Joan Bakewell

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Joan Bakewell CBE (born April 16, 1933, Stockport, Cheshire) is an English journalist and television presenter.

1 Biography
2 Career
- 2.1 On Television
- 2.2 In Print
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Born Joan Dawson Rowlands, in Stockport, then Cheshire now Greater Manchester, she was educated at Stockport Convent High School For Girls, where she was head girl, and at Newnham College, Cambridge. It was while at Cambridge that she first came into contact with another future journalist, Brian Redhead, and her first husband, Michael Bakewell. ^[1] Later, she was married to the director Jack Emery, but they have since divorced.

[edit] Career

Joan Bakewell first became well known as one of the presenters of an early BBC Two programme, Late Night Line-Up (1965-72 and 2008). Frank Muir dubbed her "the thinking man's crumpet" ^[2] during this period and the moniker stuck, although Joan herself dislikes the epithet. She was appointed CBE in 1999 and was Chairman of the British Film Institute from 2000 to 2002.

[edit] On Television

Bakewell co-presented Reports Action, a Sunday teatime programme which encouraged the public to donate their services to various good causes, for Granada Television during 1976-78. Subsequently, she returned to the BBC, and co-presented a short-lived late night television arts programme; briefly worked on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme; and was Newsnight's arts correspondent (1986-88).

Later, Bakewell came to the fore as the main presenter of the documentary series Heart of the Matter.^[3]

In 2001 Joan wrote and presented a four part series for the BBC called Taboo, a personal exploration of the concepts of taste, decency and censorship. The programme dealt frankly with sex and nudity and in some cases, pushed the boundaries of what is permissable on mainstream television. ^[4] Bakewell used frank language and "four-letter words" to describe pornography and sex toys. She watched a couple having sex while they were filming a pornographic movie and read out an "obscene" extract from the novel Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Taboo was broadcast between 9.50pm and 10.30pm on BBC2.

Taboo was reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the National Viewers and Listeners Association, renamed Mediawatch. Following the complaint, Bakewell faced the prospect of being charged with blasphemous libel after she recited on TV part of an erotic poem about a Roman centurion's affection for Jesus, "The Love That Dares to Speak its Name". When last published, in 1976, the man responsible was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence and told he had come close to serving it. ^[5]

On 26 May 2008 Joan introduced an archive evening on BBC Parliament called Permissive Night. The programme examined the liberalising legislation passed by Parliament in the late 1960s which made Britain a more tolerant and permissive place to live. Topics covered included changes to divorce law, the death penalty, the legalisation of abortion, the Race Relations Bill, the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts (using editions of the documentary series Man Alive ) and the relaxation of censorship. Permissive Night concluded with a special one-off edition of Late Night Line-Up which discussed the themes raised in the programmes over the course of the evening.

[edit] In Print

Bakewell's autobiography, The Centre of the Bed ^[6] was published in 2004. It describes at length her affair with Harold Pinter, while he was still married to the actress Vivien Merchant and she was still married to Michael Bakewell.

Joan Bakewell currently writes for the British newspaper The Independent in the 'Editorial and Opinion' section. Typically, her articles concern aspects of social life and culture but sometimes she writes more political articles, often focusing on aspects relevant to life in the United Kingdom.