Gloria Hunniford

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2006

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the broadcaster Gloria Hunniford. She's one of our most popular interviewers and presenters and for 40 years has been a warm, but always incisive, figure on our radio and television airwaves. She grew up in Northern Ireland and first of all thought her career lay in singing - as a young girl she would spend several evenings each week singing in local church halls. Although she moved in to broadcasting, those early years lay the foundation for the success and gave her a confidence performing in front of a crowd and a genuine interest in people and their lives.

She was among the vanguard of women who tried to have it all - to combine motherhood with a fulfilling career. Her eldest daughter, Caron Keating, followed her into the profession and shared Gloria's ready warmth and wit. But Caron was just 41 when she died from breast cancer and Gloria's moving account of her experiences has now touched tens of thousands of people.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Miss You Nights by Cliff Richard Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Luxury: Family photographs

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2006. My cast away this week is one of our most popular broadcasters Gloria Haniford. Her warm Ulster
0:34.2	brogue and easy charm on air goes some way to explaining the success of a career
0:38.4	in radio and television that has spanned more than 40 years. What's less obvious is that her work ethic and determination
0:45.4	to get the job done started early. From the age of age she was performing in
0:49.5	church-hole variety shows and after a spell of singing musical requests live on air, she became the first
0:56.5	ever woman to have a daily show on Radio 2, all this whilst being a wife and mom to three children.
1:03.0	More recently, it's in her role as a mother that the highly polished professional has made
1:07.4	way in public for the personal.
1:09.7	Her daughter, the television presenter Karen Keating, fought determined determined against breast cancer for seven years.
1:15.4	And after she died Gloria's moving account of her experience touched tens of thousands of people.
1:20.9	Gloria I want to talk to you about your family and indeed about Karen of course later on, but it strikes me you must have been almost
1:27.4	at the Vanguard of women who tried to have it all to combine both a proper career with hands-on motherhood. Were you always determined to do that?
1:36.0	I'd like to tell you it was always a plan, but it wasn't. The Ulster work ethic, which
1:40.9	you referred to, was very strong. It was taught to me because if I for example had
1:46.5	been sitting at home doing nothing just reading a book or just idling away my mom
1:51.6	would have said what are you doing go and something. But it wasn't my plan. I sort of slid into everything really over the years. My father was a newspaper man by day, but a magician by night, which was a magical mix literally for a child and from
2:06.7	the age of five I guess I begged to go along and stand side stage to watch my dad
2:12.2	because there he was with a razor blade trick and the Chinese
2:15.5	rings and rabbits coming out of hats and to me of course I mean he was my dad for goodness sake
2:20.8	and he could do all of this and I just thought all of this was
	...

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