Jump to content

Janet Street-Porter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 82.16.221.138 (talk) at 23:17, 15 March 2012 (New appearance on BBC QT). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Janet V Street-Porter
Janet Street-Porter in 2005
Born
Janet V Ardern

(1946-12-27) 27 December 1946 (age 77)
Brentford, Middlesex, England
NationalityBritish
OccupationEditor
Notable credit(s)Editor of The Independent on Sunday
Contestant on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
Spouse(s)Tim Street Porter
(m. 1967–1975, divorced)
Tony Elliott
(m. 1975–1977, divorced)
Frank Cvitanovich
(m. 1979–1981, divorced)
David Sorkin (m. ?-?, divorced)
Websitehttp://www.janetstreetporter.com/

Janet Street-Porter (born Janet V Ardern, 27 December 1946 in Brentford, Middlesex) is a British media personality, journalist and television presenter. She was editor for two years of The Independent on Sunday. She relinquished the job to become editor-at-large in 2002.[1] Her distinctive London accent and her teeth have been the butt of many comic routines.[2][3]

Early life

Janet Street-Porter was born Janet V Ardern in Brentford, Middlesex, a daughter of Stanley W G Bull, an electrician and Cherry Cuff Ardern (née Jones) a school dinner lady. Her mother was still married to her first husband, George Ardern, at the time, and was not to marry Stanley until 1954, hence her name being recorded thus in the birth records. She was later to take her father's surname. She grew up in Fulham and Perivale, West London. Her family, she says, were poor. She went to Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green from 1958 to 1964 and then spent two years at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter.[4]

Early career

She dropped out of college and found media work. After a brief stint at a girls' magazine called Petticoat, she joined the Daily Mail in 1969, where she became the deputy fashion editor.[5] She became fashion editor of the Evening Standard in 1971.[4]

When the LBC local radio station began to broadcast in 1973, Street-Porter co-presented a mid-morning show with Fleet Street columnist, Paul Callan.[6] The intention was to sharply contrast the urbane Callan and the cockney Street-Porter. Their respective accents became known to the station's studio engineers as "cut-glass" and "cut-froat." Friction between the ill-sorted pair involved constant one-upmanship that made for compelling listening, causing, it was claimed, more than one traffic accident.

In early 1975, Street-Porter was launch editor of Sell Out, an off-shoot of the London listings magazine, Time Out, alongside its publisher and her second husband, Tony Elliott. The magazine was not a success.[7]

Television

Street-Porter went into television at LWT in 1975, first as a reporter on a series of mainly youth-oriented programmes, including The London Weekend Show (1975–79). She went on to present the late-night chat show Saturday Night People (1978–80) with Clive James and Russell Harty. She later produced Twentieth Century Box (1980–82), presented by Danny Baker.[4]

She was editor of the innovative Channel Four Network 7 show from 1987. The same year the then BBC 2 boss, Alan Yentob, appointed her head of youth and entertainment features. She was responsible for the twice-weekly DEF II and commissioned Rapido, Red Dwarf and Rough Guide.[8] Her Network 7 show was in 1988 awarded a BAFTA for its graphics.

In 1992 she provided the story for The Vampyr: A Soap Opera, the BBC's adaptation of Heinrich August Marschner's opera Der Vampyr, which featured a new libretto by Charles Hart.

Street-Porter's approach did not endear her to critics, who objected to her diction and questioned her suitability as an influence on Britain's youth.[8] In her final year at the BBC, she became head of independent commissioning. She left the BBC for Mirror Group Newspapers in 1994 to become joint-managing director with Kelvin MacKenzie[8] of the ill-fated L!VE TV channel. She left after four months.[4] In 1996, Street-Porter set up her own production company.

She has appeared on numerous reality TV shows, including Call Me a Cabbie and So You Think You Can Teach. The latter saw her trying to work as a primary school teacher.[9] She was a contestant in the ITV series I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. She finished fourth.

Street-Porter conducted numerous interviews with business figures and others for Bloomberg TV.[9]

Since 1998, Janet has appeared annually on BBC's Question Time. Her most recent appearance was in March 2012.

In 2000, Street-Porter was nominated for the "Mae West Award for the Most Outspoken Woman in the Industry" at Carlton Television's Women in Film and Television Awards.[4]

In 2006, she appeared regularly on chef Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word, where she was the "field correspondent." In this capacity, it was her job to locate outlandish or unusual food such as crocodile and then tempt diners to have a taste. In the third series of the show she caused controversy when she attempted to serve up horse meat at Cheltenham Racecourse. She was thwarted by the police, who described the stunt as highly provocative, and she had to dish the meat out elsewhere. Ramsay himself became the target of animal rights protesters, who dumped a ton of horse manure outside his restaurant at Claridge's.[10]

In 2007, Street-Porter starred in an ITV2 reality show called Deadline. She served as a tough-talking editor who worked with a team of celebrity "reporters" whose job it was to produce a weekly gossip magazine. The celebrities in question had to endure the Street-Porter tongue as she decided each week which of them to fire.[11]

In 2007 Street-Porter took part in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home about her Welsh family history.

