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We all know that feeling when a colleague gets a plum assignment, while we're slumming it in some foxhole. And tensions at the BBC between the economics editor, Stephanie Flanders, 41, and business editor, Robert Peston, 49, are sizzling.
Last week while Flanders was dispatched to the remote Scottish Highlands for an eve-of-Budget 10 o'clock BBC News report, Peston popped up on the Today programme talking about the IMF - her terrain. Although both Peston and Flanders vied for airtime on the big day, a year ago it was all so different.
Flanders, the thinking man's crumpet, got Evan Davis's old job as BBC economics editor (the first woman to become one of the BBC's senior editors), but almost immediately took maternity leave for her second child - and Peston's stock subsequently went through the roof during the financial belly-up later that October.
Flanders had missed the story of the decade. "I did have a wobble about whether I had to get back to work. But my daughter was only two months old," she protests.
However, don't count her out yet. Flanders is one brilliant, tough bird. And despite their current work wars, let's face it, they have so much in common. Precocious children from Left-wing families, they both went to Balliol and began their careers at the FT.
In their fight for supremacy as the BBC's trusted voice of the economy, here we compare their market value.
ROBERT
USP: Jerky idiosyncratic manner and strangulated diction (masking a stammer). Admits on-screen delivery lacks polish but refuses to become a broadcasting clone.
Scoops: Told us at 8.30pm on Thursday, 13 September 2007 that Northern Rock was bust, later winning the Royal Television Society's Television Journalism Award for Scoop of the Year. His book Who Runs Britain? exposes the corporate delusion that led to the Northern Rock debacle.
Sex factor: Women love his glittery dark stare and puritan streak (he always hated the drinking culture of the City).
Posh factor: Liberal Jewish. Father is Maurice Peston, now Lord Peston of Mile End, who founded the economics department at Queen Mary College, London; advised Labour ministers. Robert was sent to his local comprehensive in Crouch End. "I was a horribly precocious, slightly weird little boy." Got distracted by hedonism and girls at Balliol, so missed a first — "it made me see I probably wasn't as clever as I thought".
Career: Briefly a stockbroker. Print journalist for 24 years — financial and political editor of the Financial Times, City editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Joined the BBC three years ago.
Wardrobe: Slightly nerdy in pinstripes and open-collar pink shirt.
Most likely to say: "Many of the bankers who created this poison trousered massive rewards; we are paying the price."
Married to: writer and film-maker Siân Busby. They have a 10-year-old son, Max (Siân has a son from a previous marriage).
Hobbies: ballet, John Buchan novels, Arsenal FC and Seventies pop music.
Enemy: Thorn in the side of Alistair Darling, a "market menace" for many greedy hedge funders. Also loathed by Alastair Campbell, who once spat out: "Another question from the Peston school of smart-arse journalism."
Workaholic factor: Broadcasts from his garden shed in Muswell Hill. Up at 6.15am, monitors news, writes blog (a million readers) and prepares for Today programme.
STEPHANIE
USP: An upmarket Carol Vorderman, described as having one of the most formidable brains at the BBC. It's said The West Wing's CJ is modelled on her (she previously worked as a Clinton adviser).
Scoops: Outed herself as an unmarried mum on Newsnight in 2007 when grilling David Cameron on tax credits for married couples — "I'm not married. I have a small child. Are you saying the Conservative Party would like me to be married?" Went overnight from being a cerebral brainbox to the most notorious woman on TV.
Sex factor: Foxy, dominatrix bluestocking with impossibly long legs. Middle-aged men write poems to her.
Posh factor: Boho theatrical. She's the daughter of Michael Flanders — one half of Flanders and Swann, of Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud fame — and Claudia Cockburn. Novelists Alec and Evelyn Waugh are distant relatives. Her sister is US-based journalist Laura Flanders, while writers Alexander, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn are her uncles.
Career: St Paul's School for Girls, Oxford, then Harvard. A leader writer with the FT, she moved to America, becoming a speech writer and senior adviser at the US Treasury and a reporter for the New York Times. Economics editor for Newsnight in 2002. BBC economics editor since February 2008.
Wardrobe: Prada and sharp separates. Pageboy hair; fabulous lipstick.
Most likely to say: "I didn't ever dream of walking down the aisle in a white dress."
Lives: Shepherd's Bush with journalist John Arlidge and children Stanley and Claudia. Their relationship was tested when Stanley was born with a hole in his heart.
Hobbies: Collects jokes involving animals and/or inanimate objects going into bars.
Enemies: After Cameron-gate, the Mail on Sunday lambasted her "smug, superior BBC liberal's face".
