Janet Street-Porter

Street-Porter began to work in television at London Weekend Television (LWT) in 1975, first as a reporter on a series of mainly youth-oriented programmes, including The London Weekend Show (1975–79), then went on to present the late-night chat show Saturday Night People (1978–80) with Clive James and Russell Harty. She later produced Twentieth Century Box (1980–82), presented by Danny Baker.[6]

Street-Porter was editor of the Network 7 series on Channel 4 from 1987. In the same year, BBC Two controller Alan Yentob appointed her to become head of youth and entertainment features, making her responsible for the twice-weekly DEF II. She commissioned Rapido, Red Dwarf and Rough Guide.[10] She was responsible for the cancellation of the long-running music series The Old Grey Whistle Test.[11] Her Network 7 show was awarded a BAFTA for its graphics in 1988.

In 1992, Street-Porter provided the story for The Vampyr: A Soap Opera, the BBC's adaptation of Heinrich August Marschner's opera Der Vampyr, which featured a new libretto by Charles Hart. Street-Porter's approach did not endear her to critics, who objected to her diction and questioned her suitability as an influence on Britain's youth.[10] In her final year at the BBC, she became head of independent commissioning. She left the BBC for Mirror Group Newspapers in 1994 to become joint-managing director with Kelvin MacKenzie[10] of the ill-fated L!VE TV channel. She left after four months.[6] In 1996, Street-Porter established her own production company. Since 1996, Street-Porter has appeared several times on the BBC panel show Have I Got News for You, most recently in May 2020.[12] From 1998 until 2015 (except 2013), Street-Porter appeared annually on BBC's Question Time.

In 2000, Street-Porter was nominated for the "Mae West Award for the Most Outspoken Woman in the Industry" at Carlton Television's Women in Film and Television Awards.[6] In 2007, Street-Porter starred in an ITV2 reality show called Deadline, serving as a tough-talking editor who worked with a team of celebrity "reporters" whose job it was to produce a weekly gossip magazine. The celebrities in question had to endure the Street-Porter tongue as she decided each week which of them to fire.[13]

In 2011, Street-Porter became a regular panellist on ITV's chat show Loose Women. In 2013, she appeared in Celebrity MasterChef reaching the final three, and returned again for a Christmas special in 2020, in which she was crowned the winner.[14] She also appeared in the television show QI. Since 1 September 2014, Street-Porter has co-hosted BBC One cookery programme A Taste of Britain with chef Brian Turner and ran for 20 episodes in one series.[15]

Street-Porter has appeared on many reality TV shows, including Call Me a Cabbie and So You Think You Can Teach; the latter saw her trying to work as a primary school teacher.[16] She conducted numerous interviews with business figures and others for Bloomberg Television.[16]

Street-Porter became editor of The Independent on Sunday in 1999. Despite derision from her critics, she took the paper's circulation up to 270,460, an increase of 11.6 per cent.[6] In 2001, Street-Porter became editor-at-large, as well as writing a weekly column and regular features.[17][18]

Following the death of Ian Tomlinson, Street-Porter dedicated her editor-at-large column in The Independent on Sunday to painting a picture of Tomlinson as a "troubled man with quite a few problems":

Knowing that he was an alcoholic is critical to understanding his sense of disorientation and his attitude towards the police, which might on first viewing of the video footage, seem a bit stroppy.[19]

A rambler, Street-Porter was president of the Ramblers' Association for two years from 1994. She walked across Britain from Dungeness in Kent to Conwy in Wales for the television series Coast to Coast in 1998.[6] Street-Porter also walked from Edinburgh to London in a straight line in 1998, for a television series and her book, As the Crow Flies.[20] In 1994, for the documentary series The Longest Walk, Street-Porter visited long-distance walker Ffyona Campbell on the last section of her round-the-world walk.

In 1966, Street-Porter appeared as an extra in the nightclub scene in Blowup, dancing in a silver coat and striped trousers. In 2003, she wrote and presented a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival titled All the Rage.[21] She published the autobiographical Baggage in 2004, about her childhood in working class London. Its sequel is titled Fallout.[21] Life's Too F***ing Short is a volume which presents, as she puts it, her answer to "getting what you want out of life by the most direct route."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Street-Porter regularly appeared as a guest on This Morning to review the political decisions taken by the government alongside Matthew Wright, via video call from her home in Kent.

Street-Porter was diagnosed with basal-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, in January 2020. On 23 June 2020, she announced her news on Loose Women from home via video call because of COVID-19 restrictions.[29]