A Bermudian broadcast journalist is making it big on United Arab Emirates television with over 90 million potential viewers watching her co-host a women’s television programme.

Julie Matthews moved to Dubai with her then fiancé Stefan Borchardt in 2006.

“My fiancé at the time wanted to move there because there were a lot of opportunities for him in terms of hotel work,” Ms Matthews said during a recent visit back to Bermuda. “He was an executive sous chef at Cambridge Beaches. We were weighing our options. Was it going to be Dubai, or Vietnam or some other up and coming place.”

They decided on Dubai, and 19 days after the couple arrived, they were married on the beach.

“It all came together really quickly,” Ms Matthews said. “I had a lot of people helping me. Stefan had friends living there, so we knew people as soon as we got there. I thought I could have a civil wedding, but non-Muslims are not allowed to have civil weddings.

“You have to be married in a religious ceremony. You have to publish your banns the way you do here. You can get married in a church because there is a Catholic Church and a Church of England and so forth. However, one of the challenges was being able to book the church. We ended up getting married on the beach. We had a beautiful ceremony. It was gorgeous.”

Ms Matthews said she is really enjoying living in Dubai and learning about the new culture and climate.

“Dubai is an amazing place,” she said.

“When you are over there you feel like you are in another world. It is a big city. It is fast moving. It is changing every day. It is like one big construction site, because they are building things all the time. You could go to work in the morning, drive home at night and wake up the next day and the roads have all changed and you are lost. It is very much on the move.”

She said she hasn’t needed to learn a new language since moving there, because a large portion of the population are English speaking expatriates.

“What is great is that everyone’s culture is tolerated,” she said. “A lot of people ask me if I have to cover up and I don’t. You could walk around in mini-skirts, but it seems kind of disrespectful to me.

“I definitely do not feel oppressed in Dubai. On the contrary. I feel that there is this philosophy of live and let live. They don’t expect me to cover up. When you go to the bank you don’t have to stand in a line. You can go right to the front of the line if you are a woman. There is a women’s section on the bus.”

Soon after arriving in Dubai, Ms Matthews found a job on City Seven Television as co-host of a woman’s programme called ‘That Women’s Show’. It covers women’s issues, fine arts, education, parenthood, fashion, beauty products and other things. It is the only women’s television show broadcast in Dubai in English. Because it is broadcast across the Middle East and North Africa, it has a potential viewership of 93 million.

“We get a lot of fan mail from Qatar and Kuwait. It is pretty amazing,” she said.

As part of her job, Ms Matthews has interviewed charity workers, taken golf and tennis lessons and even done a segment on a hypnotherapist.

“I did get hypnotised myself,” she said. “I was hypnotised to get rid of a phobia of lizards.”

However, she was unable to say if her phobia was cured, but she did say that she now feels less stressed about them.

She also interviewed a practitioner of Aura Soma, during one television segment. Aura Soma is colour therapy.

“It is colour therapy and is about revealing your past, present and future through these coloured oils,” she said.

“I was amazed when I sat down with the practitioner. She asked me to pick four bottles. She went by colours and she was spot on. She said that I was in the right business. She talked about me being a teacher, communicator, and she also said I’d be very rich someday. She said it is not just material wealth, but also wealth in all aspects of my life. You come out of that kind of reading feeling very positive.”

In Bermuda, Ms Matthews started out working for Fresh TV, then moved on to ZBM, then worked for Troncossi Public Relations briefly, before starting her own production company called Lumi|0xe8|re Productions. She said experience gained from each place is helping her now in different ways.

“Working for Fresh TV was very important to what I am doing today,” she said.

“I got my experience from that, so I wasn’t camera shy when I went to Dubai. ZBM helped improve my journalism skills, and the production company really helped me to put things together, which is imperative in what I do today. It is on hold for the moment.”

Being a television personality in Dubai has its own special challenges. For example, she and her two co-hosts are not allowed to mention taboo topics like alcohol or boyfriends on the air.

“The show is divided into interviews and lifestyle segments, plus talk between us,” she said. “We pick a hot topic and debate it, and we often don’t agree. It is spontaneous. We have an idea where we are going.

“There are a certain number of restrictions on what you can say and not say out there. We are very careful not to insult Dubai, and to always show it in a positive light.”

However, one thing that she does not like about living in Dubai is driving.

“Driving is absolute madness,” she said. “You have all these different cultures in this one city. They all have their different styles and they bring that with them when they get behind the wheel. It is crazy. Traffic is a major concern.”

She and her husband do eventually intend to come back to Bermuda, because her family is on the Island.

She misses the friendliness of Bermuda, and Bermuda’s beautiful beaches.

“It is a lot less hectic a lifestyle in Bermuda,” she said. “In Dubai, every now and again you can get caught up in the hectic lifestyle over there. It is fast moving.”

Another thing that Ms Matthews misses about Bermuda is the rain. Since she has been in Dubai she has only seen about six brief showers.

“One of the fascinating things to see when I first got there was a desert sandstorm,” she said.

“It virtually never rains. We have had about six little showers in the year and a bit I have been there. People get excited when it rains there. They say, ‘hey, is that a cloud’? It is blue sky everyday except when you have these sandstorms. They are not that often either. It whips around and you can taste it.”