We launched my BFI Classics book on A Hard Day’s Night at the BFI Southbank last night with a screening, which I introduced. I’ll be speaking at more screenings and book festivals all round the UK in the weeks ahead.But thought I’d share the brief speech I made at the book launch:
I thought my first book was going to be about Mary Whitehouse! But once I realised I needed to pull together the story of this remarkable film as a moment of groundbreaking social change there was no stopping me. It was a joy to write.
My thanks dive backwards in time..
Starting with the BFI and Benugo team for hosting tonight. All of you who’ve spoken up for the book and me – too many to name.
Everyone who spoke to me FOR the book – especially David Janson – the Boy – who’s here tonight with his family.
Mark Lewisohn for his scholarship and advice, and Chris Shaw – whose Eggpod podcast was key to me realising there was a book to write.
Rebecca Barden – a dream editor, who commissioned my pitch and offered the perfect notes. I didn’t disagree with a single one!
Sophie Contento for her remarkable fact checking and copy editing. My two favourites are spotting that ‘Allo ‘Allo! the sitcom had an exclamation mark and that Cliff Richard’s character in Expresso Bongo is called Bongo Herbert not Harry.
The whole marketing team at Bloomsbury especially Mollie Broad for their hard work backing the book.
Mark Swan for designing such an exquisite cover..
On sale in the BFI Southbank bookshop
My literary agent Catherine Clarke from Felicity Bryan for being my guardian through this whole process.
My agent of 25 years Sue Ayton and the whole team at Knight Ayton for always being my champions.
Philip Lawford for, amongst other things, taking me to visit Stowe School!
My family especially – Mum (Lalita Ahmed) for being one of those pioneering career women in tv, and my brother Salim for introducing me to the Beatles.
The Beatles of course. But a special thank you to the director Richard Lester – an immigrant who loved Britain, and defying authority, and who captured the Beatles with such style and joie de vivre. Let’s raise a glass to Richard Lester.
You can find info on my book and film screening events on the Upcoming page.
I think about popular culture for a living as a presenter of a daily artsshow on BBC Radio. But this book, due out on April 2nd 2026, has its roots in Christmas 1979when I was eleven years old and my big brother taped all the Beatlesfilms off TV onto our Betamax video recorder.
I used to watch A Hard Day’s Night (AHDN) again and again and fell under the spell of the Beatles like so many other children born too late to have ever seen them perform. Then just six years ago as an older woman dealing with a legal battle, I found myself playing the film soundtrack every day of the hearing on the train and the walk to and from Waterloo station.
And I realised how the Beatles represented something unique to me and I think to all of us – challenging the powerful and the privileged with their talent and their wit and their rebelliousness. So I think the book was born then. That’s the spirit of this book. At a time when the Beatles’ influence continues to grow it was a delight to re explore this magical moment.
I’d loved the BFI Classics from the start ever since Salman Rushdie’s take on The Wizard of Oz and the freedom to use sixty photographs to pick out key moments. And I was thrilled at the enthusiasm, encouragement and support from Bloomsbury from the moment I pitched the idea for my book.
I see AHDN as a kind of Tutankhamen’s tomb – a time capsule from 1964 but fully alive. I wanted to explore why the film feels timeless, even though it is entirely of its time. In all my work I’m fascinated by the intersection of pop culture, politics and social change. When I discovered the Stowe School tape two years ago the reason that story resonated so powerfully with people round the world, including those who weren’t Beatles fans, was because I explored the huge change going on in Britain at the time. The end of deference as working class culture epitomised by these young men, became admired – as heroes to the posh boys from the elite boarding school.
That’s also what this book is about. How Britain and the world were changing. One of the chapters I’m proudest of is on the Women of AHDN in which I explore the career women who populate the film and connect them to the wider social change going on in society as women pursued independence as make up artists, directors, journalists, and in advertising and as fashion designers. I spoke to girls who’d been in the concert, one classical musician who’d been in the opera singing scene and to the young boy, David Janson, who had that remarkable scene with Ringo who all revealed so much about the way the film was improvised and their interactions with the Beatles. Did you know Paul McCartney quoted Tennyson in the canteen?
I’ll reveal how and why a key scene was changed. And how and why the film avoided the dated references to race and gender that have tainted so many other films of the era. Crucially this is a book not just for those of us who already love the Beatles, but for anyone who loves films, who’s fascinated by the 60s, with style and design and TV. The fantastic cover for the book by artist Mark Swan captures another key theme in my take on the film – the importance of television in transmitting the Beatles to the world. I look at how TV was made, the impact of their seismic appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show a few months earlier, and how the Beatles were this unique force at a time when old variety and new screen culture were merging with each other.
Above all I look to the legacy of this film in the pop video, on films and sitcoms. From the Monkees to the Spice Girls, to Kneecap and the future. AHDN made it possible for millions of people round the world to feel they’d been at a Beatles concert. Abba Voyage attempts the modern equivalent. What might come next?
And at a time when there is growing hostility pushed by politicians in many countries against immigrants, I hope readers will enjoy finding out that a film, which captured a wholly British, northern, mostly working class phenomenon to perfection, was made by immigrants. Men such as Richard Lester and Walter Shenson. In the photos in the book you’ll see boys, girls, people of colour all sharing in the inclusive fabness of the fab four.
I look at how the film was promoted and feared in totalitarian states during the peak of the Cold War, and how in West Germany it was dubbed in a wholly original way with the Beatles riffing on Gunter Grass, traditional poetry and German cinema.I can’t tell you what a joy it was to write this book. Well, I think I just have. I think that joy comes across in its pages.
It’s not stuffy, there’s no jargon. I am hugely grateful to Mark Lewisohn, who kindly agreed to read my manuscript to ensure it did not repeat some of the many errors and myths that have spread jabout the film. Like the train the Beatles board at the start of the film, it’s a wild ride. And I really hope you’ll want to come on board.
In the 2000s when my children were very young, my mother, a veteran TV presenter and actress, took me aside one day and told me she was concerned my children weren’t watching ENOUGH television. “They’ll be left out in school,” she explained. It’s true that my daughter seemed to be the only girl in her Year 1 class not to have watched High School Musical on the Disney Plus channel, but I have no regrets and she quickly came to see that as something to boast about.
Graham’s feature in the Daily Telegraph (May 2025)
Graham Kibble-White and I met through his work as a renowned TV magazine editor and indeed “cult TV guru” (in the words of the Liverpool Daily Post). He’s the head of TV and Radio at The Telegraph. I wrote features for him on Space:1999, The Word and ITV children’s lunchtime shows of the 70s (Rainbow, Hickory House, Pipkins etc). But I’d also spent my entire career working on TV – mostly in news and documentaries. We started to bump into eachother as cultural commentators booked for vintage TV shows and Graham wrote a terrific piece about the experience of looking back this way.
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In the spirit of archaeology, Graham and I thought it would be fun to unearth real tv viewing of the past, assess it in modern sunlight, and like the hunt for the missing link, work out the evolutionary dead ends and successes of screen viewing. Not just nostalgia, but active thinking, in the age of streaming, when Channel 5 is re-launching Play For Today, about what makes great television and its social purpose and role in our daily lives. Angels to Casualty; Shadows to Inside Number 9 etc.
With JoyWhitby (2022)
The title of our podcast Through The Square Window, is course a reference to the famous filmed segments of Play School, created in 1964 for the news BBC2 channel, by the brilliant television producer and writer Joy Whitby, who also created Jackanory, The Book Tower and produced Catweazle. She has become a good friend and gave her blessing to our project. Thank you, Joy.
Two things that might come up now and then My family got a Philips home video recorder in about 1975, so there are shows I knew very well from repeated viewing in the age before VCRs became widespread a decade later, and I’ve read the campaign diaries of Mary Whitehouse, who famously lobbied to clean up TV from the 60s to the 90s.
We really hope you’ll give Through The Square Window a go, wherever you get your podcasts, and let us know what you think.
It’s had rave reviews, notably from men who’ve never read the book. And many female fans who have. But I felt really unsettled by this new production. Last year’s The Witches, wittily inverted Dahl’s misogyny, by making the witches aliens, who disguise themselves as those most ignored of humans – older women. This production actually ends up reinforcing some stereotypes in its attempt to modernise the book, as I’ll explain.
Let me start by declaring: I think the actors especially, Pearl Mackie, are wonderful and I do not blame them one jot for what I’m going to say. The set is fabulous. I am a huge fan of the National Theatre and I respect their right to experiment with new ways of story telling.
I liked the racial diversity. I loved the affectionate joke about Croydon. I loved the few sections where we got to see the joy of 1930s theatre – in the Alice show and the avant garde Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But I felt this production betrayed Ballet Shoes in fundamental ways. It turned a charming and thoughtful story about women and girls achieving in elite art forms into a camp pantomime.
A book that is unashamedly about a world of women without men, and what does the director do? Mock ballet with galumphing, mustachioed men in tutus and give two key female parts – of the ballet madames – to a man. Unforgivable.
And Pauline, played as a young black woman, is made to act physically aggressive – attacking other girls from the very start. None of this is in the book. And the worst racist stereotype so often imposed on black women, is actually imposed right here.
While the subtly lesbian academic couple are turned into a lone bereaved Doctor Jakes; thus actually putting the trope of the “dead lesbian” into Ballet Shoes, where it was not, while imposing a heterosexual patriarchal romance on Sylvia. And Nana is implied to be a Christian fundamentalist who comes to accept “lesbians” – the word spoken with great shock relish. How much more powerful to have left the theme as it was, implicit, as it would have been in that age, rather than lasciviously signposted, prompting the 7+ age rating.
The melancholy of the book was that we saw something every woman knows: the sadness of an older generation of women who’d lost so much, or been limited by the restrictions of their age, but who championed these children, equipping them with education and hopes that they might do better. That’s what women do for the next generation. Sylvia found no romance. We watch her age from young woman to grey haired careworn spinster over the course of the novel. Though we might hope she finds romance in that land of reinvention, California. The idea that these children’s dreams are enabled by these older women is what makes their success so moving. That Pauline’s success comes partly because she was lucky enough to be beautiful. And she knows it too. Why hide that bittersweet truth? Any way it’s a book I care about deeply.
