The Saturday Profile: TV presenter Konnie Huq

When the Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq took up an invitation from Ken Livingstone to endorse a new cycling initiative earlier this year, the prospect did not seem like crass folly. Even with the ever-present threat of grandstanding from London's Mayor, Blue Peter has been behind cycling for years. The idea seemed as on-message as sticky-backed plastic and Christmas mobiles.

That was before the City Hall backbiting began. After an alleged piece of political opportunism from Livingstone, who used the launch event to rib his Tory opponents for being "pro-car", came the backlash. Brian Coleman, a Tory assembly member not known to mince his words - or miss an opportunity to slate Livingstone - complained that by association Huq had undermined the BBC's political impartiality. Currently under heavy fire, the BBC became trigger-happy, and Huq was an easy target for retaliation. This week the corporation panned her move, and she has since withdrawn her support.

"It's crazy," said a close friend of the presenter yesterday. "If she had wanted to endorse Labour Party politics she has had plenty of better opportunities prior to this." On camera, Huq, 32, is bright and personable. Yet her apparent innocence is incongruous with her formidable CV. She is intelligent, with a Cambridge University economics degree, thrown together while holding down gigs presenting national television. Not for nothing has she fronted a flagship programme for the BBC for near on a decade. She joined Blue Peter when she was just 22 in 1997, and is shortly due to leave as its longest-serving female presenter. Her friends say she is not immune to pulling the odd string to get her way. Certainly, they claim, her hunger for success can be rapacious.

Huq was born to Bangladeshi parents in 1975 and grew up in Ealing, west London, speaking a mixture of English and Bengali. For many years, her friends claim, she did not know to which language the word "radiator" belonged, and still stumbles over some words, although this is more likely to charm, they say, than to annoy. Her elder sister, Rupa, educated, like Konnie, at the independent Notting Hill & Ealing High School, remembers Konnie as more of a maths whiz, voluntarily memorising her times tables up to 30, when her fellow pupils had to be forced. Those close to her claim she has always wanted to be involved in the media, and that the glitzy edifice of BBC Television Centre has an ugly yet enticing dominance in West London daily life. Guided by the unlikely falling star of Phillip Schofield and his Broom Cupboard, Huq settled upon a career in media when most of her peers were still wrestling with puberty.

Ironically enough, one of Huq's first television breaks came through politics. She interviewed Neil Kinnock ahead of the 1992 general election for BBC's Newsround, with Rupa attending as her chaperone, and challenged Kinnock on the Labour Party's commitment to the environment. "It was just a bit of fun," said Rupa, now a university lecturer. "I went because I was a member of Labour students and thought I would get to meet John Craven."

Aged 14, she appeared at the Edinburgh festival with the National Youth Music Theatre in the period musical Captain Stirrick, sharing a stage with Jude Law. The theatre did not cover transportation and accommodation costs for the show's run. So Huq, determined as ever to realise her dreams, organised a sponsored bike ride to London tube stops to raise the necessary funds.

The drive for success continued. A theme of juggling commitments, that has gone on throughout her academic and work life, began to emerge. While studying for her science and maths A-levels, she responded to an advertisement in Time Out to audition for TVFM, a magazine show on a relatively unknown cable and satellite channel. When she secured the position over thousands of applicants, her school supported her in dropping her Further Maths A-Level to fit around her presenting work. During free periods she would be contacted via a huge pager (one of the country's earliest) to jet off to chinwag with pop acts of the day, such as The Farm and East 17. One presenter who worked with Huq claimed her media employers did not know she was only 16 until after she had signed her contract, such was her commitment to getting on.

The experience helped with her application to university. She read economics at Robinson College, Cambridge University. Here, one of her contemporaries was the comedian Robert Webb. But moonlighting was still pivotal to her routine. In her holidays, alongside poring over the writings of Keynes and Adam Smith, she would work for Q magazine and present for GMTV, sourcing her work without an agent.

Upon graduating, when many go travelling, live off the state or reminisce over their halcyon days of subsidised lengthy lie-ins, Huq threw herself into a gruelling regime. She began each day by fronting segments on Channel 5, before going to work at 9am at Q as a full-time editorial assistant. But it was only a year before her potential for a bigger audience was spotted. She soon started at Blue Peter as its first Asian presenter, and quickly won the hearts of her new colleagues. "She is a complete pro," said the show's editor, Tim Levell. "Sometimes she can come straight from location filming, walk into the studio, absorb the script, and deliver a funny, engaging, warm and almost flawless performance." The programme-maker lauded her "child-like wide-eyed fascination" and the gusto with which she entered into tasks - such as wrestling with a top Bolivian female wrestler.

