{"id":788686,"date":"2026-10-01T15:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T15:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788686\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T15:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T15:50:09","slug":"esther-rantzen-changed-my-life-says-thats-life-presenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788686\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Esther Rantzen changed my life&#8217;, says That&#8217;s Life! presenter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When TV presenter Bill Buckley was disowned by his parents after being outed as gay by a national newspaper, Dame Esther Rantzen decided to step in, writing them a &#8220;beautiful&#8221; letter in defence of her colleague.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She absolutely changed my life&#8230; I will be eternally grateful,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We became great friends and we always stayed in touch.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tributes are being paid to Dame Esther, who presented the BBC&#8217;s That&#8217;s Life! for 21 years and founded the children&#8217;s charity Childline, following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cmlyrywk7vx1o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">her death aged 86.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Buckley, from Sutton Coldfield, was 23 and working at Wolverhampton-based Express and Star when he joined her as a co-presenter on the television programme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She was possibly the toughest boss I ever had,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I thought some of the blokes on the Star were quite hard going, but, nothing compared with her. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You see, she was first in the office every morning, putting the lights on, last out at night turning the lights off.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When TV presenter Bill Buckley was disowned by his parents after being outed as gay by a national&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}