James Murray
Born with broadcasting in her blood, the BBC’s national treasure looks back on fun, forbidden love, and finding TV stardom
FOR many of us, city life has begun to lose its lustre in lockdown, and Dame Esther Rantzen is no exception. She’s a Londoner to her core, a constantly busy media mover and shaker, alive to the frenetic buzz of the capital and its limitless connections.
But, she admits, it’s taken a pandemic, and a very big birthday, to make her rethink her life.
For 35 years, she has used an old farmhouse in the heart of the New Forest as a weekend bolthole, a holiday retreat where she could unwind before racing home to the bright lights of London. But now, as she contemplates turning 80 on Monday, she reveals that shielding herself there with her daughter Miriam for several months has led her to plan a permanent escape to the country.
Ambling amid the wild flowers in her glorious garden, as swallows swoop above, she says: “Until now I’ve never watched spring become summer here, but what can be more important than appreciating nature, the world and the fact that I’m alive in it?
“I just love these wild flowers. I leave the nettles for the butterflies and I’m hoping there is frogspawn in the pond so there’ll be frogs for the grandchildren.”
But Esther doesn’t see turning 80 as the prelude to the autumn of her life, more like a convenient point in time to kickstart an exciting new episode.
“I’m seriously thinking of selling the flat.When I go to London I can stay in a hotel. London is fascinating and fun, but it just doesn’t compete with this.”
The only surprise is that it’s taken her so long to decide to take it easy, given her long, action-packed career. She first found fame as consumer champion and host of BBC’s That’s Life, where she battled tirelessly on behalf of the ripped-off public, raised the profile of organ donation and introduced us to amusingly shaped vegetables.
SHE took on the daunting task of setting up Childline, to offer support to abused, frightened children. Then, when she realised that older people were suffering too, in an unseen epidemic of loneliness, she created The Silver Line charity.
For years Dame Esther has been a wise, soothing voice helping us navigate the choppy waters of life from virtually the cradle to the grave.
Always looking forward, eye on the prize, the next big challenge in her sights, she’s never really looked back, taken stock. Now she is considering writing a memoir, something she’s never had time to do before. “I had such a happy childhood with my younger sister Scilla who’s now in Australia. My parents left me in no doubt we came first in their lives and that gives you confidence and optimism.We were precious to them.”
She was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, in 1940 to Katharine and Harry, an electrical engineer responsible for outside broadcasts for the BBC, making him a key figure in keeping up the morale of the nation in wartime. In 1936 he worked on the outside broadcast in which Edward VIII announced his abdication. When the microphone was switched off, the King said: “That will shake her”, an apparent reference to his mother Queen Mary, Esther discloses.
The family later moved to London settling in Hampstead, and Esther encountered her first challenge in life at school. “It was a small school run by an unmarried teacher. The head was horrible, a real sadist. If she summoned you into her room she wanted to make you cry, so the sooner you cried the better, but she did not crush my spirit. I was stubborn.”
When she came home reciting antiSemitic phrases she’d been taught – even though teachers knew the Rantzens were Jewish – her parents removed her. Esther coasted through her O-levels and A-levels and went to study English at Somerville College at Oxford University, where her nose for a good story first developed.
“They made me chair of the Somerville ball,” she says. “I had a look at our big dining room with