Return of the people's champion
TV consumer queen Faulds Wood is back after TWICE beating cancer
IN the 1980s, no conman, fraudster or rogue trader was safe from the intrepid investigations of consumer champion Lynn Faulds Wood. During a lengthy awardwinning television career she faced frequent threats to her personal safety, from full milk bottles being thrown at her to being chased by a woman with an axe or hit in the face by a dog lead attached to a Rottweiler.
Now the former star of BBC’s Watchdog programme is returning to the nation’s screens once more – but this time in a more gentle role.
Glasgow-born Miss Faulds Wood and her husband John Stapleton, 70, who co-presented with her on the consumer show, will compete in BBC2’s Celebrity Antiques Road Trip next month, taking part in a jolly jaunt along the B-roads of the Lancashire countryside in vintage cars and picking up collectibles, aided by expert antique dealers, on the way.
It will be a long-awaited comeback for many fans of their former programme, whose popular catchphrase was ‘the show that’s on your side’.
Millions of viewers tuned in to Watchdog, where more than half the letters were about dangerous products and safety issues, and the programme’s reports and campaigns led to changes in the law and in product design that have made every home in Britain safer.
And Miss Faulds Wood can now reveal how her role as people’s champion from 1985 to 1993, and later as a charity campaigner, gave her extraordinary access to everyone from the Pope to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, as well as Elton John.
Yet she was forced to share the credit with rival presenter Anne Robinson, who took over when she had to leave Watchdog abruptly in 1993 after being diagnosed with bowel cancer. And to this day there is clearly no love lost between the two women.
‘I knew her when she was nothing,’ says Miss Faulds Wood. ‘I was incredibly successful on Watchdog, yet Anne Robinson has always claimed how hugely successful she was and how s**t I was.
‘Three times on TV she has slagged me off. I did loads of good stuff on Watchdog, and to find it being denied with comments that I only ever doorstepped people in lock-ups was a shame. I didn’t think Anne needed to say that she had three times our audience – which was rubbish.’
Today, justifiably proud of bunk beds, irons, kettles, microwaves, toasters and oven doors all being made safer as a result of her hard-hitting reports, she reflects: ‘I’ve always set out to do things that help people.’
Her marriage to Stapleton is one of the longest in showbusiness – they celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary next month. Their son Nick, 29, works in television, but the six-bedroom Victorian family home in West London offers little evidence of their distinguished careers.
‘We’re quite similar, decent people,’ she says of her soul-mate. ‘What’s helped more than anything is that we’re both in the same game, so we understand what each other’s going through.
‘He was my mentor. He’s the one who’s helped me get anywhere that I’ve got, and I’ve helped him as well, so we’ve both been rocks for each other.’
It was Miss Faulds Wood, whose TV career started as a researcher on the BBC’s Nationwide in 1976, who suggested her award-winning journalist husband should front Watchdog with her when she was offered the job in 1985.
‘I can’t recall us ever having a fallout while working,’ she says. ‘Though he did once call me “Liz” live on air!’
Two years earlier, she’d got her big break as consumer champion at TVam before moving in 1984 to BBC Breakfast Time. There she remembers Elton John sitting beside her on the sofa as she demonstrated – badly – how to open a tin can safely: ‘Elton suddenly said “You’ve cut yourself!” with great glee. It showed not even the
‘Three times Anne has slagged me off’
safe way worked – those tins needed to be designed differently.’
At Watchdog, she and Stapleton championed the jumper as a fashion statement. The BBC received more calls about her wardrobe than any other female presenter. She recalls being lampooned by Jennifer Saunders on a French & Saunders skit entitled Watch Out!
‘Jennifer and her husband Ade Edmondson lived round the corner from us, and their daughter, Beattie, went to nursery school with my son Nick,’ she explains.
‘Jennifer invited me to talk about the script to that sketch, and she used my ideas – considering what a genius she is, that was extremely generous. She later gave me a role in the sitcom The Life and Times of Vivienne Vile, a spoof of Jeremy Kyle. Jennifer and Dawn are even funnier in real life – they can’t stop being funny.’
