By Jane Gordon
Last updated at 12:24 AM on 23rd January 2011
She became one of television’s first female newsreaders in 1980, and for two decades her career flourished. Then followed self-imposed exile – and vociferous attacks on the TV industry for its treatment of older women. But now Selina Scott is returning to our screens – and this time,she tells Jane Gordon, she’s holding nothing back
'I really liked Princess Diana; she would tell you the most indiscreet things,' says Selina
A group of schoolgirls is watching our photographer take pictures of a ravishing Selina Scott posing in the majestic grounds of Chatsworth House.
‘Excuse me,’ shouts one of the teenagers, ‘is she a film star?’
It’s a chant taken up by three or four others in the group – on a school trip to the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in Derbyshire – and when they are silenced with a polite ‘no’, they ask, variously, if she is a Wag, a reality-show contestant, or someone from Corrie, Emmerdale or EastEnders?
To a generation of girls whose role models are mostly famous for being famous – from Katie Price to Kerry Katona – it’s difficult to explain the phenomenon that is Selina Scott. In the 1980s and 90s, Selina enjoyed the kind of celebrity that almost put her on a par with royalty (she was admired by a clutch of kings, a couple of princes – Andrew and Charles – and her looks were often compared to Princess Diana). In recent years, though, she has shunned the limelight, choosing to lead a somewhat reclusive life on her farm in North Yorkshire and only venturing into the public arena to express her concerns about the way in which the British television industry (and particularly the BBC) treats
older women.
But all that is about to change: the 59-year-old journalist, producer and former newscaster is back on our screens again, presenting a ground-breaking new five-part series, Treasure Houses of Britain. The programme – a
co-production between Sky Arts and the History Channel – will give viewers the chance to look at the interiors and exteriors of five of the most important houses in the country in 3D. Among them is Chatsworth, where I meet Selina for the photographs and – at the end of a long, cold winter’s day – a surprisingly emotional interview.
Somewhere between the glacial goddess in the ink-blue ballgown of our photo shoot and the rather strident ‘poster girl against ageism’ that she has become in the past couple of years lies the real Selina Scott: passionate, clever and opinionated. She laughs more than she sighs and insists (when we sit down over a shared bottle of white wine) that her mission in life is to encourage women to see the positive side of growing older.
Fom left: Selina with co-presenter Frank Bough on BBC’s Breakfast Time, 1983, and Prince Charles in A Prince Among Islands, a documentary she produced in 1991
‘I don’t understand this obsession women have about looking younger. Instead of celebrating our achievements and enjoying the many good things that come as we grow older, we drive ourselves mad trying to turn back the clock. I hate to see women belittle themselves. I hate to see them dress in a way that doesn’t suit them and do things to their faces that disfigure them. I think women acquire luminosity as they grow older; why would you choose to obliterate that by surgery? Surgery doesn’t make you look younger, it makes you look freakish,’ she says, pushing her thick blonde hair away from her eyes to proudly display the signs of ageing on her own still lovely – but visibly lined – face.
It’s easy to understand why Selina is so exasperated about the way that women are judged – and judge themselves – on their physical appearance. Although she admits that her own good looks perhaps did play a part in the early days of her broadcasting career, beauty was never her raison d’être, and these days she is not remotely vain (half an hour into our interview she has rubbed away most of the eye-make-up from her photo shoot and a forlorn false eyelash lies on the table between us).
But then there was always more to Selina Scott than her beauty. Born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the eldest of five children, her late father Charles was a police sergeant and her mother Betty a journalist. After graduating from university (she studied English and American literature), she spent two years as a reporter on The Sunday Post in Dundee before becoming a PR officer for the tourist board of the Isle of Bute and subsequently a reporter for Grampian TV.
In 1980 she became ITN’s second female newsreader – a move that led to her role in the launch of BBC’s Breakfast Time in 1983. For the rest of the 80s and much of the 90s she was the golden girl of television – presenting and producing chat shows, documentaries and high-profile interviews (with, among others, Donald Trump, King Juan Carlos of Spain, King Constantine of Greece and Prince Charles). But in 2003 – frustrated by the way that her age was restricting her ability to pursue the career she loved – she effectively withdrew from public life and bought a farm in North Yorkshire, where she wrote a book, bred angora goats and began to produce a range of mohair socks.
In December 2008 Selina won an out-of-court settlement against Channel Five (reported to be £250,000) after she was dropped as maternity cover for Natasha Kaplinsky because of her age. Last year she was commissioned to write a report investigating the employment of women over 50 at the BBC, accusing the corporation of ‘institutional ageism against women’. This month’s tribunal ruling in favour of former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly on grounds of ageism has forced the BBC to draw up fresh guidelines on such discrimination. But being a spokeswoman for anti-ageism was never Selina’s dream job (she rolls her eyes when the subject is raised), and
she is relishing a return to broadcasting.
The emergence of a lighter Selina from her self-imposed exile owes much to Chris Evans, a huge fan and stalwart supporter of older women in the media (employing Moira Stewart, 61, as newsreader on his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show). Last year Evans persuaded Selina to cover for Stewart, and her stint on the show was a revelation – listeners were enchanted by her wit and intelligence (Evans commented that having her on his show was ‘as if my mum had written to Jim’ll Fix It).
‘I met Chris at an awards ceremony and he was poking fun at me – something about my boobs – and I had a go back at him, and the next thing I know I am being asked to go on his show. I was quite unprepared for the lovely nature of the man. He is very gentle,’ she says.
Indeed, Selina is at her most mellow when she is talking about her male friends and the men who have been central to her career. Particularly those men – such as Prince Charles – whom she feels receive a hard time from the press.
‘Turn back the clock? I only look forward’
‘Whenever people criticise Prince Charles for being some kind of precious person, I think back to what he was like when we made A Prince Among Islands on [the Scottish island] Berneray in 1991. He sat at a table with a crofter and his wife Gloria, who had cooked lamb, and he helped himself to potatoes and was just part of the family. He slept in the bed Gloria had prepared for him even though the cat had slept on it – and he didn’t like cats. He was just great,’ she says.
Selina is understandably rather less affectionate about the women in her life – apart from her adored mother Betty and her three sisters – having experienced an avalanche of female-led criticism for her stance on ageism (one writer called her a ‘witch’) and discovering that her agent (an old friend) had removed her name from the list of clients on her company website. She has ‘one or two’ trusted female friends but even as a child, she says, she found it easier to be friends with boys.
‘I had a group of boys as my friends and that was it, basically. Girls and dresses and dolls and all of that just didn’t feature very much in my life,’ she says.
Over the years she has become philosophical about female antagonism (‘Women,’ she says at one point, ‘have been the bane of my life’). There are, though, a few women in public life (she is reluctant to name names) who she admires, and she was a big ally of the late Princess Diana.
‘I met Diana first when she came to ITN when she was about five months pregnant with William, and she was this beautiful young girl, full of impishness, and we got on well together. I remember she was really keen to know who my boyfriend was and I said, “Well, just look around you,” because I was surrounded by these very serious, middle-aged men who were full of their own importance, and she thought that was very funny. At that stage I was a little bit like Diana – young, out of my depth and attracting a lot of press attention. I think she felt that I had experienced a bit of what she was going through and she was always interested in how I was coping. We met again over the years and I really liked her; she never held anything back and would tell you the most indiscreet things about people,’ she says, smiling fondly.
Selina says she can also now recognise the physical similarity between herself and Diana (although she is quick to add that Diana ‘was far more beautiful than I ever was’) and agrees that, rather like the tragic princess, she has attracted her fair share of male attention. She laughs off enquiries about the rich, famous and occasional royal men who have chased her (she does admit to being pursued round a hotel room by Adam Faith, batting away the attentions of Barry Sheene and turning down a date with Warren Beatty), and remains determinedly private about those who might have caught her. There have, she says, ‘of course’ been men in her life but she won’t say who and she cannot understand the notion that in the 21st century, marriage remains ‘the only goal in a woman’s life’. Her private life has been the subject of much speculation and remains something of an enigma.
‘In the future television will allow women of a certain age more visibility’
‘Someone very well known – I am not going to say who it was – recently asked me about my love life. I said, “Oh no, I am not married,” and he replied, “Well, there is still time,” to which I countered, “Hey, matey, I’ve worked hard to be this free,”’ she says with a long, throaty laugh.
Life for Selina is full enough without a significant other. There are, after all, 23 goats, two dogs and various other livestock on her farm (she loves animals but worries that ‘it’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it, a woman who is not married and loves animals?’). Other loves of her life include ‘beautiful manners’, history, her family, the countryside and ‘endlessly watching and listening to the news’. Her list of hates is rather shorter: injustice, reality television (she is
appalled by the idea of ever going on Strictly Come Dancing or I’m a Celebrity…) and ‘looking back’. She would far rather look forward, as she is now, to a challenging future in which her age is not a barrier in her career.
‘I am forever looking forward; I don’t believe in wasting energy on something that is gone. And I think that looking forward a couple of years, you will begin to see a difference. Television – even the BBC – will slowly change and allow women of a certain age, of all ages, more visibility. I think the time is right for me. I think in the past I held something of myself back. No one has seen the real me yet, and maybe now I am ready to show them,’ she says as we part.
The first part of Treasure Houses of Britain will be screened on Sky 3D on 17 February at 9pm, and later on History HD
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