YOU have to like a woman who throws herself in regardless. “Hello Andrew, great to meet you,” shouts Fru Hazlitt across GCap’s London reception, bouncing up to the wrong man. Actually, I’m over here.

“Oops, sorry,” she giggles. Good start. She brushes it aside, laughing all the way to the lift. Hazlitt, lean and boyish, bedecked in gold jewellery, is clearly someone who takes each of life’s hurdles at a bound.

Which is good, as right now she needs everything she can muster. Only two months into her first top job as boss of a listed company, she is fighting off a takeover bid that many think will triumph, whatever she does.

GCap, Britain’s largest radio group and owner of the stations Capital Radio and Classic FM, is under assault from rival Global Radio (owner of Heart and LBC), chaired by former ITV boss Charles Allen. GCap has already rejected one bid. Global is expected to come back with a higher offer next month.

So last week Hazlitt was rushing round shareholders presenting her plans for driving growth, hoping to persuade them to rebuff Global, should it return. The plans included a dramatic scaling back of GCap’s commitment to digital radio, a move that sent a shudder through the broadcasting world. Isn’t digital radio (DAB) the future?

“Look at the hard evidence from consumers,” says Hazlitt, suddenly serious. “After 10 years just 9% of listening is through DAB, and the majority of that is stations simultaneously broadcast on analogue. Only 4% is digital-only stations.

“So it’s a really slow take-up, and if it was a cheap platform, and there were no alternatives, then we would give it a bit longer. But actually, there are much more convincing platforms for us . . .” She widens her big eyes. Hazlitt, 44, is an accomplished saleswoman, by reputation one of the best in the media industry. She started on trade magazines, then worked her way through the Guardian, Capital Radio, Yahoo, Virgin Radio and now GCap.

In her wake she leaves a trail of admirers – who love her inclusive, ballsy, out-loud style – and a few sceptics, who think she talks a better career than she manages. No one could ever accuse her of being dull.

She has been drawing on those strengths to win round shareholders who might prefer Global’s cold cash to margin improvement in what could be a difficult year. GCap, frankly, has been a disappointment since it was formed from the merger of GWR and Capital in 2005. Hazlitt is promising a new dawn.

And when we met, she had just jetted back from presenting to investors in Scot-land. So how’s it going so far?

“We’re two days in,” she says sinking into an armchair in her Leicester Square office. “And the reaction has been reasonably balanced and very positive, but we have a way to go. What’s key to me is that I really do see fantastic organic growth opportunities inside GCap. It’s like a massive jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box – we are creating plans for growth, and restructuring the business in a sensible way round those plans.”

That, actually, is an edited version of what she said as a Hazlitt answer can be a barrage of words. Behind it, you can sense a smart brain struggling to shackle the exuberance.

But she’s never less than persuasive – smiling ear to ear, continually using your first name, breezing through the trickier questions. “The key thing is never to try and sell anything until you have worked out who you are talking to and what their agenda is,” she tells me later. That, according to colleagues, has always stood her in good stead.

“Fru is extremely good at relationships,” says David Mansfield, the former Capital boss who first hired her into radio. “It’s a vital attribute. And she works the numbers and she’s a tough lady, too.”

The toughness was clear in last week’s strategy presentation. Closing GCap’s digital radio stations Planet Rock and The Jazz, selling the group’s 63% stake in the national radio multiplex Digital One, pushing key brands through broadband – much of it is a direct reversal of her predecessor Ralph Bernard’s strategy. All received a thumbs-up from the City.

Some in the radio industry were less impressed, especially by Hazlitt’s statement that she would have pulled out of DAB completely if contracts hadn’t prevented it. They queried where the long-term vision was behind the cutting. And didn’t she used to bang on about the importance of being “platform-agnostic” when she was boss of Virgin Radio? She’s not agnostic now.

“No, I’m not.” The future, she says, is more likely a mix of broadband and analogue broadcasting. And she is bullish about making money out of radio online.

“Broadband is about interactivity, community, social networking – sound familiar? It’s radio’s home town forever. . . Our broadband audiences are growing at 35%-40% each year and we’re monetising that at the same pace, so now advertisers have two reasons to spend money with us. That’s very persuasive, 15m listeners on air and 1.7m users online.”

And some of those, she says, are online advertisers who you wouldn’t normally get on air. They are now asking, how can we combine the two? Then there’s a deal with Apple to put an application into the new iPod Touch, that allows users to listen to Capital. “And every time you download a track after listening to Capital, we get money – that’s very interesting.”

In short, she has no lack of vision, but with Global breathing down her neck, it has to be “jam today and jam tomorrow”.

