My Greatest Mistake: Krishnan Guru-Murthy, reporter and presenter on 'Channel 4 News'

'I was reading a BBC World news bulletin and I realised I had nodded off mid-sentence'

Sleep has been a bit of a theme in my life and in my greatest mistakes, in that I once actually bored myself to sleep on air, in the middle of a sentence, while I was presenting BBC World many years ago. I foolishly agreed to do an overnight shift, which I should have known I would be hopeless at, and at about four in the morning I passed that limit of being able to stay awake. I was reading a bulletin, one of the typically long BBC World intros, and I became aware half-way through it that I had absolutely no idea where I was. I must have blinked and realised that I had actually nodded off. I don't know how long it was, probably just a split second, but it was extremely terrifying to think that I had fallen asleep mid-sentence. I shook my head and said, "I'm terribly sorry – I'll start again." I'm not even sure that the gallery noticed, because they were probably asleep themselves at 4am.

When I was still a student, I was contacted by the producers of The Word; they had just held open auditions for a presenter. The boss, Sebastian Scott, rang me up because I'd done a bit of youth TV and said, "We're in a terrible mess. Could you come and meet us tomorrow morning? Because if you want to go ahead and we want to go ahead, we'd like you to sign in the morning." I was supposed to go for breakfast at 9.30 at the house of Charlie Parsons, the founder of the firm that produced The Word, but, being a student, I woke up at midday. I was so mortified that I didn't phone them for more than a week, by which time they had appointed their new presenter. It's meant that, ever since, whatever rubbish Sebastian Scott rings me up and asks me to do, I feel obliged to say yes – and probably always will.

There's also a theme in my career that every so often I've tried to kid myself that I am ultimately versatile and can do light entertainment at the same time as serious analytical work. One of the really excruciating, big, big mistakes in my life was being flattered into presenting the Saturday-morning children's programme Going Live for two weeks while Phillip Schofield was doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It is, without doubt, the most embarrassing thing. I was terrible – hopeless, stilted, unfunny.

The second really excruciating thing was while I was working at Newsnight and, for some strange reason, I was approached by the National Lottery and asked if I would co-present with Anthea Turner. For some reason still unknown to me, I thought it was a good idea. The climax was, finding myself at the Leeds City Variety Theatre on a Saturday night in front of 18 million viewers, holding hands with Danny La Rue, in a 1930s outfit, singing "Down at the Old Bull and Bush". Amazingly, it didn't, as far as I know, have an impact on my career, and I was actually offered a role in pantomime that year up in Leeds.

INTERVIEW BY TOM PHILLIPS