My stage 4 cancer has made me realise how lucky I’ve been in my life.. I am so grateful
Because of Ben, the number of transplants doubled
week after we broadcast his story, a donor was found and he had a transplant. And because of Ben’s example, the number of transplants doubled that year.”
She is still amazed by the show’s reach. “Laws were changed as a result of some of our campaigns, to make sure children wear seatbelts in cars, for instance, or to change the dangerous concrete playground surfaces,” she says.
“Government ministers watched us. Even the late Queen Elizabeth watched us.”
And she remains blown away by the viewers who bravely triggered campaigns, including adults “who told us about the abuse they’d suffered as children, and who inspired the creation of Childline”, or the newsagent “who had been pressured by police into confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed, which inspired us to campaign for all statements made to the police to be recorded, as they are now.”
She believes there is a definite need for a That’s
Life! today, although concedes the same audience size isn’t there.
“Look at all the internet cons we could be warning vulnerable people about,” she says. “Look at how impossible it is these days to find anyone to complain to. “Every time I hear of another scandal, the dangerous ‘smart’ motorways for instance, or the disgusting way raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers, I wish there was a That’s Life! to demand changes.”
When picking her stand-out moments she is spoilt for choice. There was Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued hundreds of children from the Holocaust on the Kindertransport and became “one of my heroes”.
The show famously placed some of the grown children around him in the audience without his knowledge, reducing Esther to tears.
On the flipside, notorious conman Peter Foster, who told her “Esther Rantzen, I am your worst nightmare”, taught her a valuable lesson about how unscrupulous criminals can be.
And who could forget her own arrest? For handing out bat stew on a street in London. “I was arrested for obstruction,” she smiles.
“Never having been arrested before, when the police van arrived I got in the front and sat next to the driver.”
And they did it all on a budget. So much so, Esther often wore other stars’ clothes.
She recalls: “I plundered the BBC’s wardrobe and borrowed dresses previously worn by Melina Mercouri and Petula Clark.
“Victoria Wood used to say ‘I don’t know why they go on about her teeth, have you seen her dresses?’”
Esther didn’t care – journalist to the core, it was all about the story.
ESTHER ON THAT’S LIFE! HELPING POORLY CHILD