Interview: Claudia Winkleman, TV presenter

There is no sleep in this BBC queen's kohl-rimmed eyes. The presenter of pretty much everything except Newsnight these days is wide awake and talking the hind legs off a donkey.

She has already taken her two children, Jake and Matilda, to school and in an hour is off to a meeting "about something that might be happening next year ... and I can't tell you what".

Would that be something on top of Strictly It Takes Two, replacing Bruce Forsyth on the Sunday night Strictly Come Dancing results show, her weekly New Radio 2 Arts Show and taking over from Jonathan Ross on Film 2010?

At the age of 38, Winkleman is experiencing the busiest time of her career - she is going to be on our screens virtually every day until Christmas. She giggles, exhales dramatically, lets out a mini-scream, and motors on.

"Crazy time!" she bellows. (It's hard to resist sticking an exclamation mark at the end of every Winkleman sentence.) "Mental! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm so sorry - you're going to get so fed up of me!" Then she quietens down.

"The problem is I've got a weird attitude to work. I either go at it like a lunatic or I don't do anything. I've just come out of a long period of doing absolutely nothing except playing with my children and lying down. So I'm slightly nervous and freaked out."

She laughs, not sounding nervous or freaked out at all, just completely over-excited. "My dad says even when I was 16 I was either frenetic or sedentary. I'm not very good at being in the middle."

An encounter with Winkleman is a bit like taking a puppy out for its first walk.

It's manic, a bit all over the place, and really good fun. You end up running after her a lot, sometimes cleaning up after her verbal outpourings too.

Our meeting began, in fact, with a wild goose chase through Edinburgh during the Festival when Winkleman was visiting for her New Radio 2 Arts Show. There was a mix-up and we ended up waiting for each other in different parts of the city. Weeks later, in London, I expect her to have forgotten our brief non-encounter but she immediately brings it up. "Oh god," she groans. "You're the sweet girl who was waiting for me and I was in the wrong place." This isn't true, it was neither of our faults. "I'm so sorry," she insists. "I apologise. I thought you'd want to kill me."

When I do pin her down, it's still hard to keep up with her. Winkleman is quite the talker, usually finishing a long, meandering and hilarious answer to a question with, "Does that make any sense?'" Before I get the chance to answer she's waltzed off on to the next subject, which usually revolves around how terrible she is at her job.

She has a reputation for being the most self-deprecating celebrity in Britain. "I've never felt the need to show that I am either clever or tall because I'm not," she insists. "I'm miniature!" She laughs. "And I'm not saying any of this so you'll go 'oh but you are brilliant'. I mean I know people who would do my job better than me. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I am cheery about it. I think it's brilliant! I find it alarming that people are so convinced they're the best at anything - presenting, hairdressing, getting dressed...

"I don't think I'm bad, let me say that," she continues. "You know, I'm proud of the way things are going and the fact that my children say please and thank you. But here's the thing. It's also fine if someone comes along who is better than you at your job. It happens. And at that point I'm just going to eat hummus with my hands. Does that make sense?"

This refusal to take herself too seriously is one reason why people adore Winkleman. She is currently recovering from a serious eye infection from swimming after an operation and tells the story of wearing an eye patch with humour rather than vanity. "Apparently it's the fastest anyone has ever been swimming after an eye operation," she says. "I am officially a moron."

Men and women alike go a bit wobbly over Winkleman. The library researcher who sends me past interviews follows up with a text message saying "tell her I LOVE her". The editor of this very magazine squeals every time "Winkle", as she is known, is mentioned. In a piece entitled "Why Claudia Winkleman is perfect for 2010" one journalist simply comments: 'she is UTTERLY, UTTERLY FABULOUS!'

It's her wicked sense of humour, the way she swears like a trooper and is as mad as a box of frogs. It's the tan, the fringe, the Dusty Springfield eyes. She really doesn't seem to give a damn, which makes people like her all the more. "As long as you look half decent in a black top, no-one gives a toss," she says airily. She tells me she can't wait to be 68 ("I'll be on fire") and that she has asked the Strictly producers if she can present the live results show "wearing leggings".

She is now on her seventh series of backstage gossip show It Takes Two and remains smitten with everything Strictly-related: presenting live, sidling up to Len Goodman, working with Tess Daly ("all we ever talk about is our offspring. I love her.") and getting to know the guests.

"I know this sounds repellent but it's like a family," she says sheepishly. "I love it. And helping out on the results show is just that - like helping someone move house. I'll be rubbish at it. But I keep looking at everything I'm doing and thinking something has got to give. I've got to give something up. No I don't want to! And I don't want to give up the film show even though I'm sure I'm going to be fired from that..."

Last year everything seemed to be taking its toll and she became very thin. There were also rumours that Winkleman and her film producer husband, Kris Thykier, were having problems. But then events seemed to calm down, she was offered Film 2010, and today she seems happy to the point of hyper.

But when I mention her marriage, she interrupts me to say they've been together for "f***ing forever... I believe the correct term is 13 years". And, for once, she doesn't laugh. What's the secret of making it work? She groans. "Oh, I don't know," she says. "I absolutely don't know the answer to that. I know that's incredibly annoying. If you asked me what belt to buy I could tell you but I can't do relationships.

"I have no idea. You should ask Ronnie Corbett. Him and his wife have been together for ever." She must be doing something right, I venture. "No, no, no," she replies. "I feel bad... but I can't give a nugget." We move on.

