Private Passions: Dorothy Byrne
BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds
Private Passions is a long slow bath of a programme compared to the quick shower of Desert Island Discs. There’s a lot to love about the latter, but Private Passions offers time to luxuriate because it’s more in depth.
That brings us to one Dorothy Byrne – a journalist for 40 years who spent almost 20 as head of news and current affairs at Channel 4.
She is a bright, down-to-earth Scot; undaunted, powerfully truthful and possessed of a wry sense of humour.
In her MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2019, she detailed the sexism and harassment she had experienced as a young producer.
Nevertheless she would still recommend journalism to young women.
As she put it: “In what other line of work, when some ba****d annoys you or you hear of some absolute disgrace, can you say to yourself, ‘I’m going to make a programme exposing that and I’ll put a stop to it.’ And sometimes you even do.”
She said bluntly that her parents were quite unhappy: “I don’t think they had an expectation of great happiness.”
It was an unhappy childhood, she said, and that’s why she likes sad music. If you listen to it and you cry then that releases your sadness.
A boyfriend helped direct her career.
She had considered becoming a barrister and he said that she wouldn’t like being in a dark court. He told her she was always angry and that she liked people so she should be a journalist.
At the heart of Dorothy Byrne is a belief in the power of journalism to bring about change and the power of journalists to work together to do that
That combination of interest in people and outrage proved correct.
She got a job with World in Action and tells a great story about her opening programme sequence that involved putting an apron on a man and a big pink duster coming across the screen and brushing him away.
Those were the days of blatant sexism and harassment. At least now, we call it out, we say it is wrong, she said.
At the heart of Dorothy Byrne is a belief in the power of journalism to bring about change and the power of journalists to work together to do that – she’s invigorating.
Listen for all that she offers – including how she tried to buy a plot in the graveyard but they wouldn’t let her – and enjoy some beautiful unearthly music too, in the best of company.