Workaholic factor: Lives five minutes from BBC Centre. Cycles home in between six and 10 o'clock news to bath/feed children. Often covered in cycle oil. Took her breast pump to the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Reader views (14)
"Foxy, dominatrix bluestocking with impossibly long legs. Middle-aged men write poems to her."
You mean kinky dominatrix-loving men of the kind that is frequently found within the ranks of our MPs.
The reason that nature has made females smaller and weaker than males is to keep them less equal than the males so that they are dependent on them for protection, etc. In that way, the females are forced into providing a father for their children and thus the family is maintained.
But as soon as females become finacially independent or are provided for by the state, they very often become single mothers or don't have children and the family, society's foundation, goes to hell. No one to look after the elderly, no father figure for the children results in the situation that we now face - abandoned old people and neglected children and a general lowering of standards.
However, these selfish imperceptive women blind themselves to the effects of their behaviour on society because they prefer being in charge of their lives.
But as society collapses the welfare state goes and the well-paid jobs for women go, and females find themselves back where they were.
- Brenda Blessed, Plymouth, England
This is the same Flanders who petulantly asked Cameron why she should get married for a financial incentive proposed by the Tories. A proposal to combat the break down of the family environment a major cause for youth crime. She's a real class act.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
With a few exceptions, the BBC news always has a left wing bias.
It was Blairs broadcasting company until he left.
- Vanessa Morris, Richmond Surrey
Like most economic 'experts', both of them are wiseacres, more image than subtance, who respond to events in the usual predictable ways instead of anticipating and then providing a genuinely insightful take on them.
- Eric Legge, Ongar, Essex
Peston is truly dreadful - if you actually listen to some of his journalism you would actually believe that the world was going to end tomorrow and the only person to save us would be Winston Churchill or FDR and a "New Deal" plan. This is a totally different set of circumstances Peston to the 1930's so stop the pointless comparison. At times he has verged on irresponsible when putting his unjustified opinions ahead of actual fact and but dressing them up in his ever-so-superior patronising voice. No - I am not a big fan!!
- Andrew, St. John's Wood, London
You forget to mention she is best mates with Ed Balls - now that is a fabulous credential.
Do the BBC have any journalists who are not from left wing elitist back grounds?
- Objective Bbc, London
There is a considerable number of people in this world that firmly believe Robert Preston contributed more to the panic state of the economic world than you might care to imagine. Not a guy to listen to or even take notice of if you have a modicum of intelligence!! If you want to stop your son or daughter entering into financial journalism reference to the said Mr. Preston might just do the trick.
- Pecomo, Dubai UAE
I don't think I like crumpets
- Bob Jones, London
I remember the year (late 2007) before the bank crisis, Stephanie predicting on Newsnight that things wouldn't get too bad so her maternity leave was convenient for her in avoiding scrutiny of her forecasting abilities late last year! Peston I think has an "I told you so" intonation, but like Flanders he didn't tell us so in advance that the banking system would nearly collapse.
- Mike, london
Both of them are slaves to the kind of economic thinking that has got this country into the the current mess - cheap money, borrowing, Government "investment" (was there ever such a misplaced term?) - but I do agree with Ian Davies that Peston's delivery is excruciatingly bad.
He is like the bore in the pub who insists on telling a funny story but just cannot spit his sentences out or get to the punchline. When he is being "interviewed' by a BBC colleague on Newsnight or whatever, you can even feel (and sometimes see) their own boredom and impatience rising to the surface.
- Steve, London, UK
Stephanie Flanders, 'the thinking mans crumpet', isn't that the truth !!!!
- Dave Morris, Sunderland
If her career was so important to her, then she should have opted either to employ a nanny and get back to work or not become a mother!!!
In my day you just had to make that choice because we had to support our own family, two children was about all the ordinary couples could afford, there were no hand outs from the GOVERNMENT to help us through the bad times!
We have become a Nanny State and also OVERPOPULATED thus, in my opinion contributing far too much to Global Warming.
David Attenborough is quite right, we should be restricting our family size - this could be easily controlled by taking away so many benefits as well as withdrawing free IVF treatment to any women who is single or with a partner of either sex i.e not married. I know it sounds awaul but the population is in jeapordy it's time we brought in certain restrictions... Besides it would help reduce the governments debt..
- Sam, Stonehouse, England
I absolutely cannot bear to listen to Robert Peston on the TV or radio, I find his delivery to be excruciatingly awful. I can never focus on what the story is about as I cringe at his dreadful tone, long gaps and d-r-a-w-n out words. I just have to switch him off or switch channels. I'm sure his business knowledge is encyclopaedic but with such awful delivery I'd take anyone else over Robert in delivering this information to us.
- Ian Davies, London, UK
I think there are more than enough economic stories to cover for both of them.
- Bloke, London
