Through it, I got hooked on Jane Austen and PG Wodehouse, which shaped my writing style and kept me off the mean streets of small-town Canada Describe your job. Most of her family live in Egypt, though she is based in west London. So what inspired you to embark on a career in the media?
I’m an accidental journalist. My grand plan was to become a clinician-scientist, but I’ve always enjoyed literature and the arts. After finishing a PhD in immunology at Cambridge I had a chance to spend a few weeks on the science and technology section at The Economist. That eventually led to a job as the healthcare correspondent, combining my interest in writing with my love of science.
When you were 15 years old, which newspaper did your family get, and did you read it? My father read Al-Ahram, an Egyptian newspaper, but I didn’t speak Arabic at the time I’m now studying the language, but it’s not easy. “But the one thing we are not trying to do is become a corporate club. It’s all about maintaining the maverick, passionate spirit,” Rabbatts says.Phil Hall, the former editor of the News of the World who handles Millwall’s PR, believes the challenge is enormous because Millwall reflects old and new south-east London. Canary Wharf is just over the stands.”The challenge for them is to bring Millwall down the road and join it up with London Bridge and make it the most glamorous club in south London. It is doable,” says Hall.So what does Dyke make of Millwall’s initiative? “I think that the idea that football should start marketing itself makes sense, yes It’s the most unsophisticated business in the world But in the end it’s about whether you win or not.”. Before joining the 24-hour news channel, which launches later this year, she worked from 1998 to 2005 as healthcare correspondent at The Economist.
She was born in Oxford, grew up in Ontario, and studied at Cambridge. Lucky me.Shelagh Fogarty presents BBC Radio Five Live’s breakfast show Geraldine Woods is an agent at The Roseman Organisation. The new twice-weekly current affairs show on al-Jazeera International, People & Power, will be hosted by Shereen El Feki, 38. She simply reminds me of my strengths and my capacity to know the right thing for myself.I know it sounds a bit schmaltzy – especially now she works as my agent – but as friends and mentors go, she is most definitely True North when the compass starts to go crazy. You get the picture.Our paths have crossed a few times since, and now she is my agent. It’s early days, but once she’s put down the gin and stubbed out the cigar, I’m sure the work will roll in!She has an unrivalled deftness when it comes to giving advice. She also once shoved me into the green room to facilitate a conversation between Sir Cliff Richard and a Mexican mariachi band.
He gave it a good old scrunch and declared theatrically: “No!” Thanks, Vidal.Her next attempt to launch my daytime TV career was reviewing a sex video trying to pass itself off as medical help It was soft porn, unless I’ve led a very sheltered life. We’ve become close friends and since those early days I’ve learnt she’s also one of the brightest, most loyal and shrewd people I have ever met.
This Morning sometimes used staff to illustrate items, and we still laugh about when she brought in Vidal Sassoon to check out my long, dark hair with a view to cutting it into a bob. I met Geraldine in 1989 at BBC Radio Merseyside, shortly before I began my BBC reporter training. We also worked together at Granada on This Morning, when it was still broadcast from Liverpool. Geraldine produced the phone-in element and I was a “phone-in girl”. My first impression was that she was great fun, and I’ve always been drawn to people who don’t have to be too grave at work to get the job done.
She says she has found the fans very welcoming.Rabbatts, who sits on the Film Council board, was asked if she knew anyone who could become club chairman – and she turned to Till. They hope to consolidate Millwall’s position in the league and then push for promotion, one day to the Premiership.Plans for the area around the ground include a sports city and hotel, commercial premises and housing in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. “Encouraging” is the directors’ verdict, and they say the passion was definitely there.Rabbatts, who became interested in football through her husband, Mike Lee, who has worked for the Premiership and Uefa, is now Millwall’s executive deputy chairman and effectively chief executive. She was hired because she knew not only about media and talent but about regeneration. Millwall has a big regeneration plan.”Football is compelling, the most talked about topic, the national conversation,” says Rabbatts, who believes that, compared with turning round Lambeth Council, running Millwall is easy.