Last year I joined Historic England’s advisory panel for the new expansion out of London to all of England, of the blue plaques scheme, commemorating the lives of people who’ve made a major contribution to human welfare or happiness. Anyone can nominate someone via the website. Other key criteria are: at least twenty years since their death, and a still existent building, directly linked to them, visible from the public highway. George Harrison’s name came up almost immediately and we considered three addresses in Liverpool linked to his family.
12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, his birth place, was the final choice. Although the family moved when he was seven, this is the house where he and they were all happiest, and its modest size captures the marvel of his life’s journey.
On the wording, we discussed listing his wider achievements, including as a film producer and horticulturalist, but in the end it felt right that it should mirror the wording on John Lennon’s.
With Duncan Wilson of Historic England and Olivia Harrison outside 12 Arnold Grove
I was honoured to be asked to host the ceremony on Friday May 24th 2024, and welcome his wife, Olivia Harrison to speak and unveil the plaque. She spoke movingly of how he sometimes drove her up to sit and look at the house from the outside. When they booked hotels to protect their anonymity,they used to check in as Mr and Mrs Arnold Grove, with their son Dhani as Albert Grove. Most poetically she spoke of how, though he travelled South, West and East, his star was in the North.
Unveiling ceremony
Several members of George’s Liverpool family were in attendance, including his sister-in-law. (Her husband, George’s eldest brother was too frail to attend). And they appreciated the chance to look inside the house the family left in 1950. Afterwards there was a warm reception with tea and sandwiches in the old Wavertree Town Hall round the corner with the local civic society, who were so proud of their fellow son. I felt like we were in some genial self-aware version of the cover shoot of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
With Olivia Harrison in Wavertree Old Town Hall
This is the written text of the speech I gave:
I know I speak for many when I say that I grew up under the spell cast by George Harrison and The Beatles. And the dreamland of Liverpool that inspired them.
When I was ten my step cousin, an Indian merchant seaman gave me a copy of George’s 1979 album, and told me George was a friend and had given him the album as a present for me as he knew I was a fan. There’s something appropriate about the tall tale from a sailor. I studied the sleeve notes for clues to that supposed friendship and saw all the Indian cultural references. There was a great mystery about this man. The music, his wry presence in films.
Bruce Robinson, the director and writer of Withnail and I, told me recently how essential George had been to that film, through Handmade Films, and to so many other landmarks of British cinema – such as Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Time Bandits.
Culturally he embraced and embodied everything that made postwar Britain exciting – drawing inspiration from George Formby and ukeleles, Sooty and Sweep and Indian culture and music. I cannot tell you how important his embrace of Indian culture was to children of immigrants in the 60s and 70s; his openmindness at a time of racial intolerance. It helped make us appreciate our parents’ culture that a Beatle valued it.
I know George felt mixed about school and authority, but at this house he was happy. He wrote in his autobiography, I Me Mine: “It was ok that house. Very pleasant being little and it was always sunny in the summer.”
There is something hugely inspiring about the little boy with such passion for the guitar. Paul McCartney told me they’d travel across the city together to learn a new chord they’d heard about. He pursued musical excellent with such single mindedness. I don’t know how he’d feel at having the approval of Historic England, but I like to think it would have given him a wry smile.
Photo: David Betteridge Copyright Slapstick Festival
Graeme Garden and The Goodies have long been celebrated at Bristol’s Slapstick Festival. The slapstick visual sequences were absolutely central to the joy of their longrunning and much loved comedy series. As Graeme said on the night, the idea behind the original series lay in making a kind of real life Roadrunner cartoon. But this year Graeme and the Festival team came up with a new angle. Given I’d spoken publicly about how a particular episode of the show had offered me inspiration during my sex discrimination equal pay tribunal against the BBC in 2019, how about doing an entire evening focussed on the political and social satire in many of the episodes?
Looking back to 2018 when I’d interviewed Graeme, Tim and Bill together to mark the DVD release of the complete BBC episodes, I’d been struck by how reactive the series seemed to news events and social change of its day, often filtering in the sense of tabloid generated or amplified outrage: There were episodes on the obsession with suburban satanists, punk, the National Gallery’s budget and fears of having to sell off art.
Photo: David Betteridge. Copyright: Slapstick Festival
And equally how the tone of the show had changed, from quite an adult sensibility (Bill going off on psychedelic sherbert trips, topless pinups on the office walls, and, scantily clad and mostly dialogue-free women as set dressing ) to something more inclusively comic.
Graeme quickly came up with a shortlist of episodes and we compiled a rich selection of clips to illustrate the theme. At the Bristol Beacon event for the Slapstick Festival in front of a warm and enthusiastic audience, we launched our Thinking Woman’s Guide To The Goodies; inspired by female broadcasting pioneer Joan Bakewell’s highbrow cultural interviews in the 1960s. The whole event was filmed, and featured audience questions too. You’ll hopefully you’ll be able to catch it posted on Youtube soon.
My gratitude to Tim, Bill and Graeme is deep, and I want to express my huge personal thanks to Graeme Garden and the whole Slapstick Festival team.
Give Police A Chance S1 Ep 3 ( 22nd Nov 1970) had its origins in Bill Oddie being stopped by police while driving his car and then assaulted. He was charged and convicted of assault after a police officer testified in court that Oddie, despite being much shorter, had kicked him in the chest. The episode captured the sense of how violent their reputation was at the time, and played with the idea of the Police seeking The Goodies’ help to clean up their image. Tim Brooke Taylor’s onscreen persona (unlike his real views) as a patriotic, trusting conservative, added real power to story lines like this, as the veil fell from his eyes.
