subscribe: Posts | Comments

Balding: popular because women know she won’t steal their husbands

1 comment

Comment and summary of story from Daily Telegraph, April 5, 2011

Lesbian UK television presenter Clare Balding has attributed her popularity with women viewers to the fact that they know she won’t steal their husbands.

In an interview with the Radio Times, Balding said: ‘In a way it makes me much less of a threat – and women are funny the way they watch telly, because they don’t like women who they think might nick their husband’.

Balding kept her sexuality a secret for many years before marrying her partner, newsreader Alice Arnold, in 2006.

Last year, she reported Sunday Times TV and restaurant critic A. A. Gill to the Press Complaints Commission for referring to her pejoratively as a ‘dyke’ and a ‘big lesbian’ (see earlier WVoN story).

‘Personally, I’m a much better broadcaster for not hiding who I am’, she added. ‘Not necessarily trumpeting it, but not hiding it. I’m not lying any more – and I did lie, for about six or seven years. Because I was scared. That’s why everybody lies.”

She says that she considers herself to be a role model for young women, because ‘it’s hugely important for them to see someone who is confident about their sexuality and comfortable being out. They can just say, ‘Oh, that’s right, well she doesn’t have a problem with it’.’

WVoN comment: perhaps you might have hit upon the real reason for your popularity, Clare.

  1. I like Clare because she’s a good broadcaster, professional, genuinely interested in people and enthusiastic. I like her direct, no-nonsense approach to interviews where she doesn’t come over as sycophantic and trying to please. Her sexuality is immaterial to me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *