Angela Rippon

Angela May Rippon (born 12 October 1944) is an English broadcaster, former newsreader, writer and journalist. Rippon presented radio and television news programmes in South West England before moving to BBC One's Nine O'Clock News, becoming a regular presenter in 1975. She was the first female journalist to be given a permanent role presenting the BBC national television news, and the third female news presenter to appear on national broadcasts on British television, after Barbara Mandell on Independent Television News (ITN) in 1955, and Nan Winton, who temporarily presented the national news on BBC Television, in 1960. Rippon appeared on a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1976, presented the first two series of Top Gear and also presented Come Dancing. She hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1977. She was a presenter on, and co-founder of, breakfast television franchisee TV-am. In the 1990s, she moved to radio, presenting daily news programmes for LBC Newstalk between 1990 and 1994, and appeared on Channel 4's The Big Breakfast as a stand-in newsreader. She presented the BBC broadcast of the United Kingdom Ballroom Championships at the Bournemouth International Centre in 1991. Rippon has written fourteen books, toured with a production of Anything Goes and presented a segment of BBC1's The One Show. From 2009 until her departure in 2024, she co-presented the BBC One consumer show Rip Off Britain with Gloria Hunniford and Julia Somerville; in 2013 and 2014 she hosted Holiday Hit Squad alongside Helen Skelton and Joe Crowley. She was also the voiceover for the BBC1 game show The Wall and can currently be seen presenting occasionally on GB News. She also appeared as a contestant on the sixth series of Dancing on Ice in 2011, and the twenty-first series of Strictly Come Dancing in 2023, the latter of which she...