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Veteran broadcaster Joan Bakewell has said she regrets becoming known as ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’, as her image created a stereotype about a ‘frivolous girl with short skirts’.
The TV presenter was given the moniker in the 1960s, which stuck for many years, after she appeared in ground-breaking BBC2 discussion programme Late Night Line-Up.
One of relatively few prominent female TV presenters in the sixties, she appeared on air in fashionable clothing, like chic dresses and miniskirts, becoming a sex symbol during the decade.
But in a speech about her career in broadcasting Dame Joan, 91, said she was not comfortable at having being judged on her appearance, saying it made her feel that the things she cared about did not matter to people.
Giving the Royal Television Society/ The Media Society Steve Hewlett Memorial Lecture, she said: ‘I was one of the first few women to be on television.. And with it, goes the attention of Fleet Street, which is not particularly attractive, and I got a label which had stuck with me for quite a long time until I got too old for it.
Joan Bakewell has said she regrets becoming known as ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’, as her image created a stereotype about a ‘frivolous girl with short skirts’ (pictured with Stephen Mangan in April)
The presenter was given the moniker in the 1960s, after she appeared in ground-breaking BBC2 discussion programme Late Night Line-Up (pictured in 1967)
‘But there were lots of articles about my short skirts and my hair and things like that.’
She added: ‘I was given the sort of attention that focussed where I didn’t want it to be, and I had to put up with it. It wasn’t appropriate, really, to come out and complain.
‘Now, young women would go to law and say, that’s damaging my career.’
Dame Joan, who in recent years has presented art shows for Sky, said at the time the press would have told her the coverage was ‘enhancing’ her career.
The Labour peer added: ‘I sort of put up with it, and years later, I rather regretted that it created this kind of whimsy about a frivolous girl with short skirts.
‘Well, that was the fashion, and I suppose it didn’t do me any harm, but it didn’t make me feel that what I cared about mattered, which was ideas, people, conversation, the benefits of television, the good it could do, the good we could do in the world.’
She said despite her discomfort she ‘charged through all the chat about short skirts’ to get her message across.
Bakewell added: ‘I certainly have plenty to be grateful for. It was a great era. There was a lot of freedom, but there was also a lot of restriction.’
She was jokily labelled ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’ by comedy writer and TV star Frank Muir in the sixties, but the moniker stuck.
But in a speech about her career in broadcasting Joan said she was not comfortable at having being judged on her appearance (pictured in 2020)
In a previous interview she said she had not been ‘insulted’ by the label but that feminists felt she had ‘sold out’ by not being ‘outraged’.
She told The Guardian, in 2016, people had pressured her to denounce Muir for the comment, but she said he was a ‘sweetheart’ who would have ‘dissolved in shame’ if she had.
In another interview she had described it as a ‘silly remark’ by someone who was her friend.
Bakewell famously had a lengthy affair with the playwright Harold Pinter in the sixties. Pinter wrote the 1978 drama Betrayal about their secret affair.
Last year Bakewell revealed she had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
