WINDSOR FESTIVAL: Esther Rantzen preview

The term 'national institution' is overused nowadays. But mention the name of Esther Rantzen to anyone and it is hard to avoid the cliche, writes Francis Batt.

She is really is part of the fabric of British life. Her consumer affairs programme That's Life ran for an extraordinary 21 years, mixing fun and entertainment with some of the most powerful exposes of corruption and unfairness ever tackled by a popular television show.

She founded Childline, the call centre that allows children in distress to speak to a sympathetic voice.
But in recent years, the same Esther Rantzen has undertaken such seemingly frivolous challenges as learning to ballroom dance on television and posing provocatively in her 60s wearing the minutest piece of chiffon.

She said: "People kept asking me, why are you doing that now? I would reply 'if not now, when'? It became a slogan and finally the obvious title for my book." 

If Not Now, When? took Esther a year to write. In it she uses her own experience to encourage her generation to look positively at getting older. At 68 she she has suffered the grief of losing her husband, the ground breaking documentary maker Desmond Wilcox and has become a grandmother.

But she said: "Time is precious and must not be wasted. The generation that rewrote the rules in the 60s is now about to rewrite the rules for how people behave over 50."

Her own rise was often controversial. It broke new ground in the early 1970s to have a women presenting a programme dealing with serious consumer issues, supported by a team of men.

She insists she did not encounter any resentment from the men she worked with, saying: "There wasn't time. We were like greyhounds, there was so much pressure - pressure to get every detail right if we were exposing an injustice."

Childline was founded after a particularly harrowing edition of That's Life about child abuse. It is still going strong more than 20 years later, offering a caring voice at the end of the phone for distressed and abused children with no-one else to turn to.

Esther said: "I still work as a volunteer. People would be surprised what can be achieved just by talking to a child who has summoned the courage to ring.
"You can work to increase a child's confidence and ability to help themselves, even if you don't know their identity."
She still meets adults who tell her they used the service and that it saved their life.

*You can see Esther in this year's Windsor Festival at the Guildhall on Saturday, September 27 at 3pm talking about her new book If Not Now, When?  Living the Baby Boomer Adventure. Tickets are £8 including a cup of tea. 

Box office 01753 740121 www.windsorfestival.com