George Alagiah: Six appeal

When I mentioned to people that I was going to interview George Alagiah, everyone, without exception, said what a good thing they thought he was – "nice" was a popular word, and I got one: "Ooh, he's lovely." The other term that cropped up was "decent", which seems to imply that people like him not just because of his smile, but because of what they perceive as his integrity. There aren't many figures in public life who inspire that sort of response, and his popularity is even more striking when you consider that, as far as most people are concerned, Alagiah has been out of sight for the past year, as anchorman for the evening news on BBC 4.

When Alagiah took that job, there were suggestions that he had been sidelined, packed off to digital Siberia. But it became clear just how wide of the mark that idea was in the autumn, when his next move was announced. Next Monday, he becomes the face of the six o'clock news on BBC1, or one of the faces: he will be doing a double act with Sophie Raworth, who has been promoted from the Breakfast programme.

For Alagiah, the contrast could hardly be starker: from the serious agenda and micro-audiences of digital TV, to the most-watched programme in Britain. It seems a departure for somebody audiences associate with dark and difficult news stories: as the BBC's Africa specialist, he reported on the disastrous American intervention in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda, before a four-year posting to South Africa.

But Alagiah argues that there is a fundamental continuity: "If you look back at my career, I've spent most of it in foreign, international news, doing what I think were very challenging stories. And there was an easy way to do those stories, which was to have a lot of stick-babies, a lot of Africans running wild. And there was a challenging way, which was to try to explain it, explain what was going on, which I think I did." The six o'clock news, he feels, is an extension of that idea: "The job is the same – that is, to explain complex things in a fairly accessible way. But the subject matter changes. There will be more domestic stories than I've done in the past year; and we're doing it at a time, six o'clock, when people have lots of other things going on."

That's surely the rub, though: when you have to compete with soaps and The Simpsons and the clatter of teatime plates, there is inevitably some loss of complexity, some narrowing of focus. And Alagiah's concerns have always had an international slant: born in Sri Lanka, brought up in Ghana and England, and now a British citizen, he says that he has lived his whole life as a migrant. Before he joined the BBC, he was the Africa editor of the now-defunct magazine South, which was founded on the notion: "An unequal world is an unstable world." Is he bothered by the parochialism of mainstream television news?

"It would be wrong for people to see me as someone who only thinks international," he says. He points out that, before BBC4, he had a stint on the one o'clock news on BBC1, "which is hardly what you'd call a showcase for international journalism."

He acknowledges that television is a "front-page medium"; every day, there are five or six "must-do" stories, he says. "We're not that whimsical – no news organisation can afford to be that whimsical. So there is the core that you've got to get right and do properly, and that's quite often domestic, quite often politics. I think that what marks out one bulletin from the other, one channel from the other, is what you do with what is left."

As examples of what can be done, he points to the six o'clock news's "Special Report" slot, in which reporters have a few minutes to talk about issues that are not so "time-urgent". He also praises the "Your Politics" strand, which looks at the effects of politics on the lives of people, as "the way to go". And he expresses complete faith in the editor of the six o'clock news, Jay Hunt, and her team: "I haven't met a group of people more dedicated to the notion that they ought to unpick everything and work out how best to say it."

There is a slight sense that Alagiah is watching what he says; the flow is not, perhaps, helped by the presence of a BBC press person with tape-recorder and notebook. I don't know whether such watchdogging is standard procedure for people who have reached the dizzy heights of the six o'clock news, or a response to Alagiah's bad interview experience last year when he was quoted in the Radio Times as criticising the rolling-news operation of BBC News 24 – a criticism that seemed incongruous given that he began his presenting career on the channel. (Alagiah denied the remarks; the Radio Times stood by the story.)

It's certainly noticeable how much more relaxed he is once my tape recorder is turned off. He is not entirely at home with the idea of being a media figure, with the notion of the newscaster as star. But he is a star – everybody knows him and likes him – which is why the BBC has given him this job. "Well, yes," he says. "I've been in people's living-rooms for 14 years. I don't want to blow my own trumpet too much, but I've tried very hard at what I do. I wasn't a natural at TV, so I told myself that I wasn't simply going to whack on a load of pictures; that I'd try to do what I used to do in print – that is, always explain but do it through pictures. I'd like to think that that's paid off, that if people do trust me, if people do like me, it's because I've achieved something."

He says that he wants to be able to speak with authority on the news, to know what he's talking about: "I don't want to be just the lips." His other aim is "to be the trusted friend, who, as we know, is not simply one who gives the good news."

This idea of the newsreader as somebody to trust recurs when I ask him about the role of BBC1 in the multi-channel age – after all, when he started at BBC4, he predicted that in the next few years digital TV would take off. He hasn't changed his mind, but says: "Almost as a consequence of that, I think, there will be almost a growing role – you may not see it day by day, but on big events there'll be a growing role for that kind of national experience: the trusted figure to explain something."