Media: CV - Martha Kearney, Presenter, Woman's Hour, Radio 4

I was at St. Anne's College, Oxford, between 1976 and 1980, studying Classics. I didn't really think about what I wanted to do until my finals were looming, although I did do some student radio - a programme on BBC Radio Oxford - as well as some hospital radio towards the end of my time there.

I also wrote to a lot of independent local radio stations, which were then just starting up, but didn't hear back from any of them. But then, through a friend, I heard about odd freelance shifts you could do at LBC/IRN - the London commercial news station and the network behind independent radio news bulletins. And I got a series of odd jobs there: in the news information department, cutting up newspapers for the cuttings library, as newsroom secretary, and as a telephone operator on a phone-in programme with Brian Hayes.

Then I got on to a graduate training scheme there, and from that, I got my first proper job - running something called the London newsdesk, which involved coming in very early and producing London bulletins to go out in the breakfast programme, AM. After that, I was a reporter on AM, doing a mixture of news stories and features, and I also did some presenting. I ended my time there as lobby correspondent for IRN, which meant I was supplying political news for IRN bulletins from Westminster, and I had my first appearance on the BBC - being hit by an egg while covering the 1987 general election campaign.

Then, a producer at LBC asked me to make a programme for a Channel Four series called Diverse Reports, about the Channel Islands. And, through doing that, I got to work on Channel Four's A Week In Politics, which was then - in the days before Parliament was televised - a mixture of films about politics and discussions in the studio. I really enjoyed that, and was sent to France to report on the 1988 presidential elections, to America to report on the 1988 primaries, and to Hong Kong.

But later that year Channel Four cancelled that programme's contract, so I applied to work for On The Record, which the BBC was just starting. There, my reports included the first TV profile of John Major, who back then was the least well-known member of the cabinet. But he was always being talked about as someone to watch, so we went to meet him and got exclusive pictures of him eating egg and chips in his favourite greasy spoon cafe- pictures which, when he became famous, cropped up again and again.

After a year of doing that, I decided to take a year off and go travelling: I'd been working for almost 10 years by then, and wanted a break. The idea was to leave TV altogether and do something else, but as I travelled - through India, Pakistan, Nepal and South America - I found myself addicted to World Service radio and knew I was a bit of a news junkie.

So when I got back I went back to On The Record, and through a contact of mine in the Labour Party, got inside Bill Clinton's campaign HQ in Little Rock with a camera crew. We were there for three days just before the 1992 election, and got some great footage. I also became interested in Northern Ireland during this period, spending a lot of time in Belfast, and did a lot of stories on Europe, actually reading the Maastricht Treaty. I also worked on Panorama for a while, and did a programme I was particularly pleased with called "Lucky To Have A Job", which was about job insecurity during the recession. It drew in a very big audience and a huge mailbag - it really touched a chord.

In 1994, I did an attachment to Newsnight, during which I did a story on celebrations the government was planning for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. The D-Day veterans that I interviewed felt that it was inappropriate to "celebrate" such a tragic event, and in the end, after I'd challenged John Major about it, the government changed their plans. That went down well and I was asked to stay on at Newsnight, where I went on to make some films ahead of the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995: one in Nicaragua on how market reforms were hitting women there, and another in Pakistan on whether you could have feminism with Islam. I also did a film on child prostitution in Nepal, and last year covered the British general election.

Then, earlier this year, Woman's Hour asked me to come in and do an audition for the show. Initially I thought the idea was to have me doing some filling- in on Fridays, but they got in touch again and asked if I'd present regularly, two days out of the five, alongside reporting for Newsnight.

It's years since I did live radio, but it'll be great handling the wide range of subjects Woman's Hour covers.