‘This is going to be a real hatchet job, isn't it?' Janet Street-Porter on ‘bitchiness', backstabbing and her remarkable career

The Guardian

17-07-2025

Janet Street-Porter is the straight-talker's straight talker. Nobody says it how it is quite like her, whether she's talking about how she 'hated' her mother, tried to kill her sister or cheated on her four ex-husbands. The former TV executive, newspaper editor, author and Loose Women regular is now going on the road with a one-woman show called Off the Leash. To be fair, she's never been on it. Street-Porter's website heralds her as 'the nation's favourite pissed-off pensioner' and promises that, with the new show, 'in the words of her good friend Elton … 'the bitch is back!''
We meet at a restaurant she has booked in west London. When I get there, she's already perusing the menu and eavesdropping on the couple behind us. 'That man behind us is very irritating,' she stage-whispers. 'He's giving this woman advice about making friends.' My back is to him. What does he look like, I ask. She sticks two fingers down her throat and makes a gagging noise.
Street-Porter, 78, has been famous for ever. She is one of the giants of British media, and has always stood out – a loud-mouthed, working-class woman in an urbane, upper-middle-class men's world; an aesthete with a love of pop culture and opera, often dismissed as a philistine because she was born with neither silver spoon nor plum in her mouth.
The young Janet Bull (Street-Porter is her first husband's surname) was bright, swotty and rebellious. She grew up in Fulham, London. Her mother was a dinner-lady and her father an engineer. When, one day, her father announced they were moving to the suburban hell of Perivale, she regarded it as the ultimate betrayal and never forgave her parents.
She worked hard and plotted her escape. Street-Porter was in her second year studying architecture when she discovered journalism. She quit the degree and got a job working on a fashion magazine. By her early 20s, she was deputy fashion editor at the Daily Mail. Fast-forward a few years and she was presenting youth TV shows (thereafter known as 'yoof' because of her pronunciation). By her 40s, she was a TV exec, commissioning groundbreaking shows such as comedy classic Red Dwarf and the music/current affairs mash-up Network 7 for Channel 4. In her 50s, she became the editor of the Independent on Sunday.
Even those who didn't give a hoot about media or telly recognised Street-Porter because she was relentlessly parodied by Spitting Image; all teeth, specs and estuary English. The caricatures were both cruel and celebratory – a reflection of her outlandish qualities and a tribute to her huge success.
Were her parents proud when she achieved so much at such a young age? 'No. They were outraged I worked for the Daily Mail!' What would have been their paper of choice? 'Reynold's News, the Co-op newspaper. That would have been my dad's. He would have wanted me to work for a leftwing newspaper. I don't know what my mother's choice would have been because we didn't have that conversation.'
Both her parents were married to other people when she was conceived. It was only after her father died, she says, that she discovered the truth. 'I didn't know either of them had been married before till my dad died. And then I only knew my mother had been married before – and they weren't married when they had me.' She's still furious that her mother took those secrets to the grave. 'I still don't know how my mum met someone she actually married that I didn't know about.'
How old were you when your father died?
'About 40.'
And how long did your mother live for after he died?
'Six years.'
You're so outspoken, it's surprising that you didn't simply ask your mother about it, I say.
She looks at me, astonished. 'Well, we wouldn't have had that conversation because I never had a conversation with her my entire life.' She tells me it was the kind of house where she didn't speak unless spoken to.
Her mother was beyond the pale, she says, and tells a story to illustrate the point. She would take her walking in north Wales as a child and tell her a lake they passed was deep and dangerous. Decades later, Street-Porter discovered the lake was only about 3ft deep. Maybe she made a mistake, I suggest. 'You mean my mother telling me that a Welsh lake was super deep and scary was a mistake?' she fumes. I'm only giving her the benefit of the doubt, I say. 'Oh, I've never given my mother the benefit of the doubt.'
The waitress approaches.
'Can you tell me something? Last week or the week before, did you have a duck salad?'
'No, but we have burrata with parma ham and figs,' the waitress says.