Pollution S2 Ep 3 (15th Oct 1972) – We chose a slapstick sequence from this episode, after the Goodies went on the trail of pollution being created and dumped by the ministry of pollution. It featured sewage filled lakes (how 2024!) and acid rain – courtesy of acetone poured on Tim’s umbrella. The health and safety assessments for the show would make entertaining reading. This episode also offered a moment to reflect on the musical genius of Bill Oddie. His song-writing pioneered a new kind of multi-genre music for comedy.
Gender Education S2 Ep 11 (31st Dec 1972) – Beryl Reid starred as the Mary Whitehouse figure Mrs Desiree Carthorse, one of many veteran comedy actresses to play key roles in The Goodies. I’d first interviewed Graeme about Whitehouse back in 2020, when I was researching her campaign diaries. The storyline reflected the very current moral panic about sex and violence on TV and her concerns about a controversial new sex education film for schools, which would show a couple having intercourse. Graeme revealed they found out Whitehouse had been a fan of the show in real life and had written to the producer to say as much. I also enjoyed reading Graeme an extract from her 1977 diaries, when it was clear she’d confused them with the Pythons and their planned film The Life of Brian. How appropriate that the last time the Guardian wrote a piece about me claiming something from the 70s needed a fresh critical appraisal, it was Mary Whitehouse.
Superstar S3 Ep 7 (12th July 1973) – Perhaps the most prescient and revelatory evidence of my thesis, about The Goodies reflecting the social issues of its day, was this elaborate parody of pop fame in the gender-bending glam rock era. In a particularly sharply written episode, Oddie finds fame as Randy Pandy, managed by the cynical Barbara Mitchell, and packaged with maximum shock value for girls, boys and “the twilight zone”. There’s even a Jesus Christ Superstar-style show for him to star in, based on the life of St Augustine. The portrayal of TOTP, which saw teenage girls brought in on a livestock lorry to be the studio audience, was striking for capturing what was only revealed in hindsight, after the Jimmy Savile scandal in the 2010s.
Hospital For Hire S4 Ep 3 (15th Dec 1973) – Another episode that looks remarkable in 2024, with issues around crumbling, filthy buildings, low morale, waiting lists and government policy on the NHS. Harry H Corbett played the Minister. The clip we showed saw inviting The Goodies visiting Crippen ward to see how a modern NHS hospital works.
Cunning Stunts Tessa Wyatt and Graeme Garden (1975)
Cunning Stunts S5 Ep 10 (14th April 1975) – My favourite episode, and the ultimate inspiration for the Slapstick Festival event, this captured the essence of The Goodies’ satirical possibilities. The title is knowing risque wordplay, it came out a few months before the implementation of the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and the 1970 Equal Pay Act aimed to transform the workplace for women. The episode was, said Graeme, conceived as a love story, with Bill falling for an heiress, played by Tessa Wyatt (then married to regular Goodies target Tony Blackburn). When she takes a job as a reporter in The Goodies newsroom, she soon upturns the sexual politics of the office and starts sexually harrassing the boys, much to their horror. It’s a magnificent moment and meant a lot to me and my sister growing up in that strange decade. We memorised the scene thanks to taping it off TV on an early VCR, and used to quote it at eachother for years after.
South Africa S5 Ep 11 (21st Apr 1975) – This satire on apartheid was clearly mocking the racist attitudes of the South African regime, and the violence of their security forces, but even with a star turn by Philip Madoc as the violent head of the South African tourist board, it remains a very difficult watch. Graeme was revealing about the push back from the BBC who claimed it wasn’t funny enough. They added more jokes, the episode got made, but it was really good that we got to discuss honestly the problem with blackface, and how the use of racist language even for satirical ends – the kind I regularly heard at school or on sitcoms like Love Thy Neighbour – was uncomfortable.
Politics S8 Ep 1 (14th Jan 1980) – A new decade and this episode captures how much had changed in politics since The Goodies began in 1970. Graeme played a Tim Bell-like media guru, making over political leaders. We had parodies of Mrs Thatcher (Tim Brooke-Taylor at his finest), plays on Evita, and spoof political ad campaigns about class and free enterprise that connect directly to the world of today.
The Playgirl Club Sq Ep 4 (Nov 1970) – Out of chronological sequence, but a clip I wanted to include, was this spoof of the Playboy Club and the strange mainstreaming of American porn culture that took Britain by storm in the early 1970s. It’s another tricky watch, not least for Graeme, who was gracious in agreeing to show it. Starring Liz Frazer and featuring comedienne Queenie Watts, this episode features the Goodies going undercover (like Gloria Steinem) as Playgirl Wolves (complete with ears and scanty outfits) in Liz Fraser’s den, where women subjected men to their female gaze. There are a couple of real male go-go dancers gyrating in the club. When Hugh Hefner died I interviewed my mother for The Guardian about being taken to the Playboy Club for my father’s business dinners with clients and their spouses. Watching this reminded me of that strange era.
