there are people out there that are

asking that question, and actually it's more silly just to

use terms and not explain it like my cardinal sin. I hate

when people do that, because I'm just like, you're not bringing

people with you. That's the whole point of journalism, or

whatever communicating, you've got to bring people with you

throughout the whole of covid, for example, there was all these

sciency terms. And I remember, just like being like, we have to

kind of debunk what the R rate is, which is, like the

reproduction rate, which meant that if you had like R rate of

one, that that was how much the virus was spreading by if it was

by two, it was by double. And I would always explain these

statistics, because we started to use them, and then just

assume that everyone knew what the R rate was. And I just hate,

I hate that. It's one of my pet peeves about journalism

sometimes, as we do that, and I try not to, because we do need

to demystify terms. And I'm so glad that as a journalist, as a

human, as a as an eyeshadow, that's what you're doing.

Absolutely amazing. Is there anything else that people

don't know about you, like you're talking about singing

earlier? Are you a belter? Can you actually sing?

Is that your like, special

opera? Singer, are we gonna see you on like, oh my

gosh, no. Like the Masked Singer, no, no, you will not.

You will absolutely not. I like to sing. I don't think I'm

actually that good. I think I'm delusionally good. So in my

head, I can sing in a concert when everyone else is singing

and think I sound amazing, but probably I'm really not. Do you

know what I absolutely love is cooking? Absolutely like if

anyone will put me on MasterChef, then please do

because I absolutely love cooking, and it's just, it's

something that, like I helped me unwind, helped me feel better,

like loads of Caribbean food as well. I I absolutely love it. My

husband actually doesn't cook much. He's met me,

And that was Ayshah Tull correspondent and

presenter, do you have an interdisciplinary life? Because

I would love to hear from you, and maybe we can chat on this

podcast that goes with my newsletter, which is called,

have you thought about and can be found via www.dhrutishah.com,

please join me next time for a fun conversation with another

guest who likes to mix up lots of things in their life. Do

listen to past episodes and rate and review it if you've enjoyed.

And thank you to Rian Shah for the music.