Kathryn Ryan takes on hardest job in radio

We have hardly begun our interview when Kathryn Ryan tries to wrest control of the tape recorder and turn it back on me.

It is enough that National Radio's new Nine to Noon host has organised the photo shoot I was expecting to coordinate and sent the photographer home by the time I arrived.

She's perched at the bar of her favourite Japanese restaurant, raring to go, with a glass of sauvignon in hand, her new current-affairs-presenter haircut shiny and luscious, and her eyes lingering, in a significant kind of way, on the handsome Japanese waiter

"The idea is growing on me that you come along here to interview me, and I interview you instead," Ryan laughs. "You end up revealing yourself in a two-page spread."

Yes, I say, I'm sure she'd like that.

National Radio's former political editor is intensely private, though in a bossy, type-A-personality kind of way.

But as of tomorrow she will share her inner musings with a quarter of a million fiercely critical listeners in one of journalism's highest-profile, most demanding roles.

And the woman the audience will discover might surprise them.

Ryan is known for her intensity, for that booming, authoritative voice that, when she gets going, has a tendency to sound like a staccato Helen Clark. Her intellect is fearsome. Her approach fearless.

But she is also extremely warm and hysterically funny. Aged eight she was the first person to enter a bird-man competition, leaping into Otago harbour while hanging on to two open umbrellas tied together with a curtain.

Unlike her predecessors, she is single, childless and prone to the odd bubbly-fuelled late night - and she's probably just a little bit naughtier.

I first met Ryan nine years ago when I started at Napier's Daily Telegraph. Her warning on the downsides of provincial life was unforgettable. "You need to understand that your sex life is over unless you are prepared to lower your standards," she said.

Still only in her 20s, she would bring the newsroom to a halt as we listened in embarrassed awe to one of her extraordinary interviews. Back then most provincial reporters quaked at the thought of putting a city councillor on the spot. Ryan would hold senior Cabinet ministers to account.

Once I told her she could be the next Kim Hill - queen of the Nine to Noon slot at the time.

"I don't think of myself as the new Kim Hill," she says today. "Kim is a broadcasting genius. And, I've learned a tremendous amount about interviewing from her.

"But I don't sit there thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm going to do the job that she once did so very well and that others have done very well too.'

"I've always loved interviewing and I never saw it as an information-gathering exercise. I always saw it as a bit of a duel.

"So you might well have said I can be the next Kim Hill and we all might have laughed about it. But actually, even then, it was absolutely a direction I dreamed and hoped I might be heading in."

And in a serendipitous twist, the Daily Telegraph made that dream happen. Ryan, who refused to beat up stories and stormed around the newsroom with her ample bosom preceding her, proved too much of a challenge for the bosses, who offered her a redundancy package following the formation of Hawke's Bay Today in 1998.

She was given a choice: jump, or run the community advertiser. The newsroom was shocked. People who could barely string together a story about drains were kept on. Ryan flew to Wellington, bought a new suit, applied for a job at Radio New Zealand and two weeks later announced that she had scored a senior reporting job and was moving to the capital.

Her rise in public radio's ranks was meteoric. Within months she was in the press gallery and within 2 1/2 years was political editor.

Three years later she is following Linda Clark, Kim Hill, Maggie Barry and Sharon Crosbie into one of the most prestigious jobs in journalism.

At 38, Ryan, is looking better than she has in years. The shoulder-length blonde hair has been cut into a soft, feminine shape. She has beautiful black boots on. She has always loved shoes. "You never have to say to anybody, 'Do my feet look fat in these?"'

She is relaxed. She is warm. And, despite my best efforts, she is remarkably sober. Not that the interview hasn't begun to degenerate after the fourth glass of wine.

"This is like Jack Kerouac or something," she laughs.

"You should just write this long, rambling story like, 'I started this interview and we both got pissed and here's where we ended up'."

No, I started this interview and I got pissed. She just started talking faster. "Ha!" she shrieks. "You should write it that way. Because that actually is an insight into my personality. I take people out and I get them sozzled."

While the rest crumple, Ryan has that remarkable ability to get both more boisterous and more articulate as she drinks. Holding court over a glass of bubbly is part of her character, thankfully something she's not trying to gloss over in order to impress her older audience.

