How is the economy doing now?

We're at an interesting point in that the recovery is not doing as well as everyone hoped, though everyone's hoping that was the result of bad weather. My big fear is that we'll have slow growth that just fails to chip away at unemployment and companies that are hanging on now go to the wall. That slow pain is more of a risk than a dramatic double dip.

Do you have a sense of responsibility that you shouldn't talk down the recovery?

I do feel quite conscious about it. Businessmen are often quite aggressive on the subject. Robert Peston came in for a lot of criticism around Northern Rock, but I don't think we can be in a position of employing happy talk, covering bad news up in an Orwellian sense. But I do try to push back a little against the journalistic bias in favour of bad news. There's an inbuilt problem in the current debate. The victims of cuts are very immediate and visible. That is a much easier thing to report than the businessman who doesn't exist yet but in a year's time will be able to employ people because there's more stability in the financial markets or for whatever reason. All we know about is the downside.

Should analysts such as yourself have issued earlier and clearer warnings about the state of the economy?

Evan Davis and I both say that we felt like we'd done a lot of pieces making clear that the housing market was overvalued and the bubble would inevitably burst. But against our couple of minutes on the Ten O'Clock News you had hours and hours of house porn, Relocation, Relocation and the general, society-wide boom. Isaac Newton got caught up in the South Sea Bubble. It may sound trite, but if the man who discovered gravity didn't know that things go down as well as up...

You started in journalism as a leader writer at the Financial Times. Did you not consider a traineeship at the Basingstoke Advertiser?

Having had a lot of journalists in my family, I certainly knew about that route, but I was keen to go in as a specialist. I wasn't attracted to traditional reporting.

Did you always want to go into broadcasting?

No, actually I hadn't thought about it. I guess I just wanted to do a job that was about explaining the political economy. After the FT I worked for the US treasury secretary. I was mainly writing his speeches, which was about making difficult things accessible.

Should salaries be subject to the free market in state-funded TV?

Without making any comments about particular salaries at the BBC, I'm not sure I'd give the economist's stamp of approval to these constant appeals to market forces, which aren't entirely relevant at the BBC.

Some departments of the BBC are being moved out to the provinces. Would you feel comfortable living in Salford?

I think I would have a very difficult conversation with my partner and my kids about it, but I can see the logic of it.

There is a radical tradition of journalism in your family – your grandfather, Claud Cockburn, was a famous communist journalist. Is that something you felt part of when you were growing up?

My father [the singer and songwriter Michael Flanders] was probably quite traditional, left-of-centre, public-school Labour. In that sense, I didn't get a great sense of radicalism from him. I'm certainly less ideological than most of my family. I'm the black sheep because I have been very establishment, working for the FT, the BBC and the US Treasury. But I also like to think that part of the Cockburn tradition is about trying to inform people about the world.

Your father died when you were six. Do you remember him?

I don't have strong memories but they've been influenced by listening to the CDs and watching some of the footage that survives.

Do you think not having a father for most of your childhood made you more independent?

I might be more independent. When you see people who have close relationships with their fathers, you think: gosh, I wonder what that would be like? But it's never been part of my consciousness. I don't know, I haven't had a lot of therapy. Perhaps that's to come.

You went to St Paul's, the independent girls' school, in west London, and then Oxford. Do you think privilege has too much bearing on education and achievement?

I don't think you'll find anyone who's comfortable with the idea that the 6%, or whatever it is, who go to public school occupy such a large number of the places at Oxford and Cambridge and so many of the slots in public life. Social mobility certainly doesn't seem to be getting any better. It's really unfortunate that, at this time of cuts, people look at those in power and they seem to reflect a very small proportion of society. But that would also be true if Labour were in power – because most of the shadow cabinet went to Oxbridge.

Is there any truth in the rumour that you dated both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband?

I'm not going to go there. It's widely known that I took Ed Balls's job at the FT, and it's true that I've known these people for a long time, and people can draw their own conclusions. But whether or not you've sort of snogged them at whatever moment just seems completely mad.

In terms of interviewing old friends or lovers, would it make it harder to give them a proper grilling?

I don't think so. If you think back on your past friendships and/or relationships, these things can go either way. You could be tougher! I know Jeremy Paxman has said he actively shuns friendships with politicians. I think I see all these people less than I might have done, because I don't want to be in that situation of having been for dinner in their house two days before I give them a grilling on Newsnight or whatever.

Has being a female economist ever been a problem?

No, I'm sure I've only benefited from being a woman who does numbers. It's funny that people still think of this as a male-dominated area when one of the commentators who made her name during the crisis was Gillian Tett at the FT, and the economics editor of the Economist is also a woman. Possibly if I'd taken the more telly-bird approach and been a bit more glam then it might have been an issue.

You know what the last question is. What's going to happen to interest rates?

I think it's safe to say that they'll go up since they can't go any lower. And I suspect house prices are not going to do very well over the next few years.