Alice Arnold: You look at men of a certain age on TV and think: 'If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be there'

Alice Arnold has quit as a newsreader and taken over her partner Clare Balding’s diary. She tells Alison Roberts why she’s set on marriage and how the Today programme lets Radio 4 down
P22-23 Alice Arnold Pic:Daniel Hambury
8 January 2013

Two weeks ago, Radio 4 newsreader Alice Arnold delivered her last shipping forecast — 11 minutes of it — packed up her things and slipped away from Broadcasting House alone. It was 1am.

A lonely way to end a 20-year career at the BBC, you might think — but Twitter was buzzing, as hundreds of people registered their sadness at the exit of one of the station’s most gently mellifluous voices. “I looked at my Twitter feed and found it incredibly moving,” says Arnold. “I hadn’t expected so many people to notice me going. Or to stay up that late to hear me. It was very flattering. I had a little weep as I left.”

Radio 4, and the Today programme in particular, will shortly sound even less comfortingly familiar, as the exodus of newsreaders continues: Harriet Cass and Charlotte Green are about to leave their microphones, while veteran Peter Donaldson, who gave Arnold her first job in the studio, delivered his last broadcast on New Year’s Day. Unlike her colleagues, however, Arnold did not take voluntary redundancy. She talks of quitting to take on new “challenges” and “directions”, but also confesses that “a house doesn’t run itself”, and that her partner Clare Balding, nowadays one of TV’s most sought-after stars, has become so busy there is barely a free day in the diary this year. Literally.

“Clare hates an empty day, but this year it’s gone mad. Occasionally I have to tell her to take the time to breathe, to slow down. Last night we were trying to carve out time to go to America to publicise her book, and the most we could find was four days out of the whole year.”

Arnold and Balding have been together for 10 years and celebrated the sixth anniversary of their civil partnership last year. Arnold, 50, is actively involved in Balding’s professional life — as adviser and cheerleader and collaborator and even wardrobe mistress.

The first thing they did after Arnold left the BBC was rearrange the office in their house off Chiswick High Road so that “we now face each other across a big desk and can work on projects together” (I’m told there’s also plenty of space for a wide variety of marker pens, Clare’s stationery fetish).

It was the Olympics, of course, that made Balding, with her empathetic yet sensible interviewing style, into a mainstream telly celebrity.

Last Saturday she hosted the first of a six-part quiz show, Britain’s Brightest Brain, thereby replacing Tess Daly as the face of weekend primetime and surely striking a blow for diversity of female representation. Balding is hardly old at 41, but she isn’t youth-placating either, and you’d certainly never see her hanging off a male co-presenter’s wrinkly arm.

Like many middle-aged women who have worked at the BBC (the names are familiar: Miriam O’Reilly, Selina Scott, even Caroline Thomson, the BBC’s former chief operating officer who was passed over for the director-general’s job), Arnold is cross at the ageism and sexism that appears to affect women who don’t play the glamour game.

“You look at men of a certain age or appearance who are on TV and think: ‘If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be there’,” she says. “It’s a constant struggle in a culture that prizes looks and youth so highly, but the BBC needs to stand up and say no. Clare is a very good example of breaking that mould.

“She’s not your typical female presenter — and thank goodness for it. She’s got where she is on talent. She is very aware of trying to push forward change. If you’re in a position where people will look at you and listen to you then you have to grasp that opportunity. We both feel very strongly about it.”

As a former insider at the Today programme, Arnold is equally bothered by the lack of female voices first thing in the morning — another common complaint, which George Entwistle, during his brief tenure as director-general, pledged to address. “Radio 4 on the whole is good for using serious female presenters, but the Today programme lets it down badly,” she says.

“Sarah Montague is great, but she’s the only one out of five. It’s such a missed opportunity. The Today programme slightly lives in a world of its own, but if I was in charge, I’d certainly be pushing for more female presenters and contributors.”

