Anne Diamond

Anne Margaret Diamond (born 8 September 1954) is an English radio and television presenter and journalist. She hosted Good Morning Britain for TV-am and the similarly titled Good Morning... with Anne and Nick for BBC One, both with Nick Owen as her co-presenter. Currently she presents a phone-in show on BBC Radio Berkshire on weekday mornings from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and makes regular appearances airing her views as a panellist and stand-in presenter on The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 and BBC London, and is a regular columnist for the Daily Mail.^[1]

In 1991, she successfully campaigned for research into cot death following the death of her third son, Sebastian. The campaign, which she co-founded, was reported to have cut the incidence of cot death in the UK from 2,000 a year to nearer 300.^[2]

Biography

Diamond's parents were of Irish ancestry, although her father was brought up in Scotland.^[3] She was born and brought up in Malvern, Worcestershire, and she attended Worcester Grammar School for Girls.

Early career

Diamond worked at a Butlins holiday camp as a redcoat and chalet-maid.^[4] She then began her career as a journalist on the Bridgwater Mercury and Bournemouth Evening Echo.

Television

Diamond began her television career with BBC West in Bristol, before moving over to ATV Today as a reporter and newsreader in 1979. When ATV became Central Television in 1982, she was paired up with Nick Owen, to present the new East Midlands edition of Central News.^[5]

The launch of the Nottingham-based service was initially delayed for a month, but then extended indefinitely. With no end in sight to the dispute,^[6][7] Diamond left to rejoin the BBC becoming a reporter on the nightly programme "Nationwide", along with being a presenter on BBC news after noon.^[8]

On Monday 6 June 1983, Diamond joined TV-am.^[9] Greg Dyke, the newly appointed programme director, spoke with Nick Owen about replacements for sacked presenters Anna Ford and Angela Rippon. Owen suggested Diamond, and later that evening they met in a pub. Six weeks later Diamond joined the station.^[10]

Diamond left TV-am in 1990,^[11] to forced full-time on TV Weekly produced by TVS which she had presented since 1989. The programme looked behind the scenes of various television programmes and interviewed various personalities from in front and behind the camera. Diamond was rejoined with Nick Owen to present the BBC daytime show Good Morning with Anne and Nick,^[12][13][14] which ran four years against ITV's This Morning from 1992 till 1996.

Diamond's presenting has attracted accusations of dumbing down. In commenting on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, she suggested that a major benefit would be that East Germans would have a better choice of shops in the West, leading her critics to suggest that she hadn't fully grasped the event's significance.^[15]

In 2002, Diamond took part in Celebrity Big Brother 2, but become the second person to be evicted.^[16][17][18]

Since 2003 Diamond has been a regular panellist on The Wright Stuff^[19] During 2008, Diamond became involved in co-developing a jewellery range, which she marketed on shopping channel QVC under her own name brand.^[20]

Radio

In the late 1990s she presented the breakfast show on the London radio station LBC, variously with Sir Nicholas Lloyd and Tommy Boyd. After a few months presenting her own lunchtime show in 1999, she left the station.

In 2001 she spent a week on The Wright Stuff, and was welcomed back in 2003 after Celebrity Big Brother and has been there to the present day. In 2002 she also returned to television, appearing in Celebrity Big Brother. In October 2004 she joined BBC Radio Oxford, presenting the weekday breakfast programme. In 2006 she left BBC Radio Oxford, presenting her last breakfast programme on 17 March 2006, her replacement being Sybil Ruscoe. Much had been made on the breakfast programme of "Diamond's Dieting Buddies", a scheme whereby Diamond and listeners to the station in 2006 who wanted to lose weight would give one another moral support.^[21]

She can now be heard presenting the mid-morning programme on BBC Radio Berkshire Mondays-Thursdays from 10:00 am.

Diamond keeps a regular blog on the official BBC website.^[22]

Pantomime

She has appeared in pantomimes such as Snow White playing the Wicked Queen at Stoke-on-Trent in 2005, alongside Ken Morley and Sooty, having said that she "thoroughly enjoyed the experience".^[23]

Campaigning

Cot death

Diamond became involved in raising awareness of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) – also known as "cot death" – after her son, Sebastian, died from the syndrome in 1991. She fronted "Back to Sleep", a campaign telling parents to ensure that babies slept on their backs. Since then, there has been a significant fall in incidents of SIDS in the United Kingdom, from more than 2,000 per year to around 300, which has been attributed to the campaign.^[1] Diamond was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the only time it has ever been awarded to a non-medic.^[1]

Diamond spoke out over the cot death and baby-swap storyline in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders, featuring characters Kat Moon and Ronnie Branning. "I think it's crass what they've done," she told ITV's Daybreak breakfast programme, branding the plot "tacky sensationalism". The episode gathered numerous complaints following its New Year's Eve airing.

FSID named Anne Diamond as their Anniversary Patron for their 40th anniversary in 2011.^[24]

Video game violence

On 28 March 2008, in an article for the UK's Daily Mail tabloid newspaper, Anne Diamond contributed to an article concerning violence in video games where she is quoted as saying that the game Resident Evil 4 "shouldn't be allowed to be sold, even to adults".^[25][26]

Leveson Inquiry

Diamond has been featured in numerous stories in the British tabloid press since the mid-1980s. On 28 November 2011 she gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press.^[27] She gave detailed accounts of intrusion by journalists into her life and her dealings with tabloid newspapers.

References

External links

• Fathappens.co.uk Anne Diamond's project
• Anne Diamond at BBC Programmes
  
  (BBC Radio Berkshire)
• Anne Diamond at the Internet Movie Database