The dotty old lady school of foreign correspondents

Daily Mail foreign correspondent Dame Ann Leslie talks with the Guardian’s Vicky Frost about her path into life as a foreign correspondent and how playing a ‘dotty old woman’ or a ‘bird brain’ can help get the job done,

“When I’m trying to assess a situation, I decide: am I going to be ‘daughter of the Raj’ today – rather imperious, somebody who can’t understand why anyone should doubt that I have a right to be where I am – or do I do ‘birdbrain’,” she says. “If I’m playing dotty old woman, I have all kinds of dotty old woman things, like recipes for Irish stew in my bag…” The dotty woman trick, Leslie says, is what got her into Manger Square, Bethlehem, when nobody else could get through. link