Rice to ‘fly the flag for older women’ in new TV challenge
ANNEKA RICE is to “fly the flag” for older women by reviving her Challenge Anneka show, noting that nobody asks Sir David Attenborough how he copes with working at 96.
Channel 5 is bringing back Challenge Anneka, nearly 30 years after the BBC called time on the popular show.
Rice, 63, said she hoped her return to primetime would send a message to television bosses.
“I want to fly the flag for women today because at the weekend there was an interview with David Attenborough and it was only in the third paragraph [his] age was just fleetingly mentioned – ‘happens to be 96’. No reference to how he copes with filming,” she said.
“With women, we get a bit more of the discussion: ‘Oh, how will you cope?’ But it’s just the same. I don’t think women feel any different. I feel just the
‘Women [on TV] were either draped over cars as a prize on a quiz game, or they were behind a news desk’
same as I did 30 years ago. But there’s more conversation about how we look, about how we might be coping with it all, whereas for men they just get on and do it. And their image, their brand, stays intact.”
Rice found fame in the 1980s as the jumpsuited star of Channel 4’s Treasure Hunt, a game show in which contestants directed her around the country in a helicopter.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the presenter said of her career: “Forty years ago, you have to remember where women were placed on television. They were usually either draped over cars as a prize on a quiz game, or they were behind a news desk.
“And Treasure Hunt was so innovative, in that it put a woman absolutely in control, right in the centre of the action, driving the narrative.
“That was a really punchy thing, and it’s what I took on when I created the format for Challenge Anneka.
“That did a lot, it really changed the face of TV in a lot of ways.”
Rice said she had turned down offers to reinvent the show with modern adjustments.