Walking through a recently opened private members’ club in west London with Angela Rippon gives you a flavour of life as a national treasure. Everyone knows her name. All of the twentysomething staff beam as she approaches, call her Angela and rush to help her with her smallest request. Of course, private members’ clubs are professionally nice. But I’ve walked through them with movie stars and rock stars and politicians and not one of them has been greeted as warmly as Angela Rippon.
It’s a first for me. But then, Rippon is all about firsts, including being the first to undercut herself when you remind her of her achievements. She was the first journalist to interview Margaret Thatcher after she became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 — “We were in a bunch when she stepped out of the car. They were all bigger and stronger than me, but I had stilettos and sharp elbows.”
She was the first female newsreader to become a regular presenter of the BBC Nine O’Clock News in the same year — “Nan Winton did it in the Sixties when they just had bulletins. I was the first woman journalist on a full news programme. It’s extraordinary that it was odd for me to do the news, but I’m always thrilled when a woman comes up to me and says, ‘I used to watch you reading the news when I was doing my homework and thought, if she could do that I can do anything.’”
Rippon on the BBC Nine O’Clock News in the 1970sBBC
And of course, she was the first newsreader to dance on prime-time television — a moment on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special that’s passed so deep into national legend you forget how spectacular her high-kicking, hip-swinging routine really was, in the days long before celebrity dance shows. “I went to dance school from about 4 or 5 until I was 17 so I knew how to do it,” she says, swatting away the compliment.
At 81 and looking immaculate in a black trouser suit with her trademark short silver ’do, Rippon shows no sign of slowing down. She’s still working full-time, so weekends are a vague and amorphous concept to her. “For whatever reason people still quite like working with me,” she says with a shrug. “I don’t have a partner, I don’t have a husband, I don’t have children. I’m a single woman, I’m still fit and I actually love what I do. I can work peculiar hours, peculiar times and have a peculiar work schedule, so while the phone rings and there’s a wonderful challenge on the end of it, why would I not do it?”
Last year she took her Let’s Dance! initiative — a campaign to get people of all ages moving, inspired by her time on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2023 — to the Eden Project in Cornwall. She was (of course) the first journalist to report on the eco-charity in 1998, when it was still a clay quarry pit. “I was there in wellies and a hard hat trying to explain this incredible vision of domes with climates from at least three different parts of the world.” She shakes her head. “As a jingoistic West Country woman, what a lovely thing for the West Country to do.”
On Strictly Come Dancing in 2023BBC/Guy Levy
Now she is ambassador for the project’s Bring Me Sunshine garden at this month’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. After its debut on Main Avenue, it will be relocated to form part of a new public garden at the entrance of Eden Project Morecambe, the £100 million regeneration project on the Lancashire coast set to open in 2028.
Rippon has always found gardens soothing. During her years at the newsdesk — when she’d do the morning, lunchtime, afternoon and evening news — she’d also present episodes of Antiques Roadshow, the Eurovision Song Contest and Top Gear, which sounds exhausting.
“If you’re a news bunny, there is something rather special about being at the sharp end of all of that,” she says. “I might suddenly be told, ‘Where’s your passport?’ And you’ve got to go do whatever. You never lose that. And so it didn’t feel like hard work to be absolutely honest with you.”
At the time she was married to Christopher Dare and they had a house at the edge of Dartmoor with a three-acre garden. She’d finish her shift and drive home then head for the garden for some peace. “I used to find it very satisfying to do the weeding on a herbaceous border,” she says, smiling. “It’s a great way of clearing your mind.”
They sold the house when they split up in 1989 after 22 years, although she says they’re still good friends. She’s been happily single ever since. “I had a foreign lover for 12 years,” she told an interviewer once, but refused to elaborate further and never felt compelled to remarry.
I’m tempted to ask if she ever gets lonely. Her father died of a heart attack in 2003 and the shock triggered her mother’s journey into dementia. “Her behaviour was erratic and she became agoraphobic and distrustful.” She pauses. “I looked after her for as long as I could, but then I had to find a rest home for her. She needed care 24/7. I felt terrible guilt, because I was handing over responsibility to someone else. And I put huge responsibility on those people’s shoulders. I expected them to give her the care and the love that I would.”
She’s since worked with the Alzheimer’s Society and presented a documentary on dementia. Does she worry about the hereditary element?
“Oh, you don’t worry about that,” she replies, sharply. “It’s not hereditary, except for early onset dementia. The thing is, journalists are physically using our brain cells all the time to work. We’re keeping the beta-amyloid at bay. That’s the plaque that suffocates the cells in your brain and kills them. I do get forgetful sometimes, but I always say there’s so much in my head, I can’t keep all of it up there.”
And she’s still incredibly physically fit. Every morning she does 20 minutes of stretching and yoga, she dances and plays tennis. Next weekend, she’s in Blackpool for the Salsa Northwest federation’s annual weekend — “dancing from nine in the morning till midnight probably” — and the second season of her latest TV series, Angela Rippon’s River Cruises, starts this weekend on 5.
“It’s amazing,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “We went all the way down both the Danube and the Mekong rivers, through Hungary, Austria and Germany, then Cambodia and Vietnam.”
If anything, she has a hard time finding days where she can just sit by herself. “Sometimes, in the winter, I’ll have the odd day just being free to say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do anything today,’” she says. “I can very happily take a day in the winter, put on a Fred and Ginger film and not feel guilty about watching it at two o’clock in the afternoon.” For a moment there’s silence as we contemplate that day of stillness, then she’s on her feet and leading me through the club to show me the Spanish garden. And of course, as we pass, everyone beams and says, “Hello Angela.” That’s how it feels to be a national treasure.
Angela Rippon’s River Cruises starts on May 9 at 8pm on 5
Angela Rippon’s perfect weekend
Lark or owl?
Both. Probably more of a lark but I rarely go to bed before midnight.
Fry-up or muesli and yoghurt?
It might be muesli, it might be avocado, but definitely not a fry-up.
Signature dish?
Salmon steak cooked in soy sauce, honey and ginger.
Theatre, opera, cinema, ballet or night in?
Ballet. I went to see Birmingham Royal Ballet last week, Scottish Royal Ballet a couple of weeks ago.
What’s on your screensaver?
My garden.
I couldn’t get through the weekend without…
…my phone. So many of my friends live in Devon. On a Sunday morning I sit down for a couple of hours and have good long chats with my girlfriends.