Dame Ann Leslie was a longtime component of Radio 4 schedules - first spotted on Woman's Hour in an item on 'travelling light' in 1966, then a long gap to Stop The Week in 1975, almost a year after the show first started -they'd struggled to find a regular who could stand her corner. There followed more Woman's Hour, The News Quiz, Quote Unquote, News Stand (reviewing magazines), The Year In Question and Any Questions ? By 1987 she was allowed to be a host of Stop The Week. Then came Vice or Virtue?, The Moral Maze and regular reviews on Front Row.
She got her own Desert Island Discs in 2004, featuring Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ravi Shankar, Ofra Haza, Paul Simon, Elgar, Brahms, Allegri and Billie Holiday. She choose the complete works of Wodehouse as her book, and an enormous amount of garlic and a garlic press as her luxury item.
She was married to Mike Fletcher, whom she'd met at Oxford; seven years courting, during which David Niven proposed. Mike became a senior studio manager at the BBC, and was often at the mixing desk for Stop The Week, impassively earwigging the views of producers unaware of their relationship.
I only met her once, in the TVC S1 green room with Paddy O'Connell & other papers review guests after an edition of Broadcasting House. She had enormous energy and was clearly enjoying herself telling stories from her long career, and not the self-regarding 'I was brilliant' sort, either; others may have sent her up but she could do that herself. A proper grande dame, but down to earth and FUN.
ReplyDelete