Her presenting style is intelligent but affable, and she seems to make no distinction between how she speaks to children and adults. One anecdote to emerge from the show's production team involved a producer banning her from using the word "adjacent" because the children would not know what it meant. But she used it anyway, ever determined to do things her own way.

She is known to be good friends with many of her former presenting colleagues, with whom she has shared innumerable foreign trips, especially Simon Thomas, Matt Baker and Liz Barker. While she claims to avoid the celebrity circuit - opting to drive a modest Honda Jazz, and known to love shopping in Primark - she turned heads earlier this year by wearing a plunging white designer frock to the Spider-Man 3 premiere. Upon seeing the pictures, Blue Peter grande dame Valerie Singleton cooed: "I looked at it and thought, 'Oh God, if [former producer] Biddy Baxter had allowed me to wear something like that and I'd had the figure and the boobs, I'd have worn one as well."

This week, as the BBC has attempted to close ranks around the latest scandal to befall it, after controversies surrounding misleading editing and phone-in competitions, the presenter has been filming with her family for a new show about genetic disorders. She is shortly due to jet off on holiday. Her agent, Jonathan Shalit, is keen to stress that she has been offered work by GMTV, once her work with Blue Peter expires early next year. He claims she recently had to turn down a prime-time Saturday night presenting gig with a rival channel because of her BBC commitments.

It is evident that the BBC presenter's life is punctuated by an impressive roll-call of achievements. So the surprise is not that Huq recently became embroiled in a political brouhaha at the hands of Livingstone and Coleman, but that someone so clearly concerned about her career could be caught in an unwitting cross-fire.

The blame seems to have been laid squarely at the door of her Tory-voting agent, Shalit, a relation of the author Simon Sebag Montefiore. He said he was unaware the BBC had turned down a request for her to attend the event on political grounds, thinking the refusal was due to a schedule clash. He added: "I was blind-sided. It is totally not the BBC or Konnie's fault. It is quite correct the BBC said no to it but I wasn't aware of that. The BBC probably realised it was a political event when I didn't. All Konnie was asked to do was support a get-fit campaign. It was done with goodwill. The Tories have made this into a political event."

Rupa is also keen to highlight her sister's innocence. It was her and not her sister, she said, who was the political member of their family. Also the author of a book on multi-ethnic subculture, she was nicknamed "Red Rupa" at school and stood for election for the Labour Party in 2005 in Chesham and Amersham. "She has never in actual fact been a member of any political party," she claimed. "When she interviewed Tony Blair [late last year], people said it was mild, but she's never claimed to be Paxman and I guess she's mellowed with age as we all do."

Huq's approachable style conceals a depth that is focused, not on political parties, but on continuing in the go-getting vein that has seemingly consumed her since childhood.

And it seems to be paying off. Among the guff of the social networking website Facebook, there is a rare moment of lucidity. One of the nine groups dedicated to the diminutive presenter is one called The Real Konnie Huq Appreciation Society (alongside the less wholesome Would You F**ck the Huq?) Here, Mark Davis, a user from the West Midlands, writes: "Our local MP took a bunch of school kids to visit Downing Street. Konnie was filming in the street and the kids were far more excited about seeing her than the door of No. 10."

The presenter lost a recent battle with the world of politics. In the end it is unlikely she will lose the war.

A Life in Brief

BORN: 17 July 1975, London

EDUCATION: Attended private school in London; balanced her school career with the National Youth Music Theatre and television presenting; attended Cambridge University and attained a 2.1 in economics

CAREER: Her first presenting job after university was for Five's children's programme Milkshake! A few months later, in December 1997, she became Blue Peter's first Asian presenter. She announced inn May that she would be leaving the programme, and will be the show's longest serving female presenter when she leaves early next year.

SHE SAYS: "We'd like to say sorry to you because when this mistake happened, we let you down." [To viewers after Blue Peter's phone competition scandal]

THEY SAY: "Konnie has been doing Blue Peter for so long, she knows it inside out, and is a complete pro. In fact, because Blue Peter has had up to five episodes a week in the past 10 years, she's presented probably more editions than any other presenter." Blue Peter editor, Tim Levell

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