Angela Rippon didn’t hold back during brutal BBC row

Angela Rippon has revealed she demanded to know if Terry Wogan and Michael Parkinson were being treated the same way when the BBC told her she was old news.

The Strictly star, 79, said former director-general John Birt told her to “make way” for up and coming talent when she hit 50.

Angela, who was the first female journalist to read the news regularly on national TV, joined the BBC in 1966 aged 21.

She presented the Nine O’Clock News and had other high-profile roles including on Antiques Roadshow.

But recalling the run-in with Birt in 1996, she told Saga Magazine: “He said ‘Angela, you have to accept you’ve had your day and it’s time to make way for younger women coming up behind you’. I remember saying to him ‘Are you having the same conversations with Michael Parkinson and Terry Wogan?’, who were both older than me.

“‘And what do you mean, make way for the younger ones coming up behind me?’

“Why would you want to lose all that ability and knowledge? There’s room for everybody’. The thing is, I’m still here – he is not.”

The BBC has been at the centre of ageism rows for years, including in 2009 when Strictly judge Arlene Phillips, then 66, was replaced by 30-year-old Alesha Dixon.

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