You Can’t Fire Me, I’m Famous

Posted on August 7, 2007 
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Anne RobinsonYou Can’t Fire Me, I’m Famous is a series about people that have been famously fired and how that they have recovered from it. Piers Morgan introduces the programme and explains who the person is, showing how they got fired and how it affected their lives. He interviews them and examines their history. 

This week Anne Robinson, the host of ‘The Weakest Link’ explains how a rift with the Royal Family left her out of work and prompted the start of her television career. 

Showing a ruthless streak as a young reporter she got a job at the Daily Mail thanks to an underhand exclusive over the death of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein. Spotted as a talent, in more ways than one, by her boss Charles Wilson, she ended up marrying him and being fired for it. It didn’t do much for the marriage.

Soon she was at the Sunday Times though, where she was given the big stories befitting a star journalist. This was also the beginning of her excessive drinking, as befitting any journalist on Fleet Street. One child, a divorce and losing all the stories later, she left the Sunday Times, thin, alcoholic and ill. As she lost custody of her daughter, she stopped drinking and went back to a local newspaper in Liverpool.

Later, she returned to Fleet Street and became assistant-editor at the Daily Mirror. Back in the limelight she started appearing on television. At this point she got into trouble with the Royals. Diana turned up late for a remembrance service in 1982 and Anne and James Whittaker spotted the story of Diana’s weight loss, prompting a conclusion of anorexia nervosa, which later proved to be bulimia. Anne was sacked on the back of the furore and ent to the television screens.

Her first appearance was on Question Time where she was pitted against Norman Tebbit. Then, she covered for Barry Took on ‘Points of View’ which she did regularly, but really came to prominence as the hard-hitting presenter of ‘Watchdog’. 

Finally