As I said in 2018, my biggest finding was that as a profundly revealing social document of the decade – what was going on in social attitudes, politics, culture, humour – The Goodies – with its mass multi-generational audience – is the series that future historians will be studying. Not Monty Python.
Graeme and I are already planning the next installment of The Thinking Woman’s Guide…
Photo: David Betteridge. Copyright: Slapstick Festival
I was hugely honoured to me made an honorary Doctor of Letters by Kingston University today, “in recognition of her contribution to journalism and gender equality”. Here’s the speech I gave at the graduation ceremony. You can watch it on YouTube here from 1 hour 39 m. And you can find the notes from past lectures I gave students by searching under Kingston University class notes.
Thankyou so much. When I was a little girl growing up in the 70s, we used to have to watch the Miss World beauty pageant to see women winning awards for anything, so we’ve come a long way.
Over the last year or so I’ve been having a new kind of anxiety dream — that I’m back at university. When I say back, I mean I’m the age I am now, but I forgot I signed up for another degree and I’m back on campus in a tiny student room, worrying about an imminent essay. In one case I dreamt I had to hand in a dissertation the next day and hadn’t had a clue. Wondered if I could busk writing 15,000 words overnight. And also thinking I don’t know any of these people. Oh, and what about my children, and my job? How will I juggle them all?
I think it shows that even all these years later how great a challenge university study is. So while I want to say thank you so much, for bestowing this honour on me, I want to first offer my congratulations to all of you for reaching that peak. Well done all of you. But also thank you so much to the university, for bestowing this honour on me. I’m really hoping this not a dream!
I grew up in New Malden, very much a local girl, and was always aware of the Uni, particularly its fame for its design and fashion courses, which as we’ve heard, are still such a huge part of this university. I love the legacy of this place, finding it in books I borrowed from the library, when I was visiting professor, that still had Kingston Polytechnic stamped in their covers. The kind of whole history of this place.
As a visiting Professor in the 2010s I was delighted to meet so many students, from all over the world and learn so much from you. Learn that your enthusiasm is what promised success. I gave one class on pop music and politics and there was an American student who knew all the answers to every question about British pop music history going back to the Beatles in the early 1960s, when the British students didn’t. I loved seeing that unexpected expertise from people. In the same way I still love my science fiction and my pop music, I would urge all of you to keep the spirit of your young selves in you, throughout your careers. That passion, that personal passion for your interests, that teenage you; the early twentysomething you. Never lose touch with that person. And always be true to yourself.
My mother, who is here now, – you may have guessed I’m of South Asian heritage. And I hate to bring up a stereotype but she always wanted me to be a doctor. And you know what kind of doctor; a medical doctor. And if I’m honest she’s still wondering now that I have this honorary doctorate whether she can tell people that I am a doctor. Sorry mum.
But, of course, my mother encouraged me to follow my own heart. And at a time when we know there are politicians talking about downgrading the value of arts and humanities degrees, I’m not downgrading STEM, but I think we must all be proud of these courses.
I once met a very senior computer expert who’d worked in Silicon Valley. This was a few years ago and we were at a science conference, talking about the future dangers of AI, and she said what AI reveals is the greater importance of human decision making, of creative thinking, of the human in all of this. So more than ever, if anyone tries to push back against humanities degrees, you absolutely need to stand up for them.
My father encouraged me too – he never went to university. Or even finished school properly. But he knew the value of education and he encouraged me. And I know for some of you here, that may be true of your families. You may be the first generation to have attended university. And I congratulate you for all of that too.
My passion meant a degree in English literature and language. It wasn’t strictly vocational, but it taught me so much about critical thinking, and how to learn to trust your own instincts. I’d always wanted to be a journalist. I was lucky enough to join the BBC as a graduate news trainee and have never, for a day, been bored. It’s been a privilege.
In fact, with my degree in English literature, when I interviewed the director of the Barbie movie, which if you haven’t seen you should, I brought up the fact that it was clearly inspired by the story of Lord Buddha, which it was, and no one else had spotted, and we also discussed Milton’s Paradise Lost. So your degree in humanities will take you anywhere you want.
So I want to thank to all our parents and guardians and carers for backing us to follow our hearts and study the degrees we wanted. Congratulations to all the parents and carers.
Thanks to my degree I have a mantra now, it is.. show me the data and I will show you the story. Whether that’s reading a report for a journalistic investigation, or someone’s bank statements, or working out when I’m being ripped off on pay.
I think it’s useful for you to know as well, what I wish I’d known when I was at university.
First, being judged on my own hard work at school and university set me up with a confidence of knowing my own abilities. I want all of you with your degrees to take that confidence with you and never forget it. Never doubt your abilities, no matter what others might say.
When I began my career I assumed discrimination had all been sorted. I really did. After all the Equal Pay Act and the Race Relations act and the Sex Discrimination act for 10-20 years when I went to university. So what I wish I’d realised, and want you to, is to never assume you’re being paid or treated fairly. Trust your instincts, to share pay information with colleagues, ask your employers for transparency and equal pay. To join a union. Stand together. I couldn’t have successfully sued the BBC for sex discrimination without the backing of mine, the National Union of Journalists and the amazing lawyers and all my colleagues and friends who supported me.
