Anna Ford

Anna Ford presented her last bulletin on the 27th of April, 2006.

Anna Ford (born 2 October 1943 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire) is a retired British television presenter.

During her long and distinguished career, she initially worked as a reseracher, news reporter and later news reader for Granada Television, the BBC, became the first female newsreader on ITN, and helped launch the first British Breakfast television program TV-am. She retired from broadcast news presenting in April 2006, and is now a non-executive director for Sainsburys.

Contents

1 Career
2 Away from the Newsdesk

2.1 Entertainment
2.2 Academia

3 Personal life
4 External links

Career

Anna Ford's parents were both West End actors, with her father having declined an offer from Samuel Goldwyn to work in Hollywood. He later decided to become a priest, and took Anna and her four brothers to live at Eskdale in the Lake District.

Ford studied Economics at the Victoria University of Manchester and was president of the students' union in 1966. After a failed marriage and a spell as an Open University tutor, Anna Ford was 30 by the time she joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1974, being told she was too old to be a newsreader [link] She joined the BBC in 1976, and worked on Tomorrow's World in 1977.

In 1978 she moved to ITN, becoming the networks first female newsreader. Fellow newsreader Reginald Bosanquet was inspired to write poetry for her: I prayed, I vowed, that I'd be good; and many people thought I would; but then I got my just reward; 18 nights with Anna Ford [link]

Ford helped ITN to launch TV-am in 1981, with its original high-brow "mission to explain". But with fierce competition from the BBC's casually styled Breakfast, TV-am was re-launch in a perceived "dumbing-down" of the station. Ford was involved in a notable incident, in which she threw her wine over Jonathan Aitken to express her outrage over his involvement in the unwelcome transformation.

She rejoined the BBC in 1986, becoming part of the presentation team for both BBC1's Six O'Clock News and the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in 1989. From 1999 she fronted the re-launched lunchtime One O'Clock News. In February 2003, Ford experienced one of her more challenging broadcasts when she lost her voice live on-air. She had to resort to drinking water on air, and the decision in the end had to be taken to replace Ford with the available Sophie Raworth.

On October 30, 2005, Ford announced her plans to retire from broadcasting in April 2006 in order to pursue other interests while she still has the interest and energy [link] She also talked tough on ageism, stating: I might have been shovelled off into News 24 to the sort of graveyard shift, and I wouldn't have wanted to do that because it wouldn't have interested me. I think when you reflect on the people who they're (the BBC) bringing in and they're all much younger. I think they are being brought in because they are younger. I think that's specifically one of the reasons why they're being employed [link] On April 27 2006, she said farewell to the viewers and signed off by introducing a compilation of clips of her career.

On 2 May 2006, J Sainsbury plc, the UK supermarket group, announced Ford was joining the company as a non-executive director. [link]

Away from the Newsdesk

Ford was always a thoroughly professional newsreader, thought of as both male fantasy and feminist icon, with Sir Robin Day once commenting that: all men wanted to sleep with Anna Ford - even though Ford's feisty personality and pleasure in speaking her mind had meant Ford had previously pushed him into a bush. Her love of academic study, and writing the book "Men - a documentary" in 1985 have given her a prim and aloof reputation

Entertainment

Ford, under her newsreader image, has always had a sence of theatre, fun and self-humour. As a student she toured Manchesters nightclub sets with a guitar for £5night, and alway wishes she could still be a nightclub singer, saying: You only have one life and it isn't a rehearsal. You may as well have fun.

She turned down the chance of a part in the film Chariots of Fire, but in 1983 her duet with Noddy Holder, a cover version of the Shakin' Stevens hit "You Drive Me Crazy", reached number 37 in the UK pop charts ([link] [link]). She also appeared on the BBC's Stars Sing the Beatles, with her version of Here, There and Everywhere. In December 2005 she was a guest presenter of Have I Got News For You - even though team captain Ian Hislop's publication Private Eye had appraised her as a talented Autocue reader on her retirement

Her biggest regret is having turned down repeated invitations to appear on the Morecambe and Wise Show

Academia

On 17 December 2001 she was installed as its Chancellor. When the Victoria University of Manchester merged with UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) on 1 October 2004 to create the new University of Manchester, she became Co-Chancellor along with Sir Terry Leahy (the former Chancellor of UMIST). On April 22, 2006, Anna Ford received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews, nominated by Sir Menzies Campbell. Her work was praised by the Dean of Arts, in both her broadcasting and academic career

Personal life

Ford had an early marriage disolve before her television career, and in the late 1970's she was briefly engaged to TV news anchor man, Jon Snow [link] She married cartoonist Mark Boxer, with whom she had two daughters Claire and Kate, before he died of a brain tumour in 1988 at their home in Brighton, East Sussex.

But it is the price of celebrity and the safety of her daughters that causes her concern, and partly resulted in her presentational style. In September 1999 she was invloved in an incident when a man smashed his way into the BBC newsroom at White City, while in 2000 a stalker, later jailed, turned up at Ford's home at Brentford. She has also been plauged by threatening letters from neo-Nazis, for no other reason than she read an article on the news.

She was then briefly engaged in 2003 to former Astronaut David Scott, with whom she was photographed. Ford briefly became the subject of rather than the reader of news stories in August 2001, when she lost a high profile court case. She claimed unsuccessfully that photographs of her in a bikini with David Scott taken by a press photographer in Majorca with a powerful zoom lens and published in the British media constituted an invasion of her privacy [link]

External links

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