Ford, Anna

Born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into a household steeped in the performing arts – both her parents were West End actors – Anna Ford forged an intellectual identity far removed from the stage.

She read economics at the Victoria University of Manchester, where she proved herself a natural leader, serving as president of the university students’ union from 1966 to 1967.

Before the cameras found her, Ford spent four years in the classroom.

Two of those were spent teaching Provisional Irish Republican prisoners at Her Majesty’s Prison Maze in Northern Ireland – an assignment demanding no small measure of personal courage – followed by a further two years as an Open University social studies tutor in Belfast.

Ford’s broadcasting career, which would span three decades, began when she was thirty.

Joining Granada Television in 1974 as a researcher, she was initially told she was too old to work as a newsreader – a verdict that proved spectacularly premature.

She swiftly established herself as both reporter and newsreader on Granada Reports, and in 1976 presented the Granada TV educational film The Messengers.

In January 1977, Ford moved to the BBC – though not without complication. Security clearance from MI5 took several months to obtain, owing to the fact that she was at the time living with a former communist.

Once cleared, she contributed to Man Alive (BBC Two, c. 1977) and Tomorrow’s World (BBC One, 1977).

February 1978 brought a move to ITN, where she briefly faced legal threats from the BBC over an alleged breach of contract – threats that were quickly abandoned.

A future colleague, Reginald Bosanquet, offered a characteristically chivalrous assessment at the time: “I have never been averse to working with ladies. I do not know Anna, but I have heard that she is a very competent and professional lady.”

Ford has spoken warmly of his memory, and the two went on to build a strong professional rapport.

She began presenting ITV’s News at One in March, and later the 5.45pm bulletin, but within two months had broken new ground as the first woman to read the news on News at Ten. She additionally served as medical correspondent in 1980.

Away from the news desk, 1979 saw Ford appear alongside Monty Python’s John Cleese and Terry Jones at the Amnesty International Comedy Gala, staged at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London.

In 1981, Ford made the most controversial career decision of her life, departing ITN to join the presenting team assembled for the imminent launch of TV-am.

The fallout was immediate and damaging: ITN had been bidding for the breakfast television franchise themselves and had built their pitch around Ford as lead anchor, entirely unaware of her involvement with a rival bidder.

Once her duplicity came to light, ITN terminated her contract without delay and publicly condemned both her dishonesty and her disloyalty.

Her tenure as one of TV-am’s original ‘Famous Five’ presenters proved short-lived, partly because of fierce competition from the BBC’s more relaxed and accessible Breakfast Time.

Haemorrhaging viewers, the station underwent a relaunch widely perceived as a “dumbing-down”, and just three months after the channel had gone on air, Ford was dismissed.

Contributing factors included her on-air expressions of support for chairman Peter Jay (who had by then already resigned) and her refusal to step back from Good Morning Britain as the ratings continued to slide.

Ford departed the company in April 1983. Her feelings about those responsible were made vividly plain at a party where she threw her wine over Jonathan Aitken in protest at his role in her dismissal.

Ford returned to the BBC in June 1986 as a stand-in presenter across three editions of Wogan, and the same year appeared on The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, casting her eye over the year’s news highlights.

Other television credits:

• Television on Trial (BBC Two, 1986);
• Co-presented The London Standard Film Awards (BBC One, 1986);
• Presented Open Space: Closing Doors (BBC Two, 1986);
• Presented Network (BBC One, 1987 – 1989);
• The Richard Burton Drama Award (BBC One, 1987);
• Chaired Welcome to My World (BBC One, 1987);
• Putting Women in the Picture (BBC One, 1988);
• Presented Wildscreen 88 (BBC Two, 1988);
• Narrator, Daughters of Abraham (BBC Two, 1988);
• Narrator, The Search for Realism (BBC One, 1988);
• Interviewed Harold Pinter on Omnibus (BBC One, 1988);
• Co-presented The British Academy Awards (BBC One, 1989);
• Interviewer on Women of the Century (BBC Two, 1989);
• Celebrity Proms (BBC One, 1999);
• Reporter on Election Night (BBC One, 5th May 2005).

Ford joined the BBC news presentation team, making her debut on BBC One’s Six o’Clock News (on 27th February 1989).

From May 1999, she fronted the relaunched BBC News at One and delivered hourly daytime news summaries.

On 30th October 2005, Ford announced that she would stand down from broadcasting the following April, wishing to pursue other interests while she, as she put it, “still has the interest and energy.”

She was forthright on the subject of ageism in the industry, observing that she might otherwise have been “shovelled off into News 24 to the sort of graveyard shift” – an assignment that would have held little appeal for her.

She was equally blunt about hiring practices at the Corporation: “I think when you reflect on the people who they’re [the BBC] bringing in and they’re all much younger. I think they are being brought in because they are younger. I think that’s specifically one of the reasons why they’re being employed.”

Ford presented her final One o’Clock News on 27th April 2006, signing off with a career retrospective compiled from archive footage.

She made brief returns to television as a guest host of Have I Got News for You? (BBC Two, 14th February 2007) and as a contributor to Happy Birthday OU: 40 Years of the Open University (BBC Two, 7th October 2009).

On BBC Radio 4, Ford guest-presented Woman’s Hour in 1992 and presented Today from 1993 to 1999.

That role was not without controversy: in 1996 she was accused of bias while chairing a discussion on the treatment of men in divorce cases. The three-minute exchange featured feminist barrister Elizabeth Woodcraft and anti-feminist critic Neil Lyndon, yet Woodcraft was afforded more than two minutes of the allotted time.

Lyndon received an apology, and Ford – herself a committed feminist – was reprimanded by the programme’s then-editor, Rod Liddle.

She was a castaway on Desert Island Discs on 18th March 2012.

Ford’s academic distinction was recognised when she was installed as Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester on 17th December 2001.

When that institution merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) on 1st October 2004 to form the new University of Manchester, Ford assumed the role of Co-Chancellor alongside Sir Terry Leahy, the former UMIST Chancellor.

Tom Bloxham succeeded as sole Chancellor from August 2008.

On 22nd April 2006, Ford received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews, nominated by Sir Menzies Campbell.

On 2nd May 2006, J Sainsbury plc announced Ford’s appointment as a non-executive director of the supermarket group, a position in which she also chaired the board’s corporate responsibility committee. She stepped down in 2012.

Ford’s personal life has been marked by both happiness and loss.

Her first marriage to Alan Bittles in 1970 did not endure, and in the late 1970s she was for a time engaged to fellow ITN reporter Jon Snow.

In 1981 she married the magazine editor and cartoonist Mark Boxer; they had two daughters together. His death from a brain tumour in 1988 cut short what had been a close and creative partnership.

In 2000, Ford was briefly engaged to former astronaut David Scott.

 

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