I have worked with some brilliant broadcasters in my time, particularly at the BBC, who are

experts at answering questions in such a way as to steer the conversation towards territory

that they are comfortable with and confident in, even if that means not

directly answering the question that they've been asked. And also in such a way that anyone

listening or watching would not be able to tell that that's what they're doing. This is such an

important skill in broadcasting, but it is applicable to any other line of work or any other area of life.

And here to explain more is the BBC's master communicator, Ros Atkins.

And this was the bit where I nudged my wife in bed and said, I've been telling you this for ages.

We need to refer us back to what we chatted about at the beginning, which you told me 10 years ago,

because I remember you showing me a clip of you on outside source asking a correspondent,

a certain question that she didn't want to answer. I can picture the expression on your face, actually. It's so

vivid in my mind. And she decided she didn't want to answer that, would go off on a tangent,

but did it so deftly you never would have noticed. I think this is such a valuable skill. And just

before you answer it, I think, you know, politicians do this, but they do this bluntly,

quite crudely a lot of the time. You know, their last question, they go, what I'm focused on is delivering jobs, so they don't even pretend that they're answering the question. But if you can do it sleekly in a way that at least gives the impression that you're doing it, this, that's much better. I mean, there are a number of people who I see on the TV, brilliant broadcasters who do this very well.

And I don't think, I don't have any problem with it, because to use the example that you're remembering, the question I asked of my colleague was definitely not the best question I could have asked her.

And we didn't have very much time in that broadcast for her to get

across the stuff that mattered. And so she, it wasn't rude. She just said, you know, she gave a very

brief answer to the question I had asked and then said, another thing I would say, Ros. And then she was

onto onto something else. And I think that this is particularly useful when we are in work environments

where we're asked questions where we may not have a huge amount of detail. I should say first and

foremost, you should acknowledge that. But journalists a lot of the time will say things like,

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