Anna Ford

Anna Ford
Born	2 October 1943 (1943-10-02) Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England
Occupation	Journalist, television presenter, newsreader
Children	2 daughters

Anna Ford (born 2 October 1943 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire) is a retired English journalist and television presenter, best known as a newsreader.

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

Early life

Ford's parents were both West End actors, with her father having declined an offer from Samuel Goldwyn to work in Hollywood. He was later ordained as an Anglican priest, becoming the Reverend John Ford, and took Anna and her four brothers to live at Eskdale in the Lake District. She went to primary school at St. Ursula's School, Wigton, then to Wigton Grammar School. Her father became the parish priest at St Martin's church in Brampton, so she went to the White House Grammar School, becoming head girl.^{[citation needed]}

Ford received a BA degree in economics from the Victoria University of Manchester and was president of the university's students' union from 1966 to 1967. She also received a postgraduate diploma in adult education whilst at Manchester.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Ford worked as a teacher for four years, including teaching IRA provisionals at the H-Blocks at Long Kesh for two years. In 1970-2, she was a lecturer in Christie's Fine Art department in Ballyclare^{[citation needed]}, after which she was an Open University social studies tutor in Belfast for two years. She worked under her married name (at the time) of Bittles.^{[citation needed]} She was thirty by the time she joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1974, being told she was too old to be a newsreader. She joined the BBC in 1976, and worked on Tomorrow's World in 1977.

In 1978, she moved to ITN, becoming their second female newscaster.^{[citation needed]} Fellow newscaster 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."

Ford left 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 Time, TV-am was re-launched in a perceived "dumbing-down" of the station, and only three months after the station's launch, Ford was dismissed from the presenting team.^{[citation needed]} Ford was involved in a notable party incident, in which she threw her wine over Jonathan Aitken to express her outrage over his involvement in her sacking from the channel.^{[citation needed]}

She rejoined the BBC in 1986, becoming part of the presentation team for both BBC One'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, in the end, it was decided to replace her with the available Sophie Raworth.

In 1996, Ford was accused of bias when hosting a discussion on treatment of men during divorce cases on The Today Programme. The three-minute discussion featured feminist barrister Elizabeth Woodcraft and Neil Lyndon, a critic of feminism, with Ford allowing Woodcraft to speak for more than two minutes of the three-minute feature. Lyndon received an apology for his treatment on the programme and Ford, herself a feminist,^{[citation needed]} was reprimanded by BBC editor Rod Liddle.

On 30 October 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". She also talked about 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."

On 27 April 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. She is the Chair of Sainbury's board's Corporate Responsibility Committee.

Entertainment

Ford, as a student, toured Manchester's nightclub sets with a guitar for £5 a night. She wished 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."^{[citation needed]}

She turned down the chance of a part in the film Chariots of Fire^{[citation needed]} but appeared in the 1982 film Who Dares Wins. 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.

She has stated that her biggest regret is having turned down repeated invitations to appear on the Morecambe and Wise Show. Having been asked to appear in a song and dance routine on the 1978 Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show, the comedians instead performed the routine with a look-a-like, whose face was never seen on camera.^{[citation needed]}

She did appear in The Secret Policeman's Ball in 1979, in a sketch with John Cleese and Terry Jones of Monty Python about a game show in which contestants try to guess the identity of a celebrity while being beaten up by them.

An entirely false rumour started via wikipedia that she had a hit single in the UK pop charts in 1983, duetting with ex-Slade singer Noddy Holder on a cover of the Shakin' Stevens song "You Drive Me Crazy" was published as fact by national newspapers including The Sun and The Daily Telegraph. As with the similar Bob Holness "Baker Street" urban myth, no such Ford/Holder duet was ever recorded.

Academia

On 17 December 2001, she was installed as Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester. When the Victoria University of Manchester merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) on 1 October 2004 to create the new University of Manchester, she became its Co-Chancellor along with Sir Terry Leahy (the former Chancellor of UMIST). On 22 April 2006, 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 for both her broadcasting and academic career.^{[citation needed]} She is also an honorary fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Ford had an early marriage to Alan Bittles, although this dissolved before her television career and, in the late 1970s, she was briefly engaged to TV news anchorman Jon Snow. She married the magazine editor and 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 Brentford, Greater London.^{[citation needed]}

She was briefly engaged in 2000, to former astronaut David Scott. Ford became the subject 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, by a press photographer in Majorca, with a powerful zoom lens and published in the British media, constituted an invasion of her privacy.

In a letter to The Guardian in February 2010, Ford accused Martin Amis (a friend of her late husband Mark Boxer) of having neglected his duties as godfather to her daughter Claire and also having been disrespectful to Boxer at the time of his death. Amis rejected her allegations in a reply, although accepting that he had been remiss in his duties as godfather.

External links

• Biography from BBC News
• Anna Ford at the Internet Movie Database
• Audio interview on Woman's Hour re her retirement
• BBC Radio 3's "Private Passions" - musical play list
• Daily Telegraph article, 28 April 2006 - "Anna Ford says goodbye Britain as she signs off after 27 years"
• Sun article, 28 April 2006 - "Anna Ford's Last Bulletin"
• Biography at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
• Open University profile