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Anne Robinson
Anne Josephine Robinson (born 26 September 1944) is a British journalist and television presenter, best known as the host of BBC game show The Weakest Link from 2000 to 2012, and again in 2017 for a one-off celebrity special for Children in Need. She presented the BBC consumer affairs programme Watchdog for a total of 15 years, from 1993 to 2001 and again from 2009 to 2015. Robinson hosted the Channel 4 game show Countdown from June 2021 to July 2022, taking over from Nick Hewer. She left the programme on 13 July 2022 after one year, recording a total of 265 episodes.
Robinson was born in Crosby, Lancashire, on 26 September 1944 and is of British and Irish descent. Her father was a schoolteacher. Her mother, Anne Josephine (née Wilson), was an agricultural businesswoman from Northern Ireland, where she was the manager of a market stall. When she came to England, she married into her husband's family of wholesale chicken dealers, and sold rationed rabbit following the Second World War. She inherited the family market stall in Liverpool and transformed it into one of the largest wholesale poultry dealing businesses in the north of England.
Brought up initially at the family home in Crosby, Robinson attended a private Roman Catholic convent boarding school in Hampshire, Farnborough Hill Convent, now known as Farnborough Hill. She was hired as a chicken gutter and saleswoman during the holidays in the family business, before taking office jobs at a law firm. The family spent their summers on holiday in France, often at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes.
On leaving school, Robinson chose journalism over training for the theatre. After working in a news agency, she arrived in London in 1967 as the first young female trainee on the Daily Mail. Robinson's mother's going-away present to her daughter was an MG sports car and a fur coat. Robinson secured a permanent position as a result of scooping the details of the story of Brian Epstein's death from being a family friend of Rex Makin, the Liverpool solicitor handling the legalities, offering him a ride to Euston railway station when he could not find an available taxi.
Her work became more uncomfortable for her when she met and fell in love with the deputy news editor, Charles Wilson; the couple married in 1968, but he subsequently had to terminate her employment because of the marriage. Robinson joined The Sunday Times. In 1977, her inability to hand in her copy due to an alcohol-related incident led to her contract being terminated by The Sunday Times. She then began working for the Liverpool Echo.
Robinson returned to Fleet Street in 1980, working as columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Mirror. She also wrote a column under the pseudonym of the "Wednesday Witch", in which she developed her vitriolic style. During her career as a newspaper journalist, she developed a flair for writing tabloid headlines.[citation needed]
In discussing a raise with Mirror boss Robert Maxwell, she asked for a doubling of her salary and a brand-new Mercedes to be written in her contract. Following the departure of her husband, Robinson demanded that Maxwell make up the difference in their joint income, which he did. Robinson wrote obituaries to Maxwell following his death in 1991, saying: "He left me reeling from his charm, his amazing panache and the sheer speed at which his brain worked. He was my inspiration and my hero". She later took Robert Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine "under her wing" as a journalist; Robinson later described Ghislaine and the wider children of Robert Maxwell as "broken". Her closeness to Robert Maxwell was mocked by Ian Hislop in 1999 as a panellist on Have I Got News for You, as well when she became the first guest presenter of the show in 2002. In Memoirs of an Unfit Mother in 2001, Robinson criticised Maxwell's fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror pension fund (which fully came to light after his death), in which she said: "we failed to monitor what was happening on our doorstep", adding: "cowards had made his behaviour possible. Bankers, accountants, lawyers, who should have known better ... said yes when they should have said no."
On 14 November 1982, Robinson attended a formal dinner attended by Queen Elizabeth II, at which she noted that Diana, Princess of Wales, arrived late. Robinson asked the Mirror's Royal editor James Whitaker to investigate and, after conversations with various sources including Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, confirmed that Diana was suffering from an eating disorder, named as anorexia in a scoop article on 19 November 1982. As a result, Buckingham Palace Press Secretary Michael Shea rang then Mirror editor Mike Molloy, asking him to remove Robinson. She was subsequently removed from the editorial rota, and was advised by Molloy to "do more television, blossom, that's what you're good at". Robinson has written weekly columns for a succession of other British newspapers, such as Today, The Sun, The Express, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph.