There are people (the ones who aren't busy adoring her) who can be a bit sniffy about Winkleman. Despite her credentials - a degree in art history from Cambridge, making It Takes Two as good as, if not better, than the Saturday night dance-off - some feel she isn't knowledgeable or serious enough about cinema to replace Jonathan Ross on Film 2010. For others, she is just too mainstream.

"Oh that's okay," she says, unperturbed. "I don't disagree with them. I've watched that show every week since I was 14 (when the show was presented by Barry Norman]. Whoever took over from Jonathan would have made me livid. I am livid! I will miss him too. I get it. So I'm not grumpy at all."

But women on television often find themselves having to prove that it's possible to be both bright and beautiful at the same time. Didn't the response bother her at all? Winkleman is having none of my sympathy. She tells me she's terrified herself that she's going to be awful.

"It's a biggie and it's my dream job," she eventually admits. "The job of my life. And I'm very happy to say that if I'm not good I'm going to stop doing it." Besides, she notes, there is always her Radio 2 show for airing her brainy side. "I don't need to express it in a work capacity but I do love the fact that I have now found an outlet," she says. "The arts show is an amazing thing because I get to say out loud that actually I did study Vermeer for a whole year and that I can be a bit geeky. And I get to meet heroes. I mean, David Bailey! I'm not giving that show up. They're going to have to prise it from my cold, dead hands."

Back to Film 2010 for a moment, if I can keep her on any subject for long. Winkleman will be the second woman, after Joan Bakewell, to present the long-running flagship show though she says that for anyone - man or woman - it's a huge honour. "Mark Kermode didn't want it for some reason," she notes. "I don't know why. So I said there will have to be more of us and it will have to be different. You can't follow Jonathan - he is the king of all broadcasting. The king! I cried when he did his last radio show. That's how much I love him. I might have also slightly got the job because of him. All we ever talked about was (Japanese animator] Miyazaki..."

The format of Film 2010 will change to accommodate Winkleman's strengths. She will co-present with film journalist Danny Leigh and she was the one who asked for a live format. "I felt it was the one thing I had to offer," she says. "Also I love live telly. I'll make mistakes but that's absolutely fine. I don't think anyone minds. What they mind is if it's all slick and annoying and you made it on a Wednesday morning."

What's clear is that Winkleman is mad about the movies. Her husband is a film obsessive (currently working on Madonna's directorial feature debut WE) and on an early date, when she told him she had never seen On the Waterfront, he stood up and insisted she watch it before they carried on eating dinner. The first film Winkleman ever saw at the cinema was ET and she remembers turning to her mother, the Fleet Street editor Eve Pollard, and asking why the backs of her eyes were burning. "I didn't understand that a film could make me cry," she laughs.

"When you work for the BBC they bring you in every 18 months and say do you like archaeology? No! Gardening? No! Cookery? No, no, no! The only thing I'm obsessed with is sleeping. I'm really good at it and if I don't do it I'm horrible." She giggles and eventually comes back to film. "So I sleep and go to movies. Those are the only things I do. I go to the Odeon at the end of my street three times a week and it's all I've ever done."

Winkleman is the daughter of Pollard, the former editor of the Sunday Express, and Barry Winkleman, a renowned publisher. They divorced when she was three and she acquired a stepfather, the former editor of the Daily Express Sir Nicholas Lloyd. It was an idyllic childhood, surrounded by smart, loving adults who adored her. The result was that Winkleman never wanted to leave. Even now her mother lives around the corner and they remain extremely close.

"I remember always being the most important thing," she tells me. "Even when my mum used to edit the paper she would come home, put us to bed and then go back to the office. She must have been exhausted. She worked on Sunday papers so I always had her on Mondays. I loved Mondays! She would always be waiting for me outside school. I remember feeling very loved. I just hope my children feel the same way because they are the most important thing."

I wonder if Winkleman's endless capacity for self-deprecation has something to do with growing up in a family of intellectuals. Perhaps she felt a pressure to be smart? Again, she's having none of it. "No I never felt intimidated. As a child I was always expected to join in. Parenting has changed now. It's all 'do you like figs? Do you? I'm so proud of you. Let's take a picture of you!' When I was little it was more like, 'Well, Claud, what do you think about the NHS. And I was like "I don't know. I'm eight.'"

Having a family of adults hanging off her every word meant that she struggled when she left home for Cambridge University. "I was so miserable and homesick," she recalls. "I missed my parents. They were so fascinated by everything I did. I remember once making an omelette and my mum standing up and clapping. And by the way I'll be exactly the same with my children. Jake said to me, 'Mummy, there's this school trip...' I said, 'I don't think so. You'll be staying home with me, breastfeeding.' 'But mummy, I'm seven...'" She roars with laughter.

The result was that after Winkleman graduated (she wrote her thesis on Rembrandt and wanted to be an art historian), she ignored all her friends who were asking her to rent a flat with them and went back home. She was 26 when she left to move in with Thykier. "If it was up to me I'd still be there, in the annexe with the kids," she sighs. "We'd all live together and spend every weekend going for big walks. My friends think I'm borderline insane." Is this, perhaps, why she has stayed young for so long? Winkleman laughs her head off, presumably at my politeness. "Oh yes," she says. "Apparently I was still skipping when I was 18."

Film 2010 is on Wednesdays, BBC1, 11:35pm; the New Radio 2 Arts Show is on Fridays, 10pm; Winkleman presents Strictly It Takes Two, weekdays, BBC2, 6:30pm, and the Sunday night results show, BBC1, 7:30pm

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 16 October, 2010