Stalker: BBC's Emily is new victim

The timing was almost spooky. On the first day of the Appeal Court's hearing in the Jill Dando murder case, police this week said that another pretty young BBC newscaster was allegedly being pestered by a stalker.

Blonde, bright Emily Maitlis, presenter of BBC London's news bulletins, is said to be "the next Jill Dando" in terms of viewer appeal. She is so hot a talent that the BBC has promoted her hard, allowing the camera lens to linger on her leggy looks.

Given the week's troubling legal developments, however, just how wise is any female newscaster to seek professional success so hungrily? A student has been remanded in custody by magistrates in Shepherd's Bush. He was charged under Section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1996. For Emily Maitlis, meanwhile, the comfortable routines of daily broadcasting have been cast aside in a turmoil of media interest and personal anxiety.

Maitlis, aged " thirtysomething", arrived at the BBC last September when the corporation revamped boring old Newsroom South East and went all space age, with a white metallic set and no chairs. Emily - part Fulham Yaah, part something groovier - was an instant hit. With her large, bewitching eyes and her flamboyant clothes, she strolls around the studio like a grazing giraffe. On screen she is dramatic, just a little dangerous - one moment throwing her head to the right to show a longnecked silhouette, at the next, lowering her chin to gaze dolefully at the camera. Off screen? Modest and rather sweetly uncertain.

The Evening Standard has known about her stalking fears for several weeks but agreed not to report them. When we met in May she quietly let slip that there was trouble with an unwanted admirer, but she preferred not to talk about it. As a TV anchor just starting to hit the big time she was aware of the difficulty of balancing privacy with a higher public profile. "I don't want stories about 'Emily's stalker hell'," she said.

She is only 5ft 8in but the heels make her look a good six foot. For our interview she wore a chocolate leather jacket, slender jeans and a pair of backless slipons with stilettos long enough to spear a Manhattan club sandwich. The new LDN bulletins have been almost aggressively hip. The men have been allowed to throw away their ties, and Maitlis has revolutionised the female newscaster's wardrobe.

"The idea is that I don't just wear 'work clothes' of matching jackets and trousers," she said. "I put on stuff that breaks down the barriers, stuff that I could just as happily wear when popping out for a sandwich. I haven't gone in for thigh-high boots and I don't think I will. And I couldn't wear jeans for the programme or too short a skirt. You can't do beige on this set, either. It washes out."

She said she had not worn plunging necklines because she did not have the tan for them, and she chooses clothes only when she has judged the tone of the day's news. She wore leopardskin print trousers on a light news day, but after something like the Potters Bar rail crash - which she says affected her deeply, as did the Ladbroke Grove disaster which she reported for Sky - she is careful not to wear anything too jaunty. "You want to remember who you're talking to. You have to be careful the fashion doesn't take over."

Brought up in a comfortable middle-class home - her father is a scientist - she was educated at a "posh comp" in Sheffield. After Queen's College, Cambridge, Maitlis flew to Hong Kong in 1992 for a six-month adventure - and stayed six years. She got a break doing radio, then television. On only her second TV assignment she filmed a documentary in Cambodia. When the Chinese took back Hong Kong in 1997 Maitlis stayed in the region - along with her friend, ITN star Andrea Catherwood - because there was another big story: the taming of Asia's "tiger" economies. She's a business specialist who speaks several languages (including passable Mandarin) and proved herself a competent, popular field operative.

In 1998 she returned to London to work for Sky. The BBC swooped last summer and now her face is not only on our telly screens most nights but, in a distinctly American-style ad campaign, is also plastered all over London doubledeckers. "I've heard all the jokes about looking like the back end of a bus," she laughed.

"We're trying to explore new ways of doing the news. This programme has got a younger, pacier feel. I know a lot of young people in the City who watch our early-evening programme at their desks." With her uppermiddle class vowels and her hourglass figure Maitlis has become a Square Mile pin-up. As her fame has grown, people have started coming up to her in the street, striking up random conversations.

Maitlis is still at that early stage of public acclaim when she is anxious to be polite and helpful, but the sorry fact is that, since Jill Dando's murder, female newscasters have had to watch what they say. So she will admit that she jogs, goes to the gym, and for holidays goes hiking to the Rockies and the Dolomites. She is quite a foodie and apparently "loves to cook". But of her recently-acquired husband, a banker, she will disclose little more than the fact that they live in west London and do not yet have children. The camera loves her and she loves it right back, though not without an attractive dash of self-mockery. She once asked the Israeli politician Ehud Barak if he was "trying to save his own bacon". "Only a good Jewish girl could ask a question like that!" she smiled.