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about the Brit bitch
Backgrounder on 'Weakest Link's' Anne Robinson
By Simon Bond
While the sadomasochistic quiz show "Weakest Link" is doing wonders for NBC's ratings, you may be tempted to spare a thought for its host, Anne Robinson, who's being roundly brutalized in the press as the "British bitch" and a "dreadful woman presiding over a theatre of cruelty."
Save your sympathies. None of these verbal harpoons is likely to penetrate the thick skin she has developed over a 40-year career in journalism.
Her story is a sad one of riches to riches.
Robinson enjoyed a pampered childhood as a result of the fortune her mother had made from a wholesale poultry business.
Holidays were spent in the South of France, and the young Robinson was sent to an elite boarding school where, after her final exams, she was sent to an exclusive health farm to recover.
After school, Robinson drifted into journalism and started writing for The Daily Mail where her mother provided her with an MG sports car and a mink coat to keep her from the cold as she hung out in doorways in pursuit of interview subjects.
After a spell on the regional daily Liverpool Echo, she was hired in 1980 to write a column for The Daily Mirror.
There she met and married the paper's chief investigative reporter and also sharpened her skill for negotiating top rates. When her husband fell out with the Mirror's proprietor, the late Robert Maxwell, and resigned, Robinson demanded a raise to make up for the loss of family earnings.
She shuffled her column between the tabloids throughout the 1980s, hiking her rates with each move.
Finally, in 1987 she landed the announcer's spot on the BBC's viewer-feedback program, "Points of View."
After proving herself as the viewers' champion it was an easy move for Robinson onto BBC's consumer flagship program, "Watchdog." She transformed the show from being a rather worthy piece of filler scheduling into a crusading and sometimes damaging series of exposés.
At one point the regular victims of "Watchdog"--usually window installers and travel packagers--held regular crisis meetings to plan how to respond to Robinson's investigations.
Despite the consumer rights froth, Robinson never lost sight of the big picture, which is to say her own interests.
When "Watchdog" was moved up from one slot a week to two, she demanded and received double the pay.
Her column-writing continued and no subject matter was sacred. She once compared her daughter to Bridget Jones and criticized her "failure" to produce children.
Her daughter did not speak to Robinson for a month.
Robinson ended "Watchdog" with a friendly wink, and when "The Weakest Link" was conceived she was assigned to do the same, as a means of softening the blow for the departing contestants.
However, as producers looked over the pilot of the show, they couldn't help but notice the arrogance of the competitors. Realizing the little dictator inside every quiz show contestant, Robinson changed her tone, adding her curt "'Goodbye" trademark signoff.
Robinson should thrive on the controversy that surrounds the show. She has spent much of her career penning similar critiques and so-called why-oh-why columns exposing this or that inequity, as well as topical opinion columns serving up lashings of self-righteous indignation.
Further, the compensation for being labeled the "British bitch" is not so bad.
Even before her success with NBC, Robinson was said to be making close to $3 million a year. Now, as Americans are developing a refined taste for Robinson's particular flavor of torture TV, she is set to make a further $20 million over the next six years.
April 23, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Simon Bond covers European media for Media Life, writing from outside of London.
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