AMANDA PLATELL: BBC's navel-gazing, metropolitan agenda is why it's losing greats like Woman's Hours Jenni Murray
For me, the clocks will all stop at 10am on October 1 when Jenni Murray presents her last Woman’s Hour.
The woman with an iron wit in a velvet voice is giving up her beloved job after 33 years to write more books, present new radio shows and enjoy her 70s with her husband John and their two sons.
I wish Jenni well. She has long been a heroine of mine. For millions of us, she has been the calm, clever, considered friend we always wanted to hear from and listen to.
For me, the clocks will all stop at 10am on October 1 when Jenni Murray presents her last Woman’s Hour
And yet Jenni’s also a forensic interviewer. She was the one who asked Monica Lewinsky why she hadn’t washed Bill Clinton’s parting gift to her from that blue dress.
Then of Hillary Clinton, why she’d stayed with a man who had cheated on her. Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto — Jenni interviewed everyone who was anyone.
She became the friend and commentator of womankind. We travelled with her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and lost her hair. We found echoes of our own lives when she described her battles with her mum and with her weight.
Many agreed with her when she was bold enough to venture into the gladiatorial arena of trans women, saying ‘be trans, be proud — but don’t call yourself a “real woman” ’. The LGBT lobby was enraged, and I wonder if that was the moment Jenni realised the Beeb was no longer her natural home.
The great personalities of the BBC — Jenni, Libby Purves, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys, both the Dimblebys, Andrew Neil — are disappearing before our eyes.
They’re being replaced by navel-gazing, metropolitan chat-show hosts obsessed with a diversity agenda that ignores the views of the majority.
Jenni is the best kind of feminist. She has been fearless, principled, provocative and brave, a brilliant broadcaster with the ability to touch millions of us.
And I know for certain what a tough job it will be to replace her. Because I once stood in for Jenni for a few days and I was utter rubbish.
She’ll be the toughest act to follow. If her microphone is taken over by co-presenter Jane Garvey, who has perfected the grating tone of the dentist’s drill, it will be the end of the programme.
The great personalities of the BBC — Jenni, Libby Purves, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys, both the Dimblebys, Andrew Neil (above)— are disappearing before our eyes
Despite having to put up with these chauvinists, the gorgeous blonde is not suing the bank over sexism, but over a bonus she believes she was denied
So who boobed?
Financier Amanda Staveley was described by former Barclays banker Stephen Jones as ‘thick as s*** with large breasts’.
She was also called ‘a tart’ who slept with clients and a ‘dolly bird’ by his colleagues.
She accepted Jones’s apology, adding she was saddened he had resigned.
Despite having to put up with these chauvinists, the gorgeous blonde is not suing the bank over sexism, but over a bonus she believes she was denied.
Proof she is a class act — not a daft tart with big t**s.
A rapper called ‘DMO Deejay’ brought the M60 to a standstill as he and his boy racer fans took videos of themselves while they blocked the motorway.
What were the police doing during this outrage that delayed motorists for 90 minutes? Probably on the hard shoulder taking the knee.
BBC presenter Jane Hill was close to tears reading news that the three teenage travellers who killed PC Andrew Harper were convicted not of murder but manslaughter — and rejoiced at it.
She’d just heard his wife Lissie’s heartbreaking statement. A nation wept with them both at the gross injustice of it all.
Harry and Megs feel the heat
Megs and Harry are suing an unknown snapper for breach of privacy after he took drone pictures of baby Archie in the grounds of their £14 million Beverly Hills mansion.
Poor loves — they believed they were escaping the horrid UK media but they now find themselves in the maw of the carnivorous LA paparazzi.
Had they not decided they were too big and too good for the Royal Family, they could still be raising Archie in the seclusion of Windsor where their privacy was ensured.
Pardon me for not squatting at the altar of that exercise chappie Joe Wicks, who is taking a break from his lockdown videos
Joe’s certainly fitter financially
Pardon me for not squatting at the altar of that exercise chappie Joe Wicks, who is taking a break from his lockdown videos.
Yes, he’s raised £580,000 for the NHS, but in the meantime he’s gathered 3.8 million online followers and a ten-book deal with more lucrative TV projects on the horizon.
I’m sure his intentions were altruistic, but Joe will not be the only one who through selflessness becomes a virus multi-millionaire.
After Coleen Rooney believed she’d trapped a friend leaking stories about her, she outed Rebekah Vardy to her two million Twitter and Instagram followers.
Rebekah says she was left suicidal by the ‘false’ allegations made while she was heavily pregnant, because of the vile abuse on social media. ‘Your baby deserves to be put in the incinerator and so do you, fat-nosed c***’, one person told her.
The next time Coleen parades her wholesome family and holidays before us, we should all recall the cruelty she has inflicted on a former friend.
Stuart was a softie
The Brexit campaigner and spread-betting millionaire Stuart Wheeler has died, aged 85. I recall him fondly as the only man who has ever given me a cheque for £1 million (as you would) — it was for the Tory fighting fund when I worked for the party.
He also paid for my suite in Knightsbridge’s The Capital hotel for a month during the 2001 election. He was such a softie he knew it was the only place that would allow my three-legged old moggie Ronnie to stay with me. Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis takes to the cover of Tatler looking sultry. Inside she poses wearing vertiginous stilettoes, a skintight couture suit and evening gloves next to, of all accessories, her grey whippet.
Yes she looks fabulous, but will she ever stop milking that Prince Andrew interview. And no complaints please from her in the future for us not taking her seriously as a journalist.
My fantastic Aunty Dot died this week, refusing treatment for cancer and going out her own way, bravely, at 89, probably puffing on her last cigarette.
We only ever had one row, when I forgot to mention her role in the family’s morning rituals in a book I wrote about my Dad’s childhood in the Aussie bush.
So I am making amends: Dot’s role was to walk the cow to school — the only place that had any grass.
So Whoopi Goldberg believes that even though her hit movie Ghost took half a billion dollars, it is a victim of racism and not considered alongside other classics.
‘Would it have been different if I had been short and cute and blonde?’ she ponders. Indeed — no identikit blonde could have had Whoopi’s comic timing.
Churchgoers at Sheffield Cathedral are bereft that their famous traditional choir has been disbanded to be replaced by one that ‘better reflects its local mixed urban community’.
Bring it on, herald the tambourines, invite Stormzy to rap — and see your congregation shrink to nothing. One thing we practising Christians can do in the face of such nonsense is vote with our feet, and go to another church.
Churchgoers at Sheffield Cathedral are bereft that their famous traditional choir has been disbanded to be replaced by one that ‘better reflects its local mixed urban community’. Reverend Canon and Vice Dean, Keith Farrow is pictured above outside Sheffield Cathedral
Westminster Wars
Well done Chancellor Sunak for awarding doctors, police and the Army pay rises
How utterly ridiculous that the Intelligence and Security Committee believe the result of the Brexit referendum was influenced by those pesky Russians bent on world domination, and what an insult to the 17.4 million Brits who voted Leave, to imply that an email from a Ruskie would have changed their mind.
Well done Chancellor Sunak for awarding doctors, police and the Army pay rises.
But why include all teachers in the list of deserving CV fighters when so few of them were in the frontline as they sat back on full pay during lockdown and their unions thwarted Government plans to get kids back to school?
Bizarre that, of the £71 million aid we give China, £500,000 was for supposedly ‘supporting human rights’, when we knew it was imprisoning its Uighur Muslim population, and ‘re-educating’, torturing and even sterilising them?
No comments: