Anna Ford (born 2 October 1943) is a former English journalist, television presenter. She first worked as a researcher, news reporter and later newsreader for Granada Television, ITN, and the BBC. Ford 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, a role she is expected to stand down from at the end of 2012.^[1]

Early life [edit]

Ford was born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire to parents who were both West End actors. Her father had declined an offer from Samuel Goldwyn to work in Hollywood, and her mother had worked with Alec Guinness.^[2] Her father John later became ordained as an Anglican priest and took Ford 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. After her father became the parish priest at St Martin's church in Brampton she moved to the White House Grammar School.

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.^[3]

Career [edit]

Ford worked as a teacher for four years, including teaching IRA provisionals at the H-Blocks at Long Kesh for two years.^[2] She was later an Open University social studies tutor in Belfast for two years. Ford was thirty by the time she joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1974, being told she was too old to be a newsreader.^[4] She joined the BBC in 1976, and worked on Tomorrow's World in 1977.

In 1978 Ford moved to ITN but in 1981 she left to help launch TV-am. However fierce competition from the BBC's casually styled Breakfast Time resulted in a relaunch which was perceived as "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 an incident at a party in which she threw her wine over Jonathan Aitken to express her outrage over his involvement in her sacking from the channel.^[5]

Ford 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 1996, Ford was accused of bias when hosting a discussion on treatment of men during divorce cases on 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,^[6] was reprimanded by Rod Liddle, then the programme's editor.^[7]

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".^[8] She also talked about ageism, stating:^[9]

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.^[10] She is the Chair of Sainsbury's board's Corporate Responsibility Committee.^[11]

Academia [edit]

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). (From August 2008 Tom Bloxham has been the sole Chancellor.) On 22 April 2006, Ford received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews, nominated by Sir Menzies Campbell.

Personal life [edit]

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 Jon Snow, a colleague at ITN.^[12][13] 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.^[14] 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.^[4]

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.^[15] Amis rejected her allegations in a reply, although accepting that he had been remiss in his duties as godfather.^[16]

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• 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