‘I’m so in love with Alan Davies’
Before she begins the ‘best job in telly’ presenting ‘QI’, Sandi Toksvig tells Julia Llewellyn Smith why she likes our new PM
‘Irevere her,” says a friend. “She’s the cleverest woman in the world,” adds another, while a third sighs: “If only she were in charge of the country.” These views are typical of the comments I hear from people of every age and background when I mention Sandi Toksvig’s name.
And now the comedian, novelist, actor, broadcaster, university chancellor and political activist is about to upgrade her national-treasure status still further by taking over from Stephen Fry as host of the beloved BBC smartypants quiz show QI.
After 13 years, the show has a devoted fanbase that could have been suspicious of Fry’s replacement. But Toksvig, 58, tiny and spry, says their reaction to her appointment “has been nothing but positive”.
Sitting in the QI headquarters in central London, surrounded by reference books, she adds that the job “is the best in telly”. Had she hankered after it for years? “I was envious of Stephen, and I’m not normally an envious person,” she says, adding: “That’ll make it sound like I wanted to commit hosticide. But I know Stephen very well, since we were 19, at Cambridge, so I knew he was ready for a change.”
The latest series will feature some subtle changes, inevitably including the role of the show’s one permanent guest Alan Davies, who’d previously admitted he wondered if he could stay on without Fry.
“Alan and I will have a totally different relationship to the one he had with Stephen, who always made out Alan knew nothing. I, on the other hand, am so in love with Alan, I’m on the turn for him,” says Toksvig, referring to her homosexuality.
Not only is she treading on hallowed turf, the gig also makes her the first female presenter of a British mainstream TV comedy panel show. Does she feel vindicated, given that 25 years ago she lost out on presenting
Have I Got News For You to Angus Deayton, with the producers telling her they preferred her version but “couldn’t have a woman in charge”?
“It’s extraordinary we still have to have this conversation in 2016,” she says in her rapid Scandinavian tones (she’s originally Danish but grew up in New York, where her foreigncorrespondent father worked, and attended a British boarding school from 14). “Hopefully, soon we won’t have to talk about it. There are so many more women in comedy now compared with when I started out, and there’s a really nice atmosphere among female comedians supporting each other, while the men are worrying about the size of their manhoods.”
So concerned was Toksvig about imbalances between men and women that last year she quit Radio 4’s The
News Quiz, which she’d hosted for a decade, to help found the Women’s Equality Party. Just 18 months later, the party, which campaigns for equal pay for men and women, has 70 branches and “tens of thousands of members, men and women”.
Despite her Leftish leanings (she used to be a LibDem supporter), is she pleased that we once again have a female prime minister, albeit a Tory?
“Theresa May is a really nice woman,” she says. “I like her. I don’t agree with everything she says, but I think we could sit down and have a perfectly sensible conversation, because she’s a good person and women do co-operative politics, which I would like to see more of.”
However, she fears that May owes her position to glass-cliff syndrome, the phenomenon of troubled companies appointing female CEOs to steer them to calmer waters.
“If May succeeds, great, tick the box, business as usual. If she fails, it’s her fault. After Brexit, what those men needed was a mummy to be in charge, The morning after the referendum all those men had the look of naughty boys who didn’t know what to do – I’ve seen the same look on my son’s face – so they called nanny.”
Toksvig has three adult children – two daughters and a son – who were conceived by sperm donation with her former partner, Peta Stewart.
“It was actually having a son made me think about feminism,” she says. “I want him to grow up in an equal world. Right now, only 10 per cent of men take paternity leave, and the 90 per cent who don’t correctly think taking it will impact adversely on their career. I thought, ‘You deserve to be in a world where you don’t have to constantly man up’, and in that world paternity leave is compulsory.”
Since 2007, Toksvig, who came out as gay in 1994, has been in a civil partnership, later converted into marriage, with Debbie, a psychotherapist.
“As far as I know, I was the first public figure to come out,” she says. “I received death threats, it was terrifying – we had to go into hiding. Every headline said: ‘Lesbian Sandi Toksvig’. Now they just say, ‘Sandi’. They’ve even dropped my surname. So things are so much better, and I love my wife beyond all measure and love the fact I can now say that in a relaxed way without it making a frisson in conversation. But please don’t think, ‘Job done’, because I still receive letters from people suffering horrible homophobic bullying.”
Three years ago, she developed plantar fasciitis, a severe inflammation of the feet muscles, due to her increase in weight, when she reached a size 22.
“I went to a physiotherapist, and she said: ‘Sandi, you have plantar fasciitis because you’re fat.’ The truth was “painful”, she admits, but necessary.
Toksvig took up boxing, started walking 10,000 steps a day, altered her diet and lost four stone. “I’m not disparaging how anyone looks, but I feel so much better now,” she says. Would she have been as happy making the move from radio to TV without it? “No, I don’t think I would. I had lost some confidence.”
Now she’s firing on all cylinders: besides QI, she’s presented three more TV series, written an as-yet untitled novel and a play, Silver Lining, which will be staged early next year.
Will she ever slow down? “I’d love to retire in terms of not having to go to work any more and earn a living.” She looks around the room longingly. “I’d love a month locked up in here, just reading all these books. But retire from life? Never!”
‘I was envious of Stephen. That’ll make it sound like I wanted to commit hosticide’ ‘Female comedians are supporting each other, while the men are worrying about the size of their manhoods’