What I'm Reading: Broadcaster Mavis Nicholson

They say women past a certain age can’t get work in broadcasting. In more enlightened times, Mavis Nicholson was the first woman to interview on daytime television. She had given up a career in advertising, married, and had children by the time she started presenting in 1972. She was talent-spotted by Jeremy Isaacs on the dinner-party circuit, where her penchant for asking searching questions was deemed ideal for the new dawn of daytime. By 1997, when she last worked in television, she had interviewed David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Cook, Kenneth Williams, Morecambe and Wise, Liberace and Maya Angelou, who saw her grilling John Cleese on TV and became a friend.

They say women past a certain age can’t get work in broadcasting. In more enlightened times, Mavis Nicholson was the first woman to interview on daytime television. She had given up a career in advertising, married, and had children by the time she started presenting in 1972. She was talent-spotted by Jeremy Isaacs on the dinner-party circuit, where her penchant for asking searching questions was deemed ideal for the new dawn of daytime. By 1997, when she last worked in television, she had interviewed David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Cook, Kenneth Williams, Morecambe and Wise, Liberace and Maya Angelou, who saw her grilling John Cleese on TV and became a friend.