PASSPORT: JULIET MORRIS

'I see my family in the faces of people in the street'

Most of the stamps in Juliet Morris's passport have been acquired in the course of her job as a television presenter. She fronted Newsround from 1990 to 1994, and flew to China to make a film about pandas, and to India to report on child carpet slaves. A stamp acquired in Colombia in 1994, brings back harrowing memories. She says: "Three years ago I went to Colombia to make a documentary on street children who live in sewers. The police can be brutal if they find them on the streets at night, so they hide there. There are children in the sewers aged eight upwards and one 15-year-old girl had given birth in the sewer - the baby was two months old. It's incredibly dangerous because the sewers get blocked and pressure can build up and suddenly explode. There were all sorts of strange rumbling noises when we were down there and we just had to hope we wouldn't be swamped." While she was in Colombia, Juliet also reported on the plight of child miners. "The children are sent down holes in the ground which have no support structures," she says. "The holes are too small for adults to get through, so they use kids of 10, 11, 12 to haul sacks of coal up hundreds of feet. It was pretty upsetting." Juliet has four Russian stamps in her passport and they evoke happier memories. "The last time I was in Russia was to report on the parliamentary elections last year for Breakfast News. I really enjoy going there because my ancestors were Russian, and I feel a real empathy with the place and the people," she explains, adding, "In fact next week I'm going to Georgia in the former Soviet Union for The Travel Show, and I'm really looking forward to it, not least because it's supposed to be a beautiful place but also because I see my family in the faces of people in the street." When Juliet isn't working she likes to go scuba diving. Her passport shows she's been to St Lucia, the Maldives, and Egypt. She says: "Diving is very important to me. It's the one way that I can completely switch off from the rest of life. The last place I went to was St Lucia - at Christmas - which is not the best diving spot in the world, it has to be said. The best place I've been for diving is the Maldives, but the Red Sea in Egypt is good because it's much closer to home, so more accessible and cheaper. It's a great place to learn."

Juliet Morris is a presenter for 'The Travel Show', Wednesdays, BBC2