'No it was duck,' Street-Porter insists. She scans the menu again. 'I'll have the club Cobb salad, and the alcohol-free beer.' She turns back to me. ''I read in the Mail last week that non-alcoholic beer is bad for you. Apparently, its crime is it's got calories and sugar.' She hoots with laughter.
Does she not drink alcohol these days? 'Of course I drink alcohol, Simon. The world has not stopped turning on its axis. I don't drink at lunchtime. I don't think I could.'
The waitress returns with the beer in a glass tankard. Street-Porter stares at it in horror. 'Can I have it in a normal glass, please? It doesn't have to be cold, just not a tankard.'
She's still thinking about childhood mealtimes. 'We got punished if we didn't eat butter beans.' What was the worst punishment? 'Oh, you'd get hit! Mum hit us with the hairbrush.' Did her father hit her? 'I don't remember Dad hitting. But he'd say things like, 'I'm going to wipe that expression right off your face.'' Didn't all dads say that back then? She gives me another look. 'So, you're thinking I've exaggerated?' No, I say, I just think it was a common expression.
'My sister and I didn't get on very well either,' she says. Well, you did say in your memoir that you tried to kill her. 'Only in a stupid childlike way. Pushing her down the stairs.' She admits she was jealous of her. 'My sister had nice dark-brown hair and a bubbly personality whereas I was a moody bitch. I was reading my books, thinking I had the wrong parents and not communicating with either of them.'
She says she became closer to her sister after their father died. 'The circumstances were so extraordinary. He died in the Canary Islands and my mother just rang up and said, 'He's dead!''
She comes to a sudden stop. 'I just don't get where this is going. Do you think my book is just a collection of fairy stories?' Not at all, I say, I was just surprised you never asked your mother about her first marriage when it was obviously important to you. Hmph, she says.
We move on to her brilliant career. She tells me she turned up to her first day of work at the Mail in knitted shorts, a furry jacket and platform boots. 'I had a right attitude. But that was the right thing to do because they were in awe of you. They weren't going to treat you like some little piece of fluff.' She pauses. 'It was so tough to get on, not using the tricks you could use.' What tricks? 'The bimbo factor. I'm very proud of my career, which I achieved entirely on merit. Not just my outrageous ambition, but my determination. I was very single-minded.'
She says some people were determined to do her down. 'It culminated in a newspaper saying I'd only done well because I was having an affair with a senior executive. It was rubbish.' Did it ever make her want to get out? 'God, no! I thought, 'Fuck this, I'm not leaving.' I've clawed my way up the pyramid of power to senior executive at the BBC. You don't get that far by shagging someone. There was also a lot of backstabbing. And a lot of manoeuvring.'
Who backstabbed you? 'Who knows? Who cares? I wouldn't be bothered. I'd be doing it to other people – you'd expect it. In any corporation, whether a newspaper or the BBC, there's only so much money. And the only way you're going to make the best stuff is getting someone else's stuff cancelled. It's not to get further up the pyramid, it's to do better stuff that makes more impact.'
She was in charge of 250 people and managed a budget of £30m at the BBC. In 1994, after eight years, she left and made the 'really stupid mistake' of going to the short-lived TV channel L!VE TV!. Why did she leave the BBC? 'Because I didn't become controller of BBC2.' How annoyed was she about that? 'Totally and utterly.'
She has often talked about the two abortions she had in her teens, the first on a stranger's kitchen table at the age of 16. Does she think her career would have been different if she'd had children? 'I definitely wouldn't have achieved as much. At times, I think how old they would be now. I think it was the right thing to happen at the time. It just shows how ruthless I was. I was not going to let anything stand in my way.'
These days, Street-Porter is best known for being on Loose Women, which she joined in 2011. In May, ITV announced the show's run would be reduced from 52 weeks a year to 30. 'I don't agree with how they've done the cuts,' she says. Does she know if she will keep her job? 'Oh, I know I'm going to keep that job. Don't waste your bloody time trying to get a scoop on that.'
