If you lived in Britain between 1973 and 1994, Sunday evening had a particular sound: a jaunty theme tune, a studio audience laughing at a vegetable, and then a presenter with a sharp fringe and a sharper tongue reading out a letter from someone who had been ripped off. That programme was That's Life!, it was made by the BBC in this borough, and its presenter, Dame Esther Rantzen, died today aged 86.
The BBC's west London village
The BBC's television operation in those years lived in Hammersmith and Fulham. Television Centre on Wood Lane, opened in 1960, was the doughnut-shaped heart of it; the older Lime Grove studios sat a few streets away in Shepherd's Bush until they closed in 1991. Rantzen had joined the corporation as a trainee sound effects assistant in radio, worked as a researcher on Man Alive and other programmes, and in 1968 was put on screen by the producer of Braden's Week, who decided his researchers should present their own findings.
When Bernard Braden returned to Canada in 1972, the BBC replaced his programme with That's Life! and put Rantzen in charge of it. She stayed for 21 years.
What the programme actually did
It is remembered for the silly bits: Prince the talking dog, the rude-shaped parsnips, the vox pops in Shepherd's Bush market. But the spine of the programme was consumer journalism, driven by thousands of viewers' letters a week. It named cowboy builders, chased holiday firms and pursued officialdom, and it had reach that no consumer body could match. At its peak more than 18 million people watched.
Two campaigns changed the law. The programme's coverage of the death of a toddler, Ben Hardwick, from liver disease transformed public attitudes to organ donation. And in 1986 a That's Life! survey on child abuse led to a special programme, Childwatch, and to a decision by Rantzen and her producers Sarah Caplin and Ritchie Cogan to open a permanent helpline for children. Childline launched on 30 October 1986, with the number 0800 1111 and around 50,000 attempted calls on the first night.
After Wood Lane
That's Life! ended in 1994. Rantzen went on to present Esther on BBC Two until 2002 and, in 2004, to dance on Strictly Come Dancing, a programme also made at Television Centre. In 2010 she stood for Parliament as an independent (Bedford Magazine remembers the Luton South campaign), and in 2012 she founded The Silver Line for lonely older people. She was made a Dame in 2015 (Westminster Magazine covers the honours).
Television Centre closed as a BBC production base in 2013 and is now flats, offices and a hotel, with a handful of studios still in use.
The last campaign
Diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2023, Rantzen used her remaining years to argue for a change in the law on assisted dying, and joined Dignitas in December 2023. She died at her home in the New Forest. Her children said she would be remembered for "her endless capacity for joy, her ability to comfort every heartache, her beautiful way with words".
The talking dog is long gone. The helpline she started in a studio in this borough answered a child today, and will answer another tomorrow.
Dame Esther Rantzen across our magazines
Each Firefly title is remembering a different chapter of her life. Read the others:
- Hemel Magazine: her Berkhamsted beginnings
- Harrow Magazine: the Edgware schoolgirl
- Oxford Magazine: Somerville and the Oxford stage
- Camden Magazine: Hampstead, home for half a century
- Westminster Magazine: the Palace, the honours and Parliament
- Southampton Magazine: the New Forest cottage where she died
- Bedford Magazine: the Luton South campaign of 2010
- Tower Hamlets Magazine: the Spitalfields cap-maker
- Warsaw Magazine: the family story that began in Warsaw
Sources: BBC News, ITV News, Hello!, Wikipedia, the family statement issued by Miriam, Rebecca and Joshua Wilcox, Somerville College, Hampshire Life, the Advertiser and Times, Jewish News, The Jewish Chronicle, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, UK Parliament election results. Images via Wikimedia Commons, credited individually.
