Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Pioneered highly stylized, sassy broadcasting that revolutionized youth television and influenced a generation of programme makers.
On the island
Eight records
I'm a big opera fan. While I was at the BBC, I produced an opera and I won the Prix Italia for it. And my love of opera started as a small child because my godmother had worked at Saddler's Wells.
It just sums up the very, very best of British music of the early nineties. The minute I heard it, it just seemed as good as a classical symphony. It's absolutely heroic.
I don't even really like very much, but I'm on this desert island and I've got to choose a record that sums up my childhood. So I've chosen a George Thornby track. My parents loved this era of, you know, music hall and radio stars and I can't listen to two bars of this record without remembering everything in Elmstone Road, Fulham.
From 14 to 18, I was three nights a week in clubs and doing loads of exams at school as well, spending an inordinate amount of time on public transport. But music was a really big part of my life. The MJQ are so of that period of the end of the fifties and the early sixties. They were just so cool.
As a schoolgirl there were classical concerts for children if you were lucky enough to live in London. ... on came Joan Sutherland and sang the mad scene from Lucia and it was electrifying.
Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite film of all time. Philip Glass takes the film and he wrote an operatic score that fits the movie. It's absolutely mind-blowing, so it adds another dimension to what is a classic piece of cinema.
Always on My MindFavourite
I met Neil and Chris first of all when I was producing a kids' show for ITV. ... eventually they came round to my house for dinner and from the minute they walked through the door you know, we just hit it off and I guess that was about 1986.
My final track is so sexy and I remember. Otis Redding the first time I heard him, and then I was lucky enough to go and see him live at Hammersmith Odeon as it was then, and all these women ran to the front of the stage and banged their handbags on the ground, and it was an orgasmic moment.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:51What about people's opinion of you? You're one of the... there are very few people who elicit such strong opinions.
Yeah, it doesn't bother me now, but I think that it did bother me in the seventies and it did bother me in the eighties when I was doing really good work on television and I felt that it didn't get the recognition at the time. And I felt it was a class thing too. ... I do think that I had to overcome quite a lot of prejudice.
Presenter asks
6:32Did you deliberately want people to see [a nurturing, motherly side of you on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!]?
I did all the cooking, yeah, I like doing the cooking. Well, I the reason why I did the program was because I think before that I was on programmes like Question Time, I was on documentaries, people had one view of me. But I thought I'm not going to be one of those people that just sneer about reality television. I want to get right into the centre of it and see what it's actually like from the inside.
Presenter asks
7:32Did you like that they liked you? [You're] uncomfortable being liked.
Yeah, I had tremendous reaction. When I came back to Britain after doing the programme, women would come up to me in the street and just thank me for being on it and not being a kind of bimbo in a bikini. ... I'm quite embarrassed about it. I'm quite uncomfortable. ... by the public at large. I'm quite a private person and I've got a vo a quite a close circle of friends.
The keepsakes
The book
Prosper Montagné
It's got lots of descriptions of how to prepare all kinds of food.
Presenter asks
9:35You grew up in Fulham with a younger sister and your parents. Tell me about your day to day life.
Well we lived in half a terraced house off the Parsons Green Lane. We were pretty hard up. My father was an electrician and my mother, well one my first memories are she's working as a school dinner lady and my parents seemed to have a relationship which looking back on it was a bit weird. ... I was obviously a horrible little snob because I used to imagine that they picked up the wrong baby in the nursing home, that the right parents would come and get me.
Presenter asks
26:34What was it you think then that kept you out of a job like the BBC running BBC Two? Was it simply that you weren't the right sort?
I think that I wouldn't wouldn't have been a safe choice. People might have thought, Oh, she might fly off the handle. She's not diplomatic enough. And they might have been right. Well, they could have been right. I'm not losing any sleep over it. I don't look back over my career and think for one minute that there's any part of it that was a bit of a flop.
“I have made television that's changed the way that television looks today and I'm really proud of that.”
“I always say there's two ways of doing things, my way and the wrong way.”
“I'm not looking back over my career and think for one minute that there's any part of it that was a bit of a flop. I've had a great career and I'm going to have a great career. Now I'm a pensioner, I'm not going to retire.”
“When my sister was dying of cancer, I could have fallen to pieces, but I didn't. And I was so angry about it. And this person who is the closest person to you in the world is dying.”