Coutts Woman

Women? They’re terrific!

From the ‘thinking man’s crumpet’ to champion of the over 70s, JOAN BAKEWELL has done it all.

It’s hard to miss Joan Bakewell these days.  What with advertisements for her new book ‘The View from Here: Life at 70’ appearing in nearly every newspaper and magazine across the UK, and the media full of stories either featuring her or written by her, the thinking man’s crumpet is back.

"I said to BBC executives at the time ‘Why don’t you have a woman reading the news?’.  They said ‘It’s just not possible, Joan’.  They thought women would be distracting!”

Of course, to a slightly older generation, Joan Bakewell is already well known as the trailblazing woman journalist and BBC broadcaster who came to prominence in the 1960s, hosting BBC2’s Late Night Line Up. She fronted the cult television show three nights a week for seven years, interviewing celebrities, diplomats and more, packing a punch across a range of intellectual subjects and complex arguments – earning herself the nickname ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’ by humorist Frank Muir.

Today, Joan Bakewell remains one of the ultimate examples of a woman making it in a man’s world – in this case, the media.  She was the first woman in Britain to sustain a career as a presenter/interviewer on a daily magazine television show. 

Looking back on this period of her life now, Bakewell says: “I remember saying to the BBC executives at the time ‘Why don’t you have a woman reading the news?’ They said ‘It’s just not possible Joan.  It’s just not possible’.  They said women would be distracting!  Of course, they were a generation of public school educated young men who’d then done military national service.  So they hadn’t mixed with women and thought women were like their sisters and girlfriends, and that’s it.  Then along came Anna Ford, reading the news on ITV.  And Angela Rippon on BBC2.  BBC1 made the change ten years later.  So I got a bit of company then,” she laughs.

Her interviewees also had a view on women television presenters.  Recalling her toughest one, she says: “It was an American television executive who really went for me, demanding ‘Why is a woman doing your job? You should be at home looking after your family.’  He took me by surprise, I hadn’t expected anyone to quite that offensive.  And so I fought back and said that it’s a job that’s worth doing, and worth doing well.  He countered that it’s not the role of women and that I had no right to be on air.  We were all gobsmacked when we reeled out of the studio that night.  But I got a lot of sympathetic letters afterward.”

After the show finished in 1972, Bakewell hosted TV programmes including Newsnight and Heart of the Matter, and others with an artistic and cultural slant.  She also continued contributing to radio and newspapers – approaching weighty issues with her trademark serious and somewhat fearless nature.

Fearless

Today, aged 73, Bakewell is no less fearless.  In her mid 60s, she made the decision to divorce her second husband, which had a profound impact on her life and, hence, her work.

“Getting divorced in your 60s is not an easy thing to contemplate.  Apart from the emotional trauma, it involved my sense of security.  Where would my roots be? Where would my life focus be? And how would everything change.  When you get older, those questions are more difficult.”

“Divorce in your 60s is not an easy thing to contemplate.  Apart from the emotional trauma, it involved my sense of security.  Where would my roots be? Where would my life focus be?”

But she was determined to face them, despite admitting: “I was reeling with anxiety and insecurity at the time.”  That decision paid off, and her advice to others in similar situations now is: “Face up to the situation.  Confront it.  Confront it yourself and then confront it with your friends.  And then get onboard the advisers that you need.”

This is exactly what Bakewell did.  Although a client of Coutts for many years, her divorce contributed to the close relationship she now has with her private banker, Sasha Speed.  “I had my accountant, my divorce lawyer and Sasha, my bank manager, all coming together to look after me.  I realised that you’ve got to trust other people like that because it’s important to have allies to help you through the financial and domestic arrangements that have to be made.  I’m glad that I faced it rather than hiding away.  And, obviously, I’m very happy with where I am now.” 

Understandably so. She published her widely read autobiography The Centre of the Bed in 2003 which covers her marriage to Michael Bakewell, her affair with actor Harold Pinter while still being married, and her second marriage to Jack Emery.  At 70, she also got a new job, writing a column ‘Just 70’ for The Guardian. 

“People that age felt that nobody spoke for them very much, so I did.  And it’s found an echo in many a heart.”  The columns sparked such a response from people that her latest book (released in September) The View from Here: Life at 70 is written loosely around them.  Couple this with more and more of her written work appearing across national newspapers, including The Independent, and Bakewell is probably busier now than ever. 

“My priorities have always been to enjoy life, and I’ve always made choices that made me feel satisfied with my work.  My career has been varied and I haven’t made a great fortune, but I’ve enjoyed every working day.  And I have no time to waste with that now.”

One thing she will continue to spend her time on is championing equal opportunities for women in the workplace.  “I feel very strongly about this.  There are lots of inequalities to be put right, basically to do with equivalence of pay with men.  There is also the work/life balance issue that isn’t resolved with women bearing the children and, frankly, doing most of the childminding.  There are still great swathes of men who just think ‘I don’t want to do that’.  So it’s tricky.

“But women have certainly made huge strides in the 40 years since I began working.  They’re confident, which I wasn’t, and very focused, which I wasn’t.  And so, I’m full of admiration for them, I think they’re terrific.”

The View from Here: Life at 70 by Joan Bakewell is published by Atlantic Books, £16.99.