Abstract

This paper looks at the framing of the journalist and broadcaster Joan Bakewell as part of television history, through an analysis of the one of the programmes When Frost Met Bakewell, broadcast on BBC4 on 14th April 2013 to celebrate her 80th birthday. As Bonner [2011] has demonstrated, across television broadcasting history there have been celebrity interviews of different modalities and intentions, from the light entertainment chat show promotional vehicles of Parkinson [BBC/ITV 1971-2007] through to The Graham Norton Show [BBC2 2007-2009/BBC1 2009-present] to the more serious address of Face to Face [BBC: 1959-62] to Mark Lawson Talks To ... [BBC4: 2007-2013]. The one-to-one format signals discourse of sobriety rather than nosey sociability [Corner: 2002], authenticity rather than performativity, and ‘announces’ itself as ‘event’. The paper investigates the verbal and visual grammatology of ‘occasion’ that When Frost Met Bakewell utilises, not least through the choice of Sir David Frost as interviewer, and discusses the specific BBC television history that appears through the narratives woven in the interview about Bakewell’s philosophy on life and her work in broadcasting, and the discursive constructions of gender which underpin them. The paper goes on to suggest various strategic and political reasons for the Corporation’s harnessing and celebration of the voice of this particular female television personality at this point in time, as the icon of meritocracy, challenge, ethics and longevity.