2021 is an important year for the BBC Breakfast star Naga Munchetty as she shifted her career from TV to radio in the New Year.
She took to social media ahead of her first day at BBC 5 Live, sharing a glimpse inside her work bag – including her BBC lanyard.
“I’m thrilled to be joining the 5 Live team. I have always wanted to work more in radio and after such an enjoyable experience presenting on the station recently, I jumped at this opportunity,” says Munchetty, 45, about her new role.
“5 Live has one of the most passionate, engaged audiences in radio. The prospect of talking to those listeners every week excites me. I can’t wait to get stuck into the role from January.”
The popular presenter joined the BBC in 2008 presenting business news programme, Working Lunch.
She became one of BBC Breakfast’s lead presenters in 2014.
While covering the story on the US president Donald Trump’s racist tweets on BBC Breakfast, in September 2019, Munchetty says: “Furious.
Absolutely furious and I can imagine lots of people in this country will be feeling absolutely furious a man in that position thinks it’s okay to skirt the lines by using language like that.”
Her reaction itself became a ‘big news story’ and following a complaint, the BBC initially said she had breached editorial guidelines. Later, after a public outcry, the BBC overturned its initial findings against her.
She was also a part of an equal pay campaign at the BBC. As a result of this, all the main presenters of BBC Breakfast were paid equally for their work.
Munchetty became a household name for co-hosting the BBC Breakfast show. She regularly appears on Newsnight and Victoria Derbyshire. She is also a former presenter of BBC World News and BBC Two’s weekday financial affairs programme Working Lunch. In January 2017, she temporarily left Breakfast to provide maternity cover for Newsnight as their acting business editor.
Munchetty hosted the NFRN Awards by the Federation of Independent Retailers in 2020 and hosted the Logistics Award 2019.
In 2018, she was honoured with the Media Personality of the Year award at Asian Media Awards.
She joined the cast of CBBC sketch show Class Dismissed playing a fictionalised version of herself as a media studies teacher who acts like a newsreader in 2017. The TV star also contested on the 14th series of Strictly Come Dancing, having been paired with Pasha Kovalev in 2016.
Her real name is Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chendriah. Her mother is Indian and her father is Mauritian. The Streatham-born journalist was educated at Graveney School in Tooting and the University of Leeds.
Munchetty’s career originally started in print, working for the London Evening Standard and then writing for the business section of The Observer.
The lure of television proved too strong to resist, so she began reporting for Reuters Financial Television, then worked for CNBC Europe as a senior producer and then a business producer and reporter for Channel 4 News. Just before joining BBC, she was a senior presenter for Bloomberg Television.
Munchetty is married to ITV broadcast consultant James Haggar. She plays jazz trumpet and classical piano and can make cocktails. She also plays golf, with a handicap of nine in 2015.