She knew that when she accepted the top job. Headhunted last year from Virgin Radio to run GCap’s London stations, she was part of the board that rejected Global’s initial 190p offer in December. She became chief executive of GCap plc shortly after, when Bernard stepped down. The Global bid even interrupted her wedding plans – she married hedge-fund boss Charlie Porter in January at a London bash sprinkled with corporate heavyweights.

But she cancelled her honeymoon in the Maldives to work on last week’s strategy statement. “It’s fair to say I’ve never gone for the easy option,” she grins.

Hazlitt is certainly ambitious. Business runs in the family. Her father is former Blue Star Line shipping boss Rodney Hazlitt, one sister is a Credit Suisse banker – and adviser to GCap – and another heads her own PR outfit.

Hazlitt herself had a yen for acting before the knack for selling won out. The confident way she projects herself comes from catching the drama bug at her posh boarding school – Fru is short for Frances.

She ran her own theatre troupe after university, and still puts herself about as an after-dinner speaker. “In fact, I am still waiting to be spotted, Andrew, so if you could just pop that in the piece . . .”

She laughs. Those close to her say that, beneath the media-savvy familiarity, Hazlitt has a dogged determination that is well disguised. Before meeting Porter, she had three children, including twins, by IVF, in an arrangement with an old friend who agreed to father the kids, even though he and Hazlitt were not in a relationship. Another friend explains that Hazlitt despaired of ever meeting the love of her life, so typically she found another solution. Ironically she fell head over heels for Porter after having the twins.

Her decision to have kids eventually changed her career – she joined Virgin because Yahoo, the internet giant, wanted her to take another European job and she didn’t want to travel.

Before that, she had helped to rebuild Yahoo’s European business after its stock bombed in 2001. Her boss then, Mark Opzoomer, credits her with turning Yahoo Europe into “a proper media business, packaging advertising and pricing it accordingly”. Hence her confidence about GCap’s online opportunities.

It was Opzoomer, Yahoo’s chief executive for Europe, who pushed her into general management. “She’s a leader. The troops would follow her over the trenches,” says Opzoomer.

Those people skills are evident at GCap now in her weekly e-mails to staff. Her appointment there also pleased advertisers. Agency chiefs argue that commercial radio, drubbed by the BBC for so long, desperately needs a charismatic figurehead.

“If people in this business are radiators or drains, she’s a radiator,” says Phil Georgiadis, chief executive of the Walker Media agency, and an old friend. “You can see the loyalty she generates.”

Georgiadis thinks Global should fight to keep Hazlitt, if GCap eventually surrenders. Others think she wouldn’t want to stay.

Hazlitt herself won’t make any comment, in case it contravenes Takeover Panel stipulations. “I was worried they would even police my wedding speech,” she laughs.

Not nervous about the future? No, she says. “I’m very confident we’ve got an offering that goes above and beyond what we had before, and what radio used to have. So the growth opportunities are very much here. These are terrific brands.”

That, of course, is why a rival wants to buy them. She shrugs. The ball is in Global’s court now.

FRU HAZLITT’S WORKING DAY

THE GCap chief executive wakes at her Fulham house after 6am. Fru Hazlitt will often start the day with a three-mile run. Then she drops her children at school and drives into Capital’s Leicester Square office before 9am. “I do management meetings early in the week and in the morning,” says Hazlitt. “Being a sales girl at heart, I also do external meetings with key stakeholders.” Nine executives report directly to her. She will often hold breakfast meetings at the Hampshire hotel, and lunches at Langan’s Brasserie. “I love it, it’s loud, no-one can hear the terrible things I’m saying.” She attends evening functions twice a week on average.

VITAL STATISTICS

Born:April 22, 1963

Marital status:married, three children, two stepchildren

School:Downe House, Berkshire

University:London

First job:ad sales rep, Centaur magazines

Salary package:not disclosed yet; her predecessor earned £400,000 plus bonus

Home:Fulham, southwest London

Car:grey Audi A4

Favourite book:Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Favourite music:Abba

Favourite film:Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep

Favourite gadget:slow cooker

Last holiday:South Africa

DOWNTIME

FRU HAZLITT runs to relax. She has completed eight London Marathons. “I took it up at age 30. It just makes you feel fantastic, and it’s a real stress reliever.” Otherwise, as mother to three young children, she doesn’t have time for hobbies. “I spend money on things that save me time.”

She shops twice a year for clothes in the same boutique in Wimbledon Village. “I buy suits very quickly. I’ve no idea what I’m wearing today, how sad is that?” She also loves buying jewellery from Mayfair’s Wright & Teague. And she still gives after-dinner speeches. “I love it. Look, it’s a bit of acting, isn’t it?”

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