In 2008 Street-Porter was host of Celebrity Big Brother Hijack.

Her distinctive voice has made her a favourite of TV and radio impersonators. Pamela Stephenson mocked Street-Porter on Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979–82) and Kenny Everett also imitated her.

In 2011, Janet joined a long list of panellists on ITVs flagship show Loose Women.

Newspaper work

Street-Porter became editor of the Independent on Sunday in 1999. Despite derision from her critics, she took the paper's circulation up to 270,460, an increase of 11.6 per cent.[4] In 2002 she became editor-at-large, writing a regular column.

She has written for numerous newspapers and magazines.

Controversy

Following the death of Ian Tomlinson, Street-Porter dedicated her editor-at-large column in the Independent on Sunday to painting a picture of Tomlinson as a "troubled man with quite a few problems":

"Knowing that he was an alcoholic is critical to understanding his sense of disorientation and his attitude towards the police, which might on first viewing of the video footage, seem a bit stroppy."[12]

Street-Porter has also attracted criticism over an article on depression in the Daily Mail in May 2010, in which she said, "Depression? It's just the new trendy illness!"[13] People have criticised the article for being condescending to those who suffer from depression and belittling the issue.[14][15]

Other activities

Street-Porter was president of the Ramblers' Association for two years from 1994. She walked across Britain from Dungeness in Kent to Conway in Wales for the series Coast to Coast in 1998.[4] She also walked from Edinburgh to London in a straight line in 1998, for a television series and her book, As the Crow Flies.[16]

The Clerkenwell house commissioned by Janet Street-Porter

In 1994, for the documentary series The Longest Walk, she accompanied long-distance walker Ffyona Campbell on the last section of her round-the-world walk.

In 1987, Street-Porter commissioned a house from CZWG Architects. The building, its exterior a postmodernist mini-echo, conscious or not, of Broadcasting House, stands out among Clerkenwell's mainly Georgian houses.

In 1966, Street-Porter appeared as an extra in the nightclub scene in Blowup. In 2003, she wrote and presented a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival titled All the Rage.[1] She published the autobiographical Baggage in 2004, about her childhood in working class London. Its sequel is titled Fallout.[1] Life's Too F***ing Short is a volume which presents, as she puts it, her answer to "getting what you want out of life by the most direct route."

Personal life

Street-Porter has been married four times. Her first marriage, in 1967 to photographer Tim Street-Porter,[4] ended in 1974 after her relationships with Doug Hayward and then Tony Elliott, whom she married in 1977. She later married Canadian film-maker Frank Cvitanovich, and then David Sorkin. She is now in a relationship with restaurateur Peter Spanton.

A friend of the model Elizabeth Hurley, Street-Porter danced with Hurley and six others at Indian-style celebrations the night before Hurley's marriage to Arun Nayar in 2007.[17]

She lives between Nidderdale, North Yorkshire,[18] Kent and London.[19]

References

  1. ^ a b c Janet Street-Porter – deadline.itv.com. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
  2. ^ Pamela Stephenson (30 September 2001). "Pamela Stepenson describes playing Janet Street Porter, 30 September 2001". The Guardian. UK. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  3. ^ om een reactie te plaatsen! (21 September 2008). "QI: What has huge teeth and only one facial expression?". Youtube. Retrieved 23 September 2011. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Janet Street-Porter – screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 27 April 2007.
  5. ^ Janet Street-Porter: Sorry, I'm a shame free zone – dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  6. ^ Media UK's LBC page – mediauk.com
  7. ^ Tony Quinn tony@magforum.com. "Magazine launches & events 1975–89". Magforum.com. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  8. ^ a b c "'I am not an amateur" The Guardian. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
  9. ^ a b TV&Radio – janetstreetporter.com
  10. ^ The night Janet Street-Porter ate horse meat – dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2007.
  11. ^ Deadline – deadline.itv.com
  12. ^ "Tomlinson was no saint, but he deserved better", The Independent on Sunday 12 April 2009
  13. ^ "Depression? It's just the new trendy illness!", The Daily Mail, 15 May 2010
  14. ^ "The reality of depression by Alastair Campbell". Daily Mirror. UK. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  15. ^ Brown, Andrew M (18 May 2010). "Janet Street Porter is talking rubbish. Depression is not 'the new trendy illness for women' – Telegraph Blogs". London: Blogs.telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  16. ^ As the Crow Flies, Metro Books, London (1998) ISBN 978-1-900512-71-8
  17. ^ So there I was dancing for Liz, the biggest by three dress sizes... – comment.independent.co.uk. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  18. ^ The Independent – The Dales: A lifelong romance, 6 November 2005
  19. ^ Lynn Barber 22 "Damn it, Janet", The Observer, 24 September 2006
Media offices
Preceded by Editor of The Independent on Sunday
1999–2002 		Succeeded by

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Janet_Street-Porter&oldid=482107489"