Anna Ford
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2012
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the broadcaster Anna Ford.
One of the first high profile women in news, she worked for Granada, ITV and the BBC before retiring after more than thirty years on our screens. One of her professional pairings was presenting the News at 10 with Reginald Bosanquet, she remembers how he would try to unsettle her during broadcasts: "I adored Reggie, he would land either obscene poems or love poems on my script just before I was to about to read it to camera and I would catch just a sight of this and it was almost impossible not to laugh."
Producer: Leanne Buckle.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. |
| 0:02.0 | Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.5 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast. |
| 0:11.0 | For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4. |
| 0:30.0 | My cast away this week is the broadcaster Anna Ford and it seems we're lucky to have her. |
| 0:40.0 | After years in the spotlight these days, she says she would happily give her fame to a passing tramp. |
| 0:46.0 | One of the first high profile women in TV news, she remains something of an enigma. |
| 0:52.0 | She was the shy child who was also a head girl. |
| 0:55.0 | The vicar's daughter who memorably threw a glass of wine in a Tory MP's face, |
| 0:59.0 | and the very private person who wrote an open letter to a national newspaper, |
| 1:04.0 | accusing Martin Amos of being a useless godfather to her daughter. |
| 1:08.0 | She says of her life these days, |
| 1:10.0 | I want to retire completely from obligation. |
| 1:13.0 | I feel like I've been weighed down by responsibility. |
| 1:16.0 | I feel like I've been a head girl all my life. |
| 1:19.0 | So that dream of no longer having any obligations is something I think that many of us can sympathise. |
| 1:24.0 | Have you managed it yet, Anna Ford? |
| 1:26.0 | I'm managing it. It's a wonderful feeling. |
| 1:29.0 | I'm looking forward to selling the family house of 30 years, |
| 1:34.0 | which means a lot of lightening the load of ownership, |
| 1:37.0 | and retiring from jobs which I've enjoyed very much, |
| 1:41.0 | which will leave me time to contemplate and to be, |
... |
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