Eyebrows have been raised over ‘bookish’ Mariella Frostrup’s involvement in the tacky Channel 4 series Sex Box in which couples have sex in a box and then talk about it. “Watching Frostrup front this show is a bit like catching your sister slip a sex toy into her handbag,” wrote Christina Odone in the Daily Telegraph.
I take a different view. The series catapults Frostrup right back to the screen persona she presented as hostess of Thames Television’s late-night video show in the early 1990s. Purring, lip-glossed and lovely, she exuded sex appeal, and knew it. Private Eye’s trademark adjectives ‘gorgeous’ and ‘pouting’ might have been coined for her — probably were.
She sprang to mind when I read Terry Wogan’s recent Times interview in which he defended the BBC for dumping older female stars. “I think a number of the people protesting originally got the jobs because of their glamour,” he said.
Of course they did. Look back to Selina Scott, Anna Ford and Angela Rippon whose high public profile in each case owed so much to their looks. Anyone remember Miss Great Britain Debbie Greenwood who was hired as a presenter of BBC1’s Breakfast Time (and was memorably awful at it)?
Memorably awful, too, were the early screen outings of two now famous presenters of the witless panel game God’s Gift. The Wikipedia entry reveals why both might wish it could be airbrushed from their CVs: “It was produced by Granada and presented from the studio floor by Davina McCall (series 1) and Claudia Winkleman (series 2). Stuart Hall provided the voiceover for both series. Jimmy Savile voiced on some later editions in series 2.”
Wogan told the Times, incidentally, that Hall was “a good-humoured fella”. Well, as perverts go, Tel . . .
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