Miriam O'Reilly Wins!

Miriam O'Reilly, the 53-year-old ex-BBC presenter, today won an employment tribunal against the BBC on the grounds of ageism and sexism. O'Reilly was dropped for younger presenters on the show 'Country File' when it moved to the prime-time. As she rightly says, the outcome has, 'implications for all broadcasters, not just the BBC'.

Let's hope this means that older women will stop disappearing from our TV screens.

Kate Adie

Uncompromising,

authoritative,

straight-talking,

cool and courageous

in her 'pearls-and-flak-jacket'.

I used to be obsessed by the news in the late 1980s, when I was young (this obsession still continues).

I remember my Dad telling me about Kate Adie and why she mattered on television - until that point she was just another news reporter to be fascinated by. Maybe that's the best way to see her, as a reporter doing a job. However, like my Dad expressed to me at that impressionable age, she's one of the only female correspondents who reported from the front lines and she was the Chief News Correspondent at the BBC for fourteen years. From the London Iranian Embassy siege in 1980 to the war in Sierra Leone in 2000, via several bullet grazes, Kate Adie saw me through my childhood.