I like to think I’ve always had an instinct for justice and to uncover the truth. My mum says I do, and she’s always right. I’m proud of standing up for the parents of Rochelle Holness who was murdered by a serial rapist and then had a false story about her murder printed in The Sun, apparently fed by a Metropolitan police officer. I’m proud of reporting the so-called corrective rape and murder of lesbian women in South Africa – women like Eudy Simelane – and bringing global attention to the way the criminal justice system around the world and misogyny around the world still betray too many women.
When I made my BBC4 documentary series Art of Persia in Iran I showcased the Iranian people and their rich culture – to help us see they weren’t the same as the regime ruling the country.
I can’t pretend every story I’ve covered has solved anything, but shining a light on the truth is where we have to start if we want to make our world fairer. I like to think I’ve never given up hope and I hope you won’t either.
Of course, you’ve had challenges that my generation didn’t expect. There’s been the ongoing issue of strikes and I need to say I support the lecturers fighting for pay and conditions. It’s not right that there should be such a huge gulf between the pay of those at the top and the rest of us. I can’t believe it’s got so much worse in the last few years.
Then you faced tuition fees, and the pandemic. My own children are very much the same age as most of you. And I’m so aware how the pandemic has seen your generation suffer. Divisions are being sown between us again, amplified by social media. I hope you can try to limit its pernicious influence in your life. I’m a great fan of IRL. Going out and meeting people and doing things is essential to your wellbeing and making your life the way you want it to be.
I hope you can all appreciate how remarkable you are to have come through this difficult time and be here to celebrate. When it comes to the rest of your life, though it’s a long and hopefully exciting journey. You may pause or change paths; there may be setbacks. You don’t need everything mapped out now. So my one other mantra to you is.. remember it’s stamina, not speed.
Thank you again for this huge honour. And I wish you all the best for your future.
A spread from the Stowe School archive was laid out in the Headmaster’s Gothic Library when I arrived there on March 22nd, ready for me. Copies of the letters from Brian Epstein, photos and more. Anthony Wallersteiner and old Stoic John Bloomfield had agreed to spend the morning with me and producer Julian May for a special Front Row report marking the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ most unusual gig – the time they played a private boys’ boarding school.
My fascination with the intersection of popular culture and social change is the driving force behind my journalism. My partner had taken me for a visit to the school last summer and Anthony had given us a tour and told us about the concert. Seeing a blue plaque on the school theatre building marking the event set my spidey senses tingling. Not only did I love The Beatles, I knew there was a story about what that concert represented as a pivotal moment of transformation in British society and the uniqueness of that almost all male audience. What I didn’t know until a couple days before we arrived was that John might have a tape of the whole concert.
Last night’s Front Row special in which I revealed the existence of the earliest complete live recording of the Beatles in the UK was one of the most delightful stories I’ve ever worked on.
It’s all thanks to John Bloomfield’s self confessed technical nerdery in taping the concert on his new tape player that it exists. And thanks to his generosity and trust in me, that he told me about it.
He brought along an extract that we played through the stage PA system turned up as loud as possible to match the experience he’d had back in 1963. It was emotional for all us, including two young A level music students who came along to listen. It was like time travel. The Front Row listen hopefully gives a sense of that.
Back home I decided I needed to be sure of my story and therefore to hear the whole tape. I rang John to ask him if he’d play it in full over a call. I also asked if I could let Mark Lewisohn join us on the call and get his expert opinion on what it revealed. John kindly agreed. Mark was in New York on a research trip for his next volume of his definitive Beatles history (covering 1963-66 by great coincidence), but we found a date and time slot and the three of us listened to it in full for the first time in 60 years, grinning and tapping our feet but also..given that this was cultural history – making careful notes. I now had an almost complete set list — more than 22 songs with another 2 we guessed, missing as the tape had run out before the end. I collated Mark’s notes with mine; John made amendments to correct what we’d misheard on the banter.
PLAYLIST:
I Saw Her Standing There
Too Much Monkey Business
Love Me Do
Some Other Guy
Misery
I Just Don’t Understand
A Shot of Rhythm and Blues
Boys
Matchbox
From Me To You
Thank You Girl
Memphis Tennessee
A Taste of Honey
Twist and Shout
Anna
Please Please Me
Hippy Hippy Shake
I’m Talking About You
Ask Me Why
Till There Was You
Money
I Saw Her Standing There (reprise) – tape runs out at this point. Possibly there were a couple more songs – maybe Sweet Little Sixteen and Long Tall Sally, according to another Stoic’s partial set list.
I then arranged to record an interview for the Front Row piece with Mark, who gives his invaluable insight and context about what the tape reveals, how it changes our understanding of the band’s performance and the potential for it with audio enhancement, as an artefact of cultural importance. And I don’t mean an artefact as a dead, fetishised object, but for its dynamic exciting capture of a live moment.
As the edit came together with more clips of the banter, the BBC worked its Reithian power when it counted: A colleague in BBC Music rights helped my editors Tim Prosser and Rebecca Stratford clear permission to use extracts. My editors gave constant support and oversight and allowed the piece to be as long as it needed to be: 27 minutes. Julian cast his George Martin-level magic to weave a sound collage of new interviews and archive – he found the BBC’s session recordings with the Fab Four made the same day as the Stowe Concert, matching some of the same songs from my written set list, in case we couldn’t use the tape. We had a nerve wracking week, keeping the secret, and waiting for clearance of clips.
