Why DID I spend £20k and 25 years dyeing my grey hair?

From MIRIAM O’REILLY, the TV star who battled the BBC over ageism, a liberating admission to inspire so many women...

was ‘ bull***t’. Her response was to say, ‘Whatever your view of it, I think you should keep it to yourself. Let’s be professional here, I am going to be.’

The next morning, she claims she was about to do her live piece to camera, when she was cued in as ‘Hayley’. O’Reilly was confused. Since they were about to go on air, she couldn’t ask who ‘Hayley’ was, but a cameraman assured her that she was on next.

Afterwards, she says she enquired, ‘ Who is this Hayley?’ and was allegedly told ‘ Oh, you look just like the [transgender — from man to woman] character, Hayley [Cropper], in Coronation Street and I just couldn’t stop thinking that, and it was stuck in my head ... ”’

O’Reilly said it wasn’t funny, it was unprofessional and she didn’t like it. She claims the response was, ‘Oh, haven’t you got a sense of humour, Miriam?’

The following day, she found a picture of Hayley had been stuck on her sound pack. Isolating tactics she says she endured included having to stay in her hotel room to ‘learn the lines’ rather than join the others for a meal.

When the programme was aired and received very high ratings, she claims she was left out of the congratulatory emails and was cold-shouldered at the wrap.

It is as painful for her to recollect all this as it is to hear it. Although she did write to the then director general, Mark Thompson, she says ‘I didn’t want to be seen as someone who was always complaining. I didn’t want to be the one who was always calling someone else out. And, actually, I had an exemplary record.’

As she points out, her experience was the year before the BBC’s Respect At Work review was set up in 2013 in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and found that there was ‘a strong undercurrent of fear’ at the BBC around bullying.

Nine hundred people came forward and of the 500 interviewed, more than two-thirds said they had witnessed or encountered bullying at the corporation.

The BBC was going to overhaul its policies to remove contractual gagging clauses to make it easier for staff to talk more openly.

Apart from the Crimewatch Roadshow programme, O’Reilly claims she was contracted to do a number of Radio 4 programmes that were not forthcoming. When she finally left the BBC, in 2012, Mark Thompson had left and his replacement as director general, George Entwistle, told her that even though it hadn’t worked out, they’d love to work with her again: ‘ but of course the phone hasn’t rung in seven years’.

A BBC spokesperson said: ‘Miriam’s views on the BBC are well known. As we’ve said before, she hasn’t been blacklisted, when Miriam left the BBC, she said she had a rewarding time here.

‘The BBC takes allegations of bullying and harassment very seriously and we have processes in place for anyone who wants to raise a concern.’

O’Reilly spent the first four of those seven years doing the things she hadn’t been able to do before: ‘I lived my life.’ Then three years ago, she received an email from a production company saying they were making a series — the Secrets Of The National Trust — with Alan Titchmarsh and they would love her to be a presenter. ‘Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather! I said, “That’s fantastic, let’s talk”.’ Since then, she has had a blast: ‘One of the best times I’ve had working, with a wonderful team — and Channel Five don’t mind strong, older women.’

As she recalls the moment she once again stood in front of the camera, after such a long break, she gets a little emotional: ‘When I did my first opening piece to camera, I was 60 and I had my white hair and my loud and proud wrinkles — and I was myself.

‘This is me, Miriam O’Reilly at 60 — and I think I look great, and I feel good about myself. All in my head obviously! And now I’m going to chat to you about this wonderful National Trust property.

‘I never thought this would happen and it’s kind of what I fought for, for all of us.’