Emily Maitlis misses Sarah Palin

Many media commentators had (and have) the knives out for Sarah Palin. But Emily Maitlis (pictured, the presenter of BBC 2's Newsnight, appears spellbound by the Alaskan governor and former V-P Republican candidate.

"Even now, I cannot quite get enough of her," she writes in this week's Spectator. "I want to watch her origami coiffed hair. I want to be winked at and I want to believe she rules Alaska with one hand while changing five nappies with the other. As someone who works with a relentless phalanx of TV screens throughout my 12-hour shifts, I can put it no more poignantly than this: I turn the sound up when she comes on."

However, she concedes that her fondness is largely down to the fact that the "pitbull in lipstick" is such a great story. "I was in Minneapolis when Sarah Palin made her maiden speech to the Republican party faithful,"she adds, "and it was red meat to ravenous lions."

Still, as Maitlis knows, it is unlikely Palin will now content herself with a mere governorship now. She adds: "She has not ruled herself out of running next time and a little bit of me-OK, huge great swathes of me - is desperate to see her back."