It’s all a long way from her ‘wonderful’ childhood on the banks of Loch Lomond, attending a small country school with 24 pupils – one sixth of whom were from her family: ‘Then I went to big school in the Vale of Leven where there were 41 pupils, and I was bottom of the class.
‘My tutor at Glasgow University said I was the least analytical person he’d ever met – a terrible thing to say to a 17-year old – and I want to run into him now and say: “And what became of you?” For a country girl who went to the big town and was bottom of the class, I’ve done much more than I expected to do with my life... and I’ve still got much more to give.’
After her a successful battle with bowel cancer, Miss Faulds Wood made her TV comeback with ITV’s World In Action, where she achieved its highest audience of 10.2 million viewers with a programme investigating GP training in recognising cancer symptoms. Her investigation into Bowel Cancer, Bobby Moore & Me, drew 6.5 million viewers and 28,000 letters: ‘Those letters took me five months to answer and were a catalogue of human misery.
‘That’s why I’ve put my career second to doing unpaid work, where I can, to stop people dying unnecessarily of cancer and other diseases. Whenever I’ve had a colonoscopy, I’ve filmed it and put it out on YouTube and NHS Choices for people to see. The latest one, from five years ago, has been viewed a million times.’
As a campaigning figurehead, Miss Faulds Wood, who also developed skin cancer in 1996, has been welcomed into the highest circles including by the Royal Family: ‘I’ve met them all because I’ve had a long and active career.
‘Prince Charles was very funny, which was a surprise. Princess Diana had an extraordinary charisma – incredibly compassionate and wonderful with children.
‘The first time I met Camilla, she said to me, “Charles and I watch you all the time... I’m having a problem with my builders.” And we had a little chat about it with my Watchdog hat on.’
In 2002 she met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican: ‘I was invited to give a speech to bowel cancer surgeons from around the world. The Pope had had an early bowel cancer discovered. Hundreds came expecting to meet him but he was unwell that day and only 20 of us were able to.
‘I said, “I’m not religious... take people who are Catholics because it’s more important to them.” But I was told, “No, we want you to meet him.”
‘We all got rushed off quickly and I left behind the black scarf you have to wear on your head, so a doctor loaned me his black hankie to wear instead.’
In 2006, for the BBC consumer investigation series Old Dogs New Tricks, Miss Faulds Wood teamed up with Esther Rantzen, to whom she has sometimes been compared.
She said: ‘The big difference between Esther and I is that she admires conmen for their cleverness and I dislike conmen because there are usually victims. I’ve known her for many, many years, and she’s a brilliant woman who’s done great things with her life. I wish I’d done half as much.
‘Once we were in Paris exposing a company whose catalogues ripped off the old and the vulnerable with hopeless products, and at one point we lost Esther – she’d disappeared into a Chanel shop and came back with a necklace!’
Miss Rantzen was made a Dame in 2015 and some people think Miss Faulds Wood deserves one also, but it is clearly not a prospect that appeals.
‘I’m not interested,’ she says. ‘I don’t like the present honours system and I’d be a hypocrite to take one. I don’t agree with the House of Lords, and I’d love to do a TV programme on who’s in there and how they got there.’
In 2014, she returned to Watchdog with the BBC1 spin-off series Watchdog Test House, which she copresented with Sophie Raworth.
‘John and I live next door to Sophie’s parents,’ she added. ‘When she was a very pretty 14-year old, she did work experience on Watchdog and, for an item on rogue ice cream sellers, ate a ridiculous amount of it.
‘When she told us she wanted to work on telly, we said, “You haven’t a chance – you don’t read papers, you’re not into current affairs...” She thought, “Right, I’ll show them!”
‘She recently gave a speech at the local working women’s network, I was in the audience and she said, “It’s because of Lynn that I did this.”’
At 68, Miss Faulds Wood is concerned about her future in TV. She says: ‘You don’t get work as an older woman in television – you get taken out and shot. But I’ve still got a lot to say and do. I feel very young, I can run five miles and I hope to be fit to a very ripe old age.’
‘I’ve had a great life but I like to think my best is yet to come.’
‘Esther came back with a Chanel necklace’