'And now it's over to Shami...'

"It's Jon Snow for Channel 4 News. Just the right side of giantism."

If Ms Chakrabarti ever decides to stand down as director of Liberty, she could surely make a hugely entertaining double act with the celebrated broadcaster, who is sitting opposite her.

Some women might be a little overawed at the prospect of becoming the chancellor of a university at the age of 39, particularly if faced with following someone with the personality and high profile of Jon Snow.

But when you happen to be the UK's foremost advocate of human rights and civil liberties, even taking on such a lofty position in Oxford higher education can't be all that intimidating.

Besides Ms Chakrabarti is relishing the chance to exchange banter with the newsman, who at 6ft 4in towers over her petite frame.

"Just think, you could have been Princess Anne," Jon Snow suddenly tells her after a comment about following in his giant footsteps leads to a lively discussion of his shoe size.

"How that could have happened is a very interesting idea," she fires back, before Mr Snow explains that he meant Brookes might have gone for a very different kind of woman chancellor.

Brookes would certainly have been hard pressed to have found someone quite as newsworthy as Shami Chakrabarti, who has emerged as the most recognisable and effective opponent of the Government's plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days.

She has been held up as 'the most dangerous woman in Britain' in the Sun newspaper and last month it seemed that Ms Chakrabarti might sue a Cabinet minister, who she believed had wrongly insinuated her relationship with the former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis was inappropriate.

But, fresh from the controversial by-election in Haltemprice and Howden, fought on the issue of civil liberties by Mr Davis, she appears chatty and relaxed about her new role.

Her appointment, Jon Snow believes, sends out the clearest message about what Oxford Brookes stands for.

"It is quite difficult to give a new university its own personality. But Brookes has developed its own personality very rapidly.

"The chancellorship is a kind of meritorious ennoblement. I can't think of anyone who deserves such an ennoblement more than Shami.

"She brings something unique. I'm ten a penny. But you don't get the best civil liberties operator tipping up on your watch very often.

"People like people with attitude. And I think we have both got attitude," said Snow, who is quickly told: "Speak for yourself. I'm very placid me."

Mr Snow formally stood down on Friday as chancellor.

At the 'university down the road', chancellors are expected to die in office, unless the chancellor happens to be Oliver Cromwell.

At Brookes, they respectfully call time after seven years.

But he leaves content in the knowledge that he has overseen a period of remarkable expansion at Brookes, with two thirds of the university's Gipsy Lane campus being demolished to make way for a modern new development.

"The other big thing is the accommodation, which was pretty threadbare when I arrived. We can now accommodate all of our first-year students."

He reaffirms the university's determination to build a major concert venue on its Headington Hill campus.

"It's still a gleam in the eye of the vice-chancellor. But a concert hall is something which the whole of the city needs."

The future may hold even bigger things. For after briefly touching on Brookes's good relations with Oxford University, he goes on to make a remarkable prediction.

"Now, this is a very outrageous thing to say. But I would not be surprised if in 20 years' time some fusion occurred and there was simply one huge university - one major seat of learning, in which there would be a big vocational element put in here, while down the road there would be a different sort of intellectual input."

So, is the retiring chancellor contemplating a future merger of Brookes and Oxford universities?

"I can't conceptualise what it would be like. But I am sure what will happen in Britain is that places of excellence will come together. Manchester is a good example. I think it can happen and Shami is young enough to see it happen."

The civil rights campaigner knows her predecessor well through submitting herself to regular Snow grillings in the Channel 4 studios.

But when he first rang her to sound her out about the chancellorship, she thought it was an elaborate joke.

"I was absolutely gobsmacked. To be honest with you I did not believe him. I wanted to be polite but I thought it must be an April Fool or something.

"Jon Snow will be an impossible act to follow. But it's a huge privilege. Brookes is my kind of place. I have never been an ivory tower lawyer or intellectual, I've always been a bit more practical than that, as my accidental career has hopefully shown.

"It's going to be a really good opportunity to meet the sort of people I would not otherwise have met - people, who with the greatest respect, are not politicians and journalists.

"I have met a lot of students through my work up and down the country. Student audiences are the best audiences because they have time and have a healthy irreverence. I think I'm a professional student really - a professional teenager."

But what about the Marmite factor, with people tending to love or loathe her?

"If I worried about people's preconceived ideas about me I would be a very worried woman. Actually, I am a very worried woman - but I worry about more important things."

She certainly does not expect her high-profile image to impact upon fundraising.

"I'm sure that the vice-chancellor and her colleagues thought about that before making this extraordinary decision. But you should ask the British Film Institute, the LSE or any of the other organisations I have been connected with. I hope I haven't done too much damage.

"I think that, mercifully, we do live in the kind of country where you can agree to disagree If people realise it's not personal, and it's just a passionate debate about things you hold dear - then hopefully it won't undermine the bigger enterprise."

Ms Chakrabarti was born in London in 1969 to Indian parents and read law at the London School of Economics before studying at the bar.

She spent six years in the Home Office, later working as a legal adviser to ministers and senior civil servants.

She joined Liberty the day before 9/11, becoming the organisation's director in 2003. Her husband is a City solicitor and they have a six-year-old son.

She said: "I've actually found in my career there are hawks and doves everywhere - in the government, political parties and the media. There are allies and friends in all sorts of surprising places."

Faced with the ongoing war of attrition with the Government over the detention of suspects, compulsory identity cards and a national DNA database, you wonder how she will now fit in the demands of being Brookes University's figurehead.

"I expect the Government to see the light next week and there will be no more attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms in this country and I will have the time to come and eat cucumber sandwiches at Oxford Brookes."

But as Jon Snow gestures towards pigs flying over Headington Hill, she concedes that that might prove an idle hope.

At least it seems there will be no legal battle with the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, after she received an apology for the 'David Davis remark'.

"I got an apology of sorts. I just hope people who get caught up with party politics will learn that they should not treat human beings as collateral damage."

She recognises that much of her work at Brookes will be ceremonial. Indoctrinating people with her passionately-held principles, is most definitely not on any agenda.

"I am here to add value and see what I can do to help," she says. "It's not for me to pursue an agenda of any kind. I know there is a lecture to give and I am not going to be talking about macrame. It would be surprising if I didn't talk about something I know a little about. It is an opportunity to light a fire for the things I believe in - not necessarily the political debate of the moment and much more to do with enduring values. I hope I can keep the spirit of restless independence. I think there are strong values already here. Brookes students run a human rights film festival for goodness sake."

Jon Snow's mind has wandered to his own days as an undergraduate in Liverpool.

"The chancellor there was dead wood. I never shook hands with the chancellor, except to tell him that we had decided to defenestrate him. And we did get rid of the chancellor before he got rid of us."

More than happy to be outdone on the fight for your rights front, Ms Chakrabarti grins: "You see, Jon had a great history of student protest before he became this pillar of the media establishment."

My guess is that it's unlikely that the chancellor's robes will change the Liberty campaigner much. As for Brookes, it is not going to want for personality for some years to come.