The latest volley in an unseemly row over TV newsreaders’ qualifications was fired by ITV anchor Mary Nightingale today.

She leapt to the defence of the glamorous so-called “auto-cuties” who read our nightly news bulletins, pointing out that most of them have brains as well as beauty.

Ms Nightingale was responding to the veteran newscaster Peter Sissons, who reportedly said that Five News’ £1m a year presenter Natasha Kaplinsky had “done very well out of her looks”.

Sissons, 66, who was shot in the legs while covering the Biafra war for ITN, said he believed all news readers should have earned their spurs as frontline reporters.

However, if you take a step further back in their careers, you’ll find that Kaplinsky and Sissons, broadcasting beauty and latter-day Boot of The Beast, have something in common.

They both went to Oxford. 

A few years ago some research by the Sutton Trust found that a whopping two-fifths of graduate journalists had spent three years studying beneath its dreaming spires.

This week, Up To Speed will be taking a closer look at the university days of some of Britain’s highest profile journalists to see how they made the transition from student to star reporter.

Looking at the backgrounds of 75 journalists we’ve found that 30 went to Oxford, 13 went to Cambridge and 32 went to other universities.

We’ll start tomorrow by looking at the single most popular subject from our list -  English.