Reader stirs Porritt

Press, 15 July 1980, Page 15

Reader stirs Porritt

From KEN COATES, in London

Anna Ford, the 36-year-old newsreader for Independent Television in Britain who has been complaining she has been made a sex symbol has now been linked with Jonathon Porritt, son of Lord Porritt, former Gov-ernor-General of New Zealand.

William Hickey, gossip columnist of the “Daily Express,” describes Jonathon, aged 30, as "a new lad who has stepped quietly into the life of Anna Ford,” and he says they ire both interested in ecology. Anna has started a spirited public debate in Britain about the quality of the sexes by her remarks to a London meeting on women in media. She said the nonsense written about her in the. newspapers had gone on too long and had been mainly to do with her body. She asked why there were no plain women in television and answered: “Because they are all chosen by men and men like to have dolly birds around.”

There were, she said, plenty of plain and even ugly men in broadcasting, and she liked to listen to them because they had something interesting to say. Anna’s comments came at a time when the equal opportunities commission reported that women are losing the battle for equality. They are still falling behind on pay, facing rising unemployment, and making little headway in winning jobs on public bodies.

The newsreader, university educated, was advised by one television critic to get on and read the news prettily, "not the most intellectually demanding of jobs.”