She says Loose Women fulfils a unique function. 'Women come up to me all the time. The issues we talk about resonate with them, whether it's relationships or domestic abuse.' And, she says, the programme also holds politicians to account. 'Obviously, during the last election campaign, I decided to confront Rishi Sunak about freezing the tax threshold. Well, it scuppered his campaign, didn't it?'
It's interesting that she refers to her younger self as a 'moody bitch' and is promoting the one-woman show as 'the bitch is back'. Has she always regarded herself this way? 'Well, I have been bitchy.' What's the bitchiest thing you've done? She looks daggers at me. 'This is going to be a real hatchet job, isn't it?' I'm only asking because that's the word you use. 'Well, I'm getting a vibe,' she says. 'OK, I'm bitchy in a fun way. Not heavy-duty. A lot of it is banter.'
I ask if she'll be talking about the men in her life in the show. 'No, I never said that.' Sorry, I say, I assumed you would be because the promotional material says: 'Now she finds herself with a senior railcard and four ex-husbands.' 'Oh well, all right. It's not right, it's not wrong, it's not finalised.'
She has been with her partner, the former restaurateur Peter Spanton, for 26 years. Is this your longest relationship? 'Probably.' Is it a good relationship? 'What do you define good as? It's survived. I'm not bored.' Who's been the best man in your life? 'The thing is, when all new relationships start, you get very involved with someone, and then you go back to work! My biggest relationship has always been with my work. I couldn't stand not working.'
She checks the time and says she's got to be off. There's still loads to talk about, I say.
'Well, Simon, I'm going in five minutes.'
'Can I ring you and finish the interview later?'
'No. I'm not giving you my number. You'll pass it on. You'll be like the producers of Newsnight and This Morning.'
'Do you really think I've got nothing better to do with my life than ring Janet Street-Porter every minute?' I ask.
'You might get really pissed off with me and just ring and hang up. So, is the Guardian doing a picture?' She answers her own question. 'Yes, they are. Will it go on the front? I hope so. To go and put myself through this … Right. I'm leaving you the bill for my salad. Thank you very much.'
Street-Porter says she thought I'd be asking her more about her life now. 'I feel very strongly that the old must not be referred to in a negative, diminishing way and, if I can do one one thing, it's celebrate getting old and being a pensioner and carrying on living life to the full. It might not be life to the full to a twentysomething TikToker, but it's perfectly brilliant by my standards and certainly a damn sight more exciting than my mum's standards. So when you asked me about my mum and dad, I did get a bit testy back then because I think, 'No, let's talk about my life now.''
I'm a bit confused. The thing is, Janet, I say, you were the one who kept going back to your mum and dad. 'Oh no I didn't. Anyway, you can say what you like. But, for me, that episode is part of my show because I like to explain to people how I've ended up like this and those are my roots and they are pretty weird. And I've still not sorted them out. I think that's clear from talking to you. I might get defensive when you go, 'Well, why didn't you ask them?' because I can't answer that!'
I was just curious, I say. 'You can see how defensive I get because I'm thinking, well, why didn't I ask them.' She says she was more concerned at the time that her pet terrapin (Terry) had been stolen.
Perhaps you were too self-absorbed? 'Totally.' And now? 'The same. Exactly. Self-absorbed. My world!' And for the first time she shows an ability to laugh at herself. 'I am interested in other people,' she says, trying to row back a little bit. But she knows she's fighting a losing battle. 'Simon, I'm interested when I'm interested.' She stands up. 'I'm not going now because I'm not interested, by the way. I'm going now because it's 3.40pm and I've got a driver waiting for me.'
As she heads off, I ask how she'd describe herself to somebody who has never met her. 'Unexpected!' That's a copout, I say. 'Good fun!' A final pause. 'When she's in the mood. Ta-ra!'
Janet Street-Porter's Off the Leash tour starts at the Kenton, Henley-on-Thames, on 11 September, and ends at the Halifax Playhouse on 1 April. Click here for details.