After training as a teacher, gaining a BA in education and history, managing a sports centre for six years, playing representative cricket, and retraining as a journalist at 27, there is no doubt in her mind that she should do this job.

Ask why she was chosen for it over higher-profile applicants (Anita McNaught and Sean Plunket were said to be on the list) and she says it's because she had more of what it needed than the others.

Ask about criticism that she's too intense for the more magaziney aspects of the show and she says, "Just wait and see. It's a completely different ball game. And that's the whole point of wanting to move into the role.

"Look, we're talking about a whole range of things that I know and love. Like good food and wine, movies and books. I'm really looking forward to talking about and enjoying those things again, because I do really enjoy them.

"And I'm looking forward to laughing. I think you as someone who knows me better than most people appreciate that I actually have a personality. It's not about saving the world. It's not about advocating for this or that or changing this or that. I'm the sort of journalist who just knows and loves understanding and enjoying people and their personalities."

But she also has a fierceness at times that could be difficult to turn off. "Why can't I? Well I might turn it off in the book review," she laughs. "I'm not going to unleash it on [cooking correspondent] Ray McVinnie! What I'm doing in a four-minute dispatch from Parliament is not what I'm doing here. That celebration of human nature.

"The good, the bad, the ugly and the funny is what I'm really looking forward to. It's about pure broadcasting, it's about the art of interviewing and the art of connecting with an interviewee and the art of connecting the interviewee with the listener.

"In many ways it has virtually no comparison with what I've been doing except I come into it with quite a strong body of knowledge and some interviewing skills."

You would think she would be nervous. Linda Clark was ripped to shreds in her first few weeks for sounding too whiney and girly, after the more brutal and husky Hill.

But Ryan rejects the idea. "Nervous always suggests to me that you're kind of dithery or you're doubting. What it overly suggests to me is that your performance is being impaired and as a broadcaster you can't let that happen. I try and say to people, 'Look, I'm just acutely aware.'

"And that's the best word I can come up with. I mean this is my whole life at the moment. Just being aware of how much this matters and getting it right. The problem with the word nervous is that it suggests the kind of things that I don't feel."

Will she sleep tonight then? "Probably not."

In a parting interview, Linda Clark, mother of twin preschoolers, said she could no longer handle the 55-hour working weeks and described the person for the job as a "workaholic, who has no children and needs very little sleep".

Ryan confesses to a wry smile when she heard that. "I work very hard. I've got by on very little sleep, though I would like some more. And I clearly have no children."

Is that a problem, given so many of her audience are mums at home?

"So you can't do motherly issues if you're not a mother? Well, I think you can. For the same reason that you can do interviews on just about anything that you haven't personally experienced ... what people want to get out of this programme is the whole gamut of life. They don't necessarily want their life reflected back at them. They certainly want to engage their brains.

"I haven't been through a torture camp either but I still think I can probably conduct an interview with someone who has. Because really the interview is about them."

Will she miss Parliament? "Not that much, actually."

Nor will she miss politicians.

"They are flawed people. It's a strange thing to want to do with your life. But that's not to negate the fact that it's quite important that someone wants to do it. I'm just a bit worried at the moment that not enough people with the right skills and abilities to tackle some of the issues that need to be tackled on behalf of the rest of us are getting involved with politics."

So tomorrow she goes to air with few changes to the format. There will be an expanded legal team, including employment and family-law experts along with the constitutional and media commentators. She is introducing Middle East and African correspondents and cutting back to fortnightly the interviews with European correspondent John Pagani.

Ryan's not keen to stamp too much of anything new on the show. "We are dealing with a much-loved product which is very well developed and what I've got to do is make people feel relaxed that no one is going to mess with their programme."

They are a tough audience. Smart and unforgiving. She could give 10 fantastic interviews and be hanged for one not-so-good one. It's the toughest job in journalism I suggest.

"Well that always appeals," she says. "I like being challenged."

She tells me about the bird-man contest. And suddenly so much about Kathryn Ryan starts to make sense. I can imagine her confidently tying the curtain to the umbrellas and pouring scorn on anyone who told her the contraption wouldn't work.

"I'm not afraid of taking risks. I'm not afraid of leaping off cliffs," she says.

And, maybe it's the wine, but I forget to ask whether she actually did fly.