The following is a transcript of Part 2 of our podcast with Katty Kay, Washington correspondent for BBC World News America. Please check back soon for Part 3.

BBCA: You mentioned European politics and the differences between American and European politics; how are British elections different from American elections and how the candidates present themselves and how the media covers it?

Katty Kay: Well, first and foremost they're shorter, which makes a huge difference. If you think that this election has gone on for a year and a half, and in Britain official election campaigns go on for 10 weeks, now of course you've got some jockeying for position before that, but you don't have this long drawn out process first of choosing the nominee, and then of having the actual national election campaign. In Britain it's the leader of the party who is chosen automatically to be the Prime Minster and you're voting for a party and not for an individual, so when you go tick your ballot box in a British general election, you're ticking the ballot box for the labor party, the conservative party, or the liberal democratic party, you're not ticking the ballot box for a particular person, and that makes a huge difference because it impacts the way our politics is conducted, we have less of the single star factor; the leader of our party doesn't have to be the overwhelmingly charismatic leader of the country in the same way that you're electing an individual for President here, now that's changing a little bit, we're starting to get a little bit of change with Tony Blair, you're starting to get a little bit more of the people politics, but it's less of a factor and that impacts other things, the ad campaigns, people will talk more about the issues of the party than the character of the individual who is leading that party for example, so there's less time, which also means there's less money, we have free broadcasting time for all our major political parties so you don't have to raise millions and millions of dollars the way you do here, in order to get time on television advertising, so the money and the time and the way that the leader is actually chosen make a big difference to the whole campaign.

BBCA: How has Gordon Brown changed the tone of US/UK relations?

Katty Kay: It's a confusing picture, there was a lot of speculation when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister that Britain would move away from America, that you would get something of a rift between Washington and London, that he would be more focused on the relationship with Europe, and less focused on the relationship with Washington, that he was going be George Bush's poodle in the way that Tony Blair was called a poodle of the American President. Actually Gordon Brown is an America-phile, he comes here on holiday every summer, he loves America. I think he will always keep an eye, a close eye on the Washington-London relationship and he doesn't want to cause a major rift. Having said that, he's also played a very sort of strategic political game of having some of his underlings come out in quite a critical way against Washington, he's appointed one or two people Mark Malek Brown, for example who is known to be a critic of the Bush Administration, a very fierce critic of the war in Iraq, he was given a surprising amount of press for a junior minister to say things that were anti-American, and then you had Gordon Brown slightly rowing back as the Prime Minister of the party saying 'no, no, no, of course we are in touch with Washington', so Gordon Brown's appealing to both sides, he's appealing to his domestic electorate which wants to hear that he's going to take more distance from Washington, but he's also keeping a close watch on relations with the White House and making sure they don't get too frayed, so he's playing a slightly double game.

BBCA: You mentioned Matt Frei earlier, what will he bring to the newscast?

Katty Kay: Matt's got a huge amount of personality on-air, he's a great reporter, he's got strong opinions and isn't afraid to say them, he's got a great way with words, he's got a nice irreverent, ironic way of looking at the world, and I think he will bring that to his coverage of America, and to his coverage of the world for an American audience. He's a great filter for us to see the world through. He's also got a cracking sense of humor so it's going to be fun for me to be working for him, because I've known him for so long and he's the godfather of my second daughter, so it's going to be fun for us to be teamed up together.

BBCA: Legend has it that you and Matt sailed down a river together in Africa?

Katty Kay: I put my life in Matt's hands, that was perhaps rather foolish of me, he's not the kind of person you put your life in the hands of�¢?�¦we went on a canoed holiday when I was living in Zimbabwe, a whole bunch of us, and I was in a canoe with Matt one time, and this was a dangerous canoe ride, cause if you sailed, if you canoed yourself into a hippo, that hippo could break your canoe in half and there were crocs in that river so you didn't want to go near a hippo. Matt was in the front and I was in the back and I say "Matt! Canoe left, canoe left, canoe left and he kept canoeing on the right and said, 'why are you canoeing on the right I keep saying left and he said to me 'but actually the words you're saying are right' because there was a hippo straight in front of us and I was terrified and I was just saying the wrong word, so he thought he was doing the right thing, I thought he was doing the wrong thing and that's probably the story of our relationship actually. Anyway we both survived, here we both are, but we had some fun times together.