My greatest mistake: Rosie Millard, BBC's arts correspondent

'It must have seemed like a good idea to get back into that low-cut dress. I just wish I hadn't'

It was in 2001 that I wore a very low-cut Vivienne Westwood evening dress for the Oscars, which was quite appropriate. Even Michael Buerk making a comment about it – "That was Rosie Millard and the best supporting dress" – wasn't a mistake. My big mistake was, after the Oscars, getting totally plastered on margaritas and then agreeing to have my photo taken in the dress the following morning for the Daily Mail. I am crouched over in blinding sunshine by a swimming-pool. I could hardly open my eyes and had a bad headache. I looked like the hunchback of something or other.

The photo went everywhere. Then ghastly columnists on vile tabloids were writing horrid things about me – she thinks she's a big star and she's not really – and it was impossible for me to have any standing, such as reporting on the news. It must have seemed like a good idea to get back into the dress. I just wish I hadn't. Even when quite a serious book by me on British art in the last 10 years comes out – The Tastemakers – serious reviewers are chuntering on about how I want to flash my breasts. All anyone can talk about is that I wore a low-cut dress a year ago. It rather got in the way of me doing other interesting things. I get over-excited by my own publicity. I wish I'd been more laid back and not jumped in there. But quite frankly, if you go around worrying about mistakes like that you'd never get out of bed in the morning.

I always wanted to work on arts programmes. When I first started working in 1989, I went for the job opportunity of a lifetime, on Omnibus. I made it to the last hurdle and decided to launch into an artistic assassination of Britain's best known painter, namely David Hockney, who I declared was out of fashion and had gone off a bit. I was met with a stony silence. I carried on, laying waste to his opera designs and his photographic innovations. I didn't mean it at all. I just got nervous and couldn't stop talking. As a result I got stuck on the Richard and Judy show for two years instead (as a researcher). But in hindsight it gave me a solid grounding, and that is where I met my husband. But at the time I spent three years in the wilderness of daytime TV and corporate videos for Bally shoes and TSB before getting into arts programming.

I would probably be better advised not to talk so much, but we grew up without a TV and that's how I was encouraged to talk so much.

Rosie Millard is on the panel of judges for the Forward Prize 2002. The winners of the poetry prize are announced on 9 Oct