Dame Esther Does The Right Thing
After 50 years spent fighting for the underdog, Dame Esther Rantzen admits she sometimes has to hold herself back. “I’ve an over-developed rescue instinct, which is not clever,” she explains. “People who charge in with hob-nail boots can do more harm than good, so I have to rein myself in when I hear myself say, ‘ we’ve got to do something about this!’”
Dame Esther, 78, famously made her name on That’s Life!, which ran for 21 years and had 20 million viewers at its peak.
“It made people laugh, it made people cry, it made people angry, but above all it gave people ammunition to use against the baddies and improve the quality of their lives,” she says.
Now the veteran broadcaster is back fighting on our behalf on Channel 5’s DoTheRightThing, where she will be tackling a campaign a week.
“A lot of people talked in a very positive way about the first series, because they said it was so like That’s Life!,” she says.
Dame Esther, who went on to establish Childline and The Silver Line, a charity to help older people combat loneliness and isolation, says retirement is not an option.
“My diary is crammed. When that stops happening I shall play with my grandchildren, re-plan my garden and perhaps take a little cruise. There’s a lot of lovely things waiting for me, but at the moment I’m rather occupied with things that are really important.”