Why Mishal Husain is really leaving the BBC

Other roles she has been touted for include helming the News at 10 on TV more regularly, as well as election debates and state occasions (one of her most-watched interviews was when she sat down with Prince Harry and Meghan as they announced their engagement in 2017).

Husain, 51, is discreet to a fault and even her closest colleagues admit that she has not told them why she has decided to leave now, with one calling her “sphinx-like”.

“I think she felt it wasn’t so much the presenting of the news – which, frankly, would be a step down in this respect,” says a colleague. “What she wanted, which would be a step up, is to do the big interviews, the royal stuff, the big political set pieces. She felt that, because she’d done so well in the debates, she was qualified to do that.”

With Husain said to be eager to take a step back from the relentless daily news cycle – she has often said a decade on Today was long enough – and Clive Myrie seemingly preferred as the News at 10 anchor, there would probably not be enough news-adjacent set-piece events to justify a full-time salary.

A current BBC News boss expresses exasperation that the narrative about feckless managers unable to hold onto stars has taken hold. “Mishal didn’t want to do news any more,” they say. “We would have loved to keep her, but you have got to respect someone’s decisions. We tried lots of different things.”

The eldest child of Pakistani immigrant parents – her father, Imtiaz, was a urologist and her mother, Shama, worked as a TV producer before becoming a teacher – Husain was born in Northampton but grew up in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.