'Like a chronic illness': Emily Maitlis speaks of stalker ordeal after 20 years of harassment

'You're having to think about things that are just ludicrous, like 'How do you get in and out of your front door?"'

Emily Maitlis has spoken of her fear she will never be free of her stalker after being harassed by the same man for 20 years.

The BBC Newsnight presenter broke her silence on her ordeal two days after a former university friend was jailed for breaching a restraining order.

The 47-year-old broadcaster compared the experience of being stalked to suffering from a “chronic illness” and said the impact on her husband and children had been devastating.

“It feels like sort of a chronic illness,” she told BBC Radio 5 live’s Emma Barnett Show. “It just makes you jumpy – and that’s stressful and it’s tiring and it’s time-consuming.

“Your head is somewhere else and you’re having to think about things that are just ludicrous, like ‘How do you get in and out of your front door?’ and ‘How are they getting back from school?’

“It’s not that you think everyone is out to kill you. You recognise it as a paranoia. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

“It’s not that I ever believe it will stop or he will stop, or the system will manage to prevent it properly.”

Edward Vines admitted two counts of breaching a restraining order that aimed to stop him from plaguing the presenter and her family with letters. Judge Peter Ross sentenced the 47-year-old to three years and nine months in jail at Oxford Crown Court.

Vines met Ms Maitlis while they were both studying at Cambridge University and developed an “obsession” with her after she spurned his advances and declarations of love in 1990.

Ms Maitlis said: “Whatever treatment he’s had isn’t working as a cure and he is obviously also a victim in this.

“He is unwell and has wasted half his life. Stalking is a weirdo glamorised term for what is essentially mental ill health and so somewhere along the lines we have to change the mechanism.”

Vines was previously jailed for breaching the same restraining order in 2016, telling the court: “I will never contact [Ms Maitlis and her mother] again if I’m defeated rationally in court – and I cannot say I have been today.”

The judge in that case said Vines had a “completely unshakeable obsession” with Ms Maitlis, which was underpinned by “delusions” over their relationship.

He was still in prison serving his sentence when he committed the first new breach.

Additional reporting by PA