New woman needed

Will the folded pashmina stay on the shoulder ? Dame Jenni Murray will leave Woman's Hour at the end of September, as creator of a fashion trend that has been followed by very few people.

She started with the BBC at Radio Bristol in 1974, and, from 1976, was presenting the Friday edition of Woman's Hour once every four weeks, as the show rolled round the regions.  She was the mid-morning host on Radio Bristol, and has described in detail her long affair with colleague Geoffrey James, sealed in the basement gramophone library after an office Christmas party.

In the 80s, she started presenting regional tv shows from Bristol, and got try-outs in London. From 1984, she was a 'rest-of-the-news' presenter on Newsnight - producers included Jana Bennett, Tim Gardam and Mark Thompson. In early 1987, she got a run with Today on Radio 4, under Jenny Abramsky. Woman's Hour editor Sandra Chalmers gave her Mondays and Fridays, and then, in September 1987, the whole week.






Charlotte Runcie in the Telegraph has already described the choice of the next Woman's Hour presenter as a measure of the 'wokeness' of the network under Mohit Bakaya. The editor of Woman's Hour, Karen Dalziel, has already been cultivating Radio 5Live's Emma Barnett.