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Anne Robinson
Anne Josephine Robinson (born 26 September 1944) is a British journalist and television presenter, best known as the host of BBC game show The Weakest Link from 2000 to 2012, and again in 2017 for a one-off celebrity special for Children in Need. She presented the BBC consumer affairs programme Watchdog for a total of 15 years, from 1993 to 2001 and again from 2009 to 2015. Robinson hosted the Channel 4 game show Countdown from June 2021 to July 2022, taking over from Nick Hewer. She left the programme on 13 July 2022 after one year, recording a total of 265 episodes.
Robinson was born in Crosby, Lancashire, on 26 September 1944 and is of British and Irish descent. Her father was a schoolteacher. Her mother, Anne Josephine (née Wilson), was an agricultural businesswoman from Northern Ireland, where she was the manager of a market stall. When she came to England, she married into her husband's family of wholesale chicken dealers, and sold rationed rabbit following the Second World War. She inherited the family market stall in Liverpool and transformed it into one of the largest wholesale poultry dealing businesses in the north of England.
Brought up initially at the family home in Crosby, Robinson attended a private Roman Catholic convent boarding school in Hampshire, Farnborough Hill Convent, now known as Farnborough Hill. She was hired as a chicken gutter and saleswoman during the holidays in the family business, before taking office jobs at a law firm. The family spent their summers on holiday in France, often at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes.
On leaving school, Robinson chose journalism over training for the theatre. After working in a news agency, she arrived in London in 1967 as the first young female trainee on the Daily Mail. Robinson's mother's going-away present to her daughter was an MG sports car and a fur coat. Robinson secured a permanent position as a result of scooping the details of the story of Brian Epstein's death from being a family friend of Rex Makin, the Liverpool solicitor handling the legalities, offering him a ride to Euston railway station when he could not find an available taxi.
Her work became more uncomfortable for her when she met and fell in love with the deputy news editor, Charles Wilson; the couple married in 1968, but he subsequently had to terminate her employment because of the marriage. Robinson joined The Sunday Times. In 1977, her inability to hand in her copy due to an alcohol-related incident led to her contract being terminated by The Sunday Times. She then began working for the Liverpool Echo.
Robinson returned to Fleet Street in 1980, working as columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Mirror. She also wrote a column under the pseudonym of the "Wednesday Witch", in which she developed her vitriolic style. During her career as a newspaper journalist, she developed a flair for writing tabloid headlines.[citation needed]
In discussing a raise with Mirror boss Robert Maxwell, she asked for a doubling of her salary and a brand-new Mercedes to be written in her contract. Following the departure of her husband, Robinson demanded that Maxwell make up the difference in their joint income, which he did. Robinson wrote obituaries to Maxwell following his death in 1991, saying: "He left me reeling from his charm, his amazing panache and the sheer speed at which his brain worked. He was my inspiration and my hero". She later took Robert Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine "under her wing" as a journalist; Robinson later described Ghislaine and the wider children of Robert Maxwell as "broken". Her closeness to Robert Maxwell was mocked by Ian Hislop in 1999 as a panellist on Have I Got News for You, as well when she became the first guest presenter of the show in 2002. In Memoirs of an Unfit Mother in 2001, Robinson criticised Maxwell's fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror pension fund (which fully came to light after his death), in which she said: "we failed to monitor what was happening on our doorstep", adding: "cowards had made his behaviour possible. Bankers, accountants, lawyers, who should have known better ... said yes when they should have said no."
On 14 November 1982, Robinson attended a formal dinner attended by Queen Elizabeth II, at which she noted that Diana, Princess of Wales, arrived late. Robinson asked the Mirror's Royal editor James Whitaker to investigate and, after conversations with various sources including Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, confirmed that Diana was suffering from an eating disorder, named as anorexia in a scoop article on 19 November 1982. As a result, Buckingham Palace Press Secretary Michael Shea rang then Mirror editor Mike Molloy, asking him to remove Robinson. She was subsequently removed from the editorial rota, and was advised by Molloy to "do more television, blossom, that's what you're good at". Robinson has written weekly columns for a succession of other British newspapers, such as Today, The Sun, The Express, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph.
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