I had written a news story for the BBC News website and my colleagues including Ian Youngs turned that around before 6pm – just over an hour before Front Row went on air. Somehow I recorded an interview with Hugh Laurie about his wonderful Agatha Christie adaptation. Producers Paul Waters and Kirsty McQuire took care of the shape of the rest of the programme. With the symmetry of pieces falling into place, Laurie’s drama was set in 1936, the same digits, rearranged, as 1963. Then we were on air. 1, 2, 3, 4… Tune in:
(Updated Feb 26th 2025 to reflect latest developments in the John Smyth abuse scandal)
It was back in summer 2019 that I first found out that Oxford University’s world famous Bodleian Library had just acquired the Mary Whitehouse diaries. And I knew straight away that I wanted to read them. I’d been a child of the 70s, seeing her mocked and dismissed as an anti-sex prude. A lot of unpleasant truths were being reassessed about that decade. What might I find by reading her point of view?
I also realised I was now nearly the same age as she’d been when she began her clean up tv campaign in 1963. I knew a thing or two about what it took to stand up as an individual woman to the power of a national broadcaster. In December 2019, I paid my first visit to the Weston Library, where the special collections of modern manuscripts were kept, and saw the Mary Whitehouse diaries in their raw state; a physical manifestation of her multitasking, formidable and relentless campaigning mind.
A physical manifestaion of Mary Whitehouse’s campaigning mind
Nicole Gilroy with 1994 diary before and after
There were stacks of boxes bursting with letters and newspaper cuttings. These were her private campaign diaries, separate to the official National Viewer and Listener Association papers now housed at the University of Essex. The diaries occupy a fascinating mysterious inbetween world – somewhere between official correspondence and personal private channels of influence. I carefully leafed through one box and found correspondence with Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and letters to Prince Charles, the Queen and Princess Diana. She kept all the newspaper cartoons of her, clearly understanding that coverage of any kind was evidence of her influence. And she was proud of the fact that her Spitting Image puppet was smiling, and, she said, the only “ordinary” citizen on the show.
I spent several weeks in the library during 2020 going through every diary and cutting and letter. And you can read one of the many stories I found about her here: Her successful 1994 battle involving the Queen to stop humanists getting on Throught For The Day. Thanks to Francesca Alves, Nicole Gilroy and their colleagues at the Bodleian, and to St Edmund Hall’s staff and Principal, Professor Katherine Willis, for all their help and support on those long research days during partial lockdown.
Eager to turn even a fraction of this into radio I sent a pitch to Radio 4’s commissioning editor who gave a speedy yes (thank you!) and teamed up with my brilliant and regular collaborators, producers Simon and Thomas Guerrier. Given the three of us first worked together filming a Doctor Who Vengeance on Varos DVD extra, called The Idiot’s Lantern, it was particularly apposite that we should explore more closely the life of the woman who waged a high profile and effective campaign against excessive violence in Doctor Who. Simon’s written a wonderful blogpost about Mary Whitehouse vs Doctor Who.
With Fiona Whitehouse, Mary’s granddaughter
Fiona Whitehouse, whose father Paul, inherited the diaries after Mary’s death in 2001, was instrumental in finding the diaries their new home in the Bod. Talking to her and her family was a fascinating and insightful experience. It’s fair to say Mary Whitehouse was a strong and divisive personality. But as you’ll hear in the programme, Fiona had a very close and warm bond with her grandmother, who was never a conventional housewife, whatever the myth that was lazily repeated in the press. They disagreed strongly on Mary’s religious belief that homosexuality was a “sin”, but I hope the programme conveys the idea that Whitehouse could be wrong and simultaneously right on different moral and ethical issues of her day. Her views on tackling pornography, especially as computer technology took off dating back to the late 1960s, are remarkably prescient. As people are very fond of saying these days, she claimed to be on the right side of history when it came to the impact of unregulated pornography on society.
One of the cuttings found in Mary’s 90s diaries
As you can probably tell I have so much more I’d like to write about Mary Whitehouse and what we could learn by studying how she operated and what’s changed because of her campaigning, even if we don’t want to admit it. I’d also like to say more about her sense of fun. She was a smart media operator with a new frock for each appearance and remarkable confidence on camera at a time when men very much ruled the airwaves on and off mic. She was always up for a debate. A former school teacher, she loved the company of students and spent a huge amount of her time travelling round the country debating at universities. Even some of her opponents – whether student protestors such as feminist lesbian activist Julie Bindel, or broadcasting executives such as Michael Grade – have told me in interviews, that she was a formidable campaigner and orator. Tireless, relentless, a writer of the most beautifully argued letters in the pages of the newspapers.
l-r Producer Simon Guerrier, critic Michael Billington, Samuel West, Nicholas De Jongh, me
Though as theatre director Michael Bogdanov found out, as the target of her prosecution for gross indecency over the National Theatre play The Romans In Britain – being targetted by her could be life changing and frightening. We do not shy away from that story and the repercussions of her campaign. Bogdanov died in 2017, but we use archive interviews with him after the prosecution was suddenly dropped. Nicholas De Jongh, often mentioned in the diaries, was the Guardian’s arts reporter at the time and knew Mary throughout this time. Samuel West directed the only professional production of Howard Brenton’s play since – in 2006. Brenton, incidentally, declined to take part in the programme, saying he was proud of the play but did not want to talk about the attacks on it. We also piece together the timetable from the diaries, which shows how, unknown to Mary, one of her closest Christian allies John Smyth was a violent abuser of young men, even while preparing to prosecute the play for staging a fictionalised male rape. He was only exposed in 2017 and the cover up over his abuse has led to the resignation of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Justin Welby (in November 2024) and ongoing scandal within the Church of England.
