I wouldn’t get Swap Shop chance today
TOMORROW’S World favourite Maggie Philbin is calling on TV bosses to stop playing it safe and hiring the same faces.
The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop host believes she would never get the same opportunity to become a telly star in the current climate as she applied via a box number newspaper ad as a youngster in the 70s.
It comes as Holly Willoughby is set to present a new Netflix rival to I’m A Celebrity after quitting This Morning.
Maggie says: “Now, in our multichannel age, there is less risk-taking.
“You see the same people doing many different shows because they’re seen as ‘safe.’
“I got my very first job out of the blue. I was a student in Manchester doing my finals and answered a box number ad in a newspaper with the headline, ‘Do you want to be a top TV personality?’
Gamble
“I sent a very tongue-in-cheek letter and it turned out to be the BBC looking for a woman to do their first Saturday morning programme, which was Swap Shop.
“They took a massive gamble on me because I’d never done anything like that before.”
She won over bosses in 1978 with her bubbly personality and natural wit rather than social media followers or raunchy photoshoots and hosted the show with Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin – who she would later marry – and John Craven.
Maggie, 68, said: “I said years later to the editor of the show, ‘Why on earth did you give me the job?’ and she said, ‘We asked you one question, which was where did you get your boots from, and you talked for 35 minutes, so we thought you’d be all right.’”
Like Holly, right, who got her big break on Ministry Of Mayhem with Dancing On
Ice pal Stephen Mulhern, Maggie got the chance to move from kids’ to mainstream TV with science show Tomorrow’s World in 1983. Maggie says: “I consider myself immensely fortunate I had a team on Swap Shop who were amazing. The pressures are very different for networks now. “The editor of Swap Shop, the originator of Saturday morning telly, was a woman, but Tomorrow’s World was very male-dominated. “I did a lot of learning in that first year of Tomorrow’s World. It was a different set of challenges.”
So can female stars such as mum-of-three
Holly, who quit This Morning after a kidnap threat, really “have it all” in a high-pressure showbiz world?
Maggie says: “It’s a very complicated industry but I like to think it’s getting better. Women have to decide in terms of having children and lots of companies could do a better job. “There’s hand-wringing on how we can have better diversity.”
Co-founder and CEO of Teen Tech, a charity and community interest company which helps young people get into the STEM (science, technology engineering and maths) work-place Maggie now spends most of her time helping the next generation. And while her old job was looking at inventions that were meant to help us in the future, Maggie is perfectly positioned as an expert now that the rise of artificial intelligence is set to m the jobs of us all. She says: “In this fast-changing world, we’re going to need skills that are slightly different. One fear people have is, ‘Will the robots be doing everything?’ But we’re going to need people to build smart homes and maintain them.
“There are going to be some seriously interesting careers in these areas. I really enjoy the free thinking that young people have.
“The smart mirror, helping you decide what to wear, or a screen in the kitchen that reads a recipe, satisfies my Tomorrow’s World instincts.”
• Maggie Philbin teamed up with Smart Energy GB to show how smart meters in British homes will help prepare households for future innovations and even better use of renewable, more affordable energy.