I'm no pretty-faced bimbo

Lara Logan is laughing her head off. She is in the green room at GMTV on the South Bank surrounded by piles of newspapers, most of them full of stories about her.

They contain the so-called facts that she was bullied at school for being too clever, used her body to get her first break in newspapers, is a "bimbo who can't hack it" in her chosen field of war reporting (she scrunches up the offending article and tosses it in the bin), wears full make-up while on assignment in the world's war zones, was so flirtatious that a member of the US Marines in Afghanistan complained about her ("that story is rubbish!"), and she wore a red jacket to ensure being spotted and arrested while filming refugees in Calais as they tried to board a train bound for Britain.

The only story not to make her guffaw is the one saying she has just "jumped 15 rungs on the career ladder" now that the American network CBS has poached her for 60 Minutes Two, a spin-off of the current-affairs programme hosted by the veteran newsreader Dan Rather. She will become a household name in America, commanding a salary of £500,000.

Is she up to the challenge? "It's the most sought-after position in the world in my business, it's huge," she says. "No one in America would challenge my credibility now I have that job."

She wipes her immaculate fingers on her trouser suit to get rid of the newsprint. "OK," she says. "Let's start with the one about the fact that I got my first job by wearing a miniskirt and low-cut top. It was my home town of Durban in South Africa, it's extremely hot, it's next to the beach, everyone wears T-shirts, and let's not forget I was 17.

"And as for the accusation that I wore a red jacket in order to get arrested, come on! I was interviewing men who were Kurds, genuine asylum seekers who would be executed if they returned to Iraq. The security guards saw us and the Kurds got away, but I was left with my cameraman in open ground, with no cover whatsoever. I was in a restricted area, I had climbed a 12ft fence, if I'd been wearing rabbit fur and hopping, I would still have been spotted." A member of the studio crew slopes in to get some coffee; as he leaves, he comments over his shoulder, "I didn't recognise you out of your swimsuit. I bet they like a bit of fluff out there." She gets this all the time. Just because she did some modelling as a teenager in order to raise enough money to buy a car. Her second name might as well be Croft.

Yes, she is beautiful, only 31, and married to Jason Siemon, an American-born basketball player with the Milton Keynes Lions. She admits that sometimes she uses her looks to get a story - in many Third World countries the belief that women are harmless means female reporters can often pass unnoticed at checkpoints - but denies she courts publicity. She recently turned down a lucrative offer to pose for Hello!; instead, she wrote a piece for the magazine about Aids.

She says the story of a Marine complaining about her, that she somehow "brushed against him", never took place. "I didn't leave in disgust, I didn't storm off the base, it never happened. We were in a canteen; they asked if I could wear sleeves, and they asked the men not to wear shorts. I always cover up to respect the culture of the country I'm in," she says.

The intimation that because a woman is good-looking she shouldn't be taken seriously makes her fume. She would blend in very well in the front row at Prada, but Logan is tougher than she looks.

"Anyone who thinks you can work your way through this business because of what you look like has no concept of what they're talking about, it's ridiculous. I'm not an MTV presenter; if you're not good at this job, you don't survive." On 11 September she says she was itching to get on the first plane to Afghanistan. "The next morning I was nagging the news editor, I was like a caged animal, I knew I could get into the country. I left on the Wednesday and was with the Northern Alliance soldiers by the following Monday." She says the reason she is so passionate about her work is because she grew up in South Africa. She knew people were dying on her doorstep.

"I had to do something about it. Even at university I would miss lectures to sneak into the townships to get a story - this was a very dangerous place for a white woman to be. I remember I saw a man who had been macheted to death lying in front of me. One of my assignments was to count the bodies in the morgue at the weekend.

"My mum used to tell me I had to toughen up, but I haven't. It still affects me. I've been in this job for 14 years; I've been doing hard news since I was 17 - people conveniently forget that."

Before she joined GMTV two years ago she had been working as a freelance for CBS and Reuters, and had covered conflicts in Angola, Zimbabwe, Za're. But even the fact that last year she won two radio awards for her reports from the Middle East doesn't seem to lay to rest the belief that image is everything.

She finds the accusation that she always wears full make-up as well as a flak jacket particularly annoying. "I don't ever have time to put make-up on. Sometimes I've spent the night lying on a hard floor, with no running water," she says, despairing. "I might put on some lip gloss and comb my hair, but I'm on camera, for goodness sake - even the men wear make-up for TV. I once saw a Canadian reporter standing next to dead bodies in South Africa making up his face. I was shocked at that."

She can take comfort in the fact that all female war reporters have taken flak in their time. The BBC's rising new star, Jacky Rowland, despite having made her name by being in a Serb prison on the day Nato bombed it, is plagued by the adjectives "blonde" and "leggy", and was criticised by Kate Adie for having "a cute face, cute bottom and nothing else in between".

But Lara is taking all the attention with good humour, and looking forward to starting her new job in the summer ("Sixty Minutes Lite", one newspaper reporter told me unkindly). She will be based in London and continue to fly at a moment's notice to trouble spots around the world. She says her husband is resigned to the fact she won't be home much and that her job comes first, at least until they start a family. "He was so happy for me when I went to Afghanistan; of course, he worries about me as well. We've been laughing at some of the things the papers are saying. There's nothing else you can do."

She agrees that women in her line of work can't win. If you are older and unattractive, you are also likely to be sidelined. "For now, I'm a bimbo, and I can look forward in a few years' time to being ignored. I can live with that as long as nobody stops me doing my job."