Mary knew none of this. But I do wonder how it might have challenged her sometimes closed mind if she’d known; not least her unshakeable faith in the leadership of establishment institutions. She herself was herself targetted with death threats, physical attacks, angry protests and blacklisting (by then BBC DG Hugh Carleton-Greene). But she was brave and, in her later years, in considerable pain after breaking her back. I think there is much to admire in this formidable woman.
I think she would be delighted to find her writings housed in one of the world’s greatest universities.
I was a young BBC News Correspondent and had arrived to cover for the BBC’s LA Correspondent over Christmas. I was very jetlagged after playing Mortal Kombat II nonstop for 11 hours on the flight over. But then Jeremy Cooke rang and told me he had heard on KROC that Oasis were playing a surprise gig at the Viper Room that night and offered to cover it for Radio 1’s Newsbeat. So rather than meeting him the next day in the office, did I want to come? This is the review I wrote the day after, thinking I might offer it to one of the British inkies – Melody Maker or the NME. These were the heady days of Britpop. I found it in the back of the filing cabinet in a folder with thank you letters from the Cabinet Office, broadcasting executives and various illustrious bodies. You can tell I was attempting a “style”. It does make me cringe. I apologise for “Yanks” and rudeness about brains. Not ok. It was my own attempt at youthful macho swagger. But it is what it is. An attempt to capture a moment.
In Britain they fill Wembley Arena. In Los Angeles, preppie couples in the Viper Lounge were discussing whether to other staying on after the Zen Cowboys and Chickenhawk for Oasis. The intimate club was packed out with a mix of industry “decision maker”, a hybrid batch of Goths, and alarmingly convincing Damon Albarn lookalikes. They’d all heard the hype. But they all needed convincing.
After a soundcheck, with the velvet curtains jumping around on the stage, the ‘Sis got off to a cracking start. All credit to Liam for perfecting a rock god act which requires minimal physical movement; just holding the mic lead carefully in his mouth, like a rookie Lassie, and staring blankly with those limpid eyes.
A rollicking Hello, Roll With It, and Some Might Say were definitely the highlights of a twenty minute set. Americans looked blankly as Liam, in the way of band banter, bawled something about “this is fookin’ great” and Manchester. Translation hopefully provided by a small contingent of British tourists, who were bounding around, unable to believe their luck. Sadly the Brits were also nearly the only ones actually moving. The crowd actually managed to make Liam’s stage act look like Take That. Arms crossed, pained expressions. Oh dear. A lacklustre Live Forever didn’t help; Liam deciding to give up on actually moving his lips and consigned large chunks of singing to big brother.
Cigarettes and Alcohol finally got some movement out of the crowd. The playing was superb. All on excellent form, and to hear it belted out in the intimacy of a venue which, as a fellow listener commented, was smaller than the Kent University hall whe he last saw them in 1994, well, it was fabulous.
Whether overly packed out with insiders or not, it’s clear the gig served as a useful illustration of the uphill struggle the band faces in the ‘States. People had come expecting The Beatles. They saw and heard something rather more akin to Slade. Without the acoustic wonders of Noel’s gentler numbers, I Am The Walrus, even as beautifully as it as performed, couldn’t amuse this lot.
And Liam walking off even before the band had finished playing – muttering thanks under the din – thus totally inaudible – suggested little attempt to tackle the situation with professional politeness.
Aww, who cares what the Yanks think anyway? For the tourists who found themselves there, and hopefully for a handful of Americans with brains, it was a moment out of history – like seeing The Beatles last ever performance at the Cavern. It may not have been their greatest, but it was for anyone who was there.
“What is this witch going to ask me next?” Oliver Stone
“We chose Samira Ahmed as MC of #thetestaments launch at National Theatre, webstreamed to 1500 cinemas worldwide, for her expertise and high professionalism. She was flawless. She is a star!” Margaret Atwood
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In the 2000s when my children were very young, my mother, a veteran TV presenter and actress, took me aside one day and told me she was concerned my children weren’t watching ENOUGH television. “They’ll be left out in school,” she explained. It’s true that my daughter seemed to be the only girl in her Year 1 class not to have watched High School Musical on the Disney Plus channel, but I have no regrets and she quickly came to see that as something to boast about.
It’s had rave reviews, notably from men who’ve never read the book. And many female fans who have. But I felt really unsettled by this new production. Last year’s The Witches, wittily inverted Dahl’s misogyny, by making the witches aliens, who disguise themselves as those most ignored of humans – older women. This production actually ends up reinforcing some stereotypes in its attempt to modernise the book, as I’ll explain.
Last year I joined Historic England’s advisory panel for the new expansion out of London to all of England, of the blue plaques scheme, commemorating the lives of people who’ve made a major contribution to human welfare or happiness. Anyone can 