Arnold is from solid Surrey stock — she became a magistrate at the age of 30 — but after a politics degree, trained as an actress at the Drama Studio in Ealing. She was in Evita for a year, and then joined the BBC’s in-house Radio Drama Group, which in those days was 30 strong, a little bohemian, and recorded dozens of plays a year.

Something of a power partner — she used to date Sandi Toksvig — Arnold briefly became famous herself last year when she tackled a litter lout by stuffing a plastic bottle back into the car from which it had been hurled. You can see how she got away with this — as a slim, smiley, polite woman anonymously dressed in a beige jumper, Arnold might seem to define the unthreatening Chiswick middle classes.

There’s a bit more steel to her than that, however: “I was very irate when I tackled the yob so I don’t suppose I thought very hard before doing it. But I don’t live my life in fear. On the whole, I’m not really frightened of anything.”

The BBC Arnold left a fortnight ago felt “unsettled”, she says, by the Jimmy Savile scandal and the Newsnight controversy, but is equally troubled by cuts and a heavier workload for those “lower down the food chain”.

I had no idea that newsreaders don’t just deliver pre-written bulletins and continuity blurbs, but also sit in front of computers and effectively play the programmes themselves. “We went on what we call ‘self op’ a few years ago,” she says. “There are no studio managers any more. Now there will be even fewer people on the team and even more responsibilities. I’m sure it’s happening everywhere but there is absolutely no slack in the system at the BBC any more.”

She would like to return to Radio 4 in some capacity — perhaps to make some features or even act in a play. For now, though, she gleefully reminds herself that “I never have to get up at 3.30am for the Today programme again”, and can indulge her love of golf (playing) and rugby union (spectating).

She and Balding would far rather be outside than indoors, preferably with a dog in tow. Expect no artfully placed throws, or plumped cushions, or chic new paint colours chez Arnold and Balding: they are quite the opposite of home-makers.

“We’re both pants at cooking,” says Arnold. “I’m absolutely not a foodie — if I cook something, it’s not usually very nice, so there’s no reward at the end of all that effort. Clare’s the same.”

She is a very tidy woman, however, and once, in a fit of cleaning, threw out a whole year’s worth of Clare’s expenses. Were words exchanged? “No. We don’t row. We really don’t. We don’t even bicker.”

Indeed, she and Balding would love to go beyond the civil partnership and get married, assuming it becomes legal. “When gay marriage arose as an issue, I didn’t think it was the most important thing in the world particularly. But all the hurtful comments that people have made during the debate have definitely made me feel more strongly about it. Equality is all we want. I simply don’t understand how it can possibly hurt other people to allow it — leaving the church out of this. Two-thirds of people don’t get married in church anyway.

“I think people get tied up in knots about it because they find it hard to get beyond the sex thing. It’s interesting how people always concentrate on sex when discussing gay marriage but it’s not about that any more than it is for any other couple. A union is about love, friendship, support and respect.

“Anyway, we’d do it because we love a good party. It wouldn’t change anything fundamental between us because we already feel we’re in a partnership that will last the rest of our lives.”

She cites last year’s Women in Film and Television Awards ceremony as a marker of lesbian progress, when host Sue Perkins presented the achievement of the year award to Balding, and of course the L word wasn’t mentioned at all. “I was really proud of that,” says Arnold. “Here were these two highly successful women, up on stage, and they just happened to be gay. I do think Clare and I have a role to play there too — to show how completely normal our lives are.”

But not that normal, when one of you is nowadays often described as a “national treasure”. Arnold baulks at this — it’s a phrase that is definitely starting to grate. “I don’t think we believe it. We do laugh at all the fuss. If you start taking any of the perks for granted — the nice frocks, the exciting parties, the posh seats on planes — then you’re in really big trouble.

“It’s thrilling and wonderful and we appreciate every little bit of it, but we also find some of it very funny. Clare has been doing essentially the same job for years and years, being the same lovely person, but the Olympics threw it into a different realm. That’s all that happened.”

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