La Dennis. The legend. She's doing the slot today which is normally handled by Yalda Hakim on a Friday.
Naga Munchetty did the 5am today instead of Martine.
And Kasia Madera will be doing World News Today for the rest of this month, according to her agent yesterday.
From what I've read, Martine Dennis is one of those very long-serving anchors at BBC, in the same league as people like Nik Gowing, the ex presenter Nisha Pillai, Peter Dobbie and some others hence the legend title eh?
Anyway, I seem to always find her having a weird rhythm in the way she talks. And she also likes to tilt her head rather acutely to one side of the screen and then to the other side. She has her unique way of reading sentences.
Kasia presenting WNT is new to me. I think Zeinab probably is heading somewhere for on-location Hardtalk.
Martine never says 'hello' or 'welcome' to the audience either from what I've seen.
I'm not too sure about "hello", she might have said it though. Her lines are usually brief anyways.
I recall she always says " I'm Martine Dennis, and these are the headlines this morning:..." Sometimes she seems to smile at the closing of the news (not so much to the camera) despite the news being a bit more depressing at times.
She has a way of filling in time with her own words for those impromptu breaking news stuff. Seems to be building up some momentum, but usually when she delivers the final punch, the news isn't as dramatic as she hypes it and it goes to commercial shortly after.
She also has a way of minor script alteration I believe. Like sometimes you have a person shown on the screen, she would chip in a liner like "Now, this woman.. She's actually the head of the XYZ Corporation. Now, she's now in Brussels and she's ...". Anyway, this tactic isn't used by her alone though, Aaron Heselhurst also likes to emphasize people in focus this way, like "Now this man here. (gesturing to the LCD image of tht guy, with his infamous swinging arms. Everytime he does this, I feel like I'm back in school where a teacher is showing stuff to us on the blackboard.)