Esther Rantzen
Esther Rantzen CBE is a riveting and humorous speaker and a very experienced presenter. Most of us came to know and love her through "That's Life", a programme that regularly reached audiences of over 20 million - a number that many a current presenter would dearly love. She has headed many other TV and radio programmes and appeared on countless more - the darling of many a presenter and interviewer.
However her passion is to protect children. This is most clearly seen with Childline, a charity she founded and chairs. This charity is a success story which delights in that children are now better protected but depresses in that it was needed in the first place. She is also an active patron of numerous charities connected with children and also people with disabilities.
Energy and energy go hand in had with Esther. She has served on a number of Government committees including the National Consumer Council, the Home Office Fear of Crime Committee, the Health Education Authority and the Campaign for Quality Television.
Esther ekes out a few nanoseconds here and there so that she can write. She is a journalist and a novelist and is know to create the odd verse or two.
ASC are delighted that she has agreed to be our Speaker of the Year 2006 because she is a great keynote and motivational speaker. She has a vast library of stories and personal anecdotes oozing with fun and wisdom. She covers a diverse range of subjects from organisation change to nurturing and developing talent; how to have success as a mother to good relations with the public and media; and many more.
She entertains wherever she goes and we look forward to seeing her at 8:00 pm on Saturday 14th October 2006 at the Victoria Thistle Hotel, Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0SJ.
For more information go to the Speakers of Bromley web site.
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| So you think you know BBC television's Esther Rantzen? The familiar, forthright tone of Esther: the Autobiography, easily matches the author's TV persona...but you can be sure there are also surprises in store. Born and raised in North London, Esther led a typical middle-class existence for most of her younger life. Her sphere of experience, although small and often blinkered by lifelong good fortune, is actually very revealing. The real interest here lies perhaps less with the author and more with her candid acceptance of the social systems she has lived through. Certainly, on one level at least, this autobiography functions well as a sociological text--looking at the institutionalised class system within higher education and the BBC (perhaps remarkable, since the book is published by the BBC itself). Rantzen's tales of collegiate life are peppered with the names of student chums who rode the conveyor belt from Oxbridge straight to top jobs in broadcasting ("Peter Snow was always lovely", and "I slept in Melvyn Bragg's bed"--indeed.) Once inside Broadcasting House, Rantzen regularly questioned the patriarchal atmosphere within--but then had no qualms about giving jobs to the "old" boys instead.
Of course there is also a more human element here. Its subject comes across as well intentioned and, although perhaps not a great visionary, she seems blessed with a confident talent to communicate and promote herself and her ideas. It was this "let's do it!" no-nonsense bulldozer effect that helped Esther Rantzen host 21 years of the TV show That's Life! and go on to work benevolently with Childline and various other good causes. There was--as in most lives--a certain amount of scandal to contend with. Esther married her late husband Desmond Wilcox (who died in September 2000, just before this autobiography was completed) after beginning her relationship with him as the mistress to a married man--here she neither shirks blame nor responsibility. It is the throwaway lines--an admission of an affair with the late Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn, for example, which really elicit some sharp intakes of breath. Away from her TV persona, the final passages of "Esther: the Autobiography" are the work of someone who has been touched by great pain and is trying--with difficulty--to come out the other side. Until this point, perhaps, this was the autobiography of a high-achieving woman. Wilcox's death transforms it instead into the work of a real woman--who has achieved. |
Esther Rantzen (born June 22, 1940), is a British journalist and television presenter who grew up in a Jewish family. She is best known for her long stint in That's Life! and her activities as founder of the charity ChildLine.
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