The secret of being a death-defying war reporter is to be a nosey parker, according to one of the UK's leading television journalists.

The secret of being a death-defying war reporter is to be a nosey parker, according to one of the UK's leading television journalists.

Kate Adie was in Glasgow yesterday, speaking at the Mitchell Library as part of the Aye Write! book festival, sponsored by the Bank of Scotland with The Herald as its media partner.

She shared a platform with the author Jonathan Kaplan, a surgeon who has worked in Baghdad and other conflict zones, to discuss why and how people work in highly dangerous occupations, the subject of her next book.

Adie spoke of the horror of reporting the conflict in Bosnia, where 77 journalists died.

"People often ask me why do I keep doing this? Why risk your life when you could go and report on the Brit Awards instead? But I prefer another kind of reporting. I'm really a very nosey person."

Adie admitted she had been "terrified out her wits" several times. But she baulked at carrying a gun.

"Journalists have armed themselves on occasions but I think it's absolutely wrong.

"I want to look like a civilian, an ordinary human being. I feel very uncomfortable wearing a flak jacket when a little old lady is crossing the road in a black skirt."

Adie was asked whether she had ever experienced a war she felt was justified.

"As a journalist, I don't have a mandate to answer that," she said. "But sometimes the answer is self-evident. I was in Tiananmen Square beaming back images of the Chinese government sending in tanks to crush the student uprising. I didn't have to say this is unjustified' - it was there for all to see."

Kaplan told how he narrowly escaped being kidnapped at gunpoint by militia men by shouting: "I'm South African - Nelson Mandela!"