THE PRESENTER TELLS ALL ABOUT FACING CHALLENGES HEAD ON, BOTH ON THE BBC BREAKFAST SOFA AND IN EVEN MORE DANGEROUS ARENAS
WORDS: HANNAH STEPHENSON. IMAGES: PA MEDIA
She’s swum in shark-infested waters, and plumbed the depths of dark wild caves, but some of Louise Minchin’s greatest challenges came while sitting on the BBC Breakfast sofa.
‘There were a few things going on that, over the years, I had been having battles with,’ she says. ‘The first one was equal pay, which is well documented. Some time after that, I noticed that I was always the second person to speak [on BBC Breakfast]. Invariably, my male presenter sitting next to me would be the person who read the first headline, did the first introduction, said hello first, and did the first interview.
‘I’d been there for years. What does this tell the female audience when I’m always the second person to speak? I started trying to change it.’
Despite usually being the senior partner on the sofa (in total, she served 15 years on BBC Breakfast), when she complained, Minchin says she was told that this was the way they’d always done it. Not to be put off, for the next three months she took notes of dates and times, who did which interview and when. When she went back to her boss armed with this information, changes were made.
‘I don’t know if they saw me as a troublemaker. I’m not into confrontation. I’d work out the whys and then go and change it. The battle about reading the headlines first was really important, because I think what you see in front of you matters to you and your value and your place,’ she continues.
While things have changed over the past 30 years, there is still plenty of room for a shake-up, she adds.
‘I think it’s really important, if you can see where things are not equal and fair, to [take a] stand and say, can we change things? In the UK, hopefully we are at this point on the right trajectory, but I think it’s incumbent on all of us to notice when things are not equal and fair, and do something about it if we can.’
Likewise, when she realised that almost every story at the end of the show about a bold or brave adventure was centred on a man, she set out on a mission to find the women who were fearless – and 17 of their stories, from swimming to the San Francisco mainland from Alcatraz, to cycling across Argentina, form the heart of her new book. In it, she celebrates the bravery of women of all backgrounds, religions, ages, shapes and sizes, as she joins them in everything from wild caving in the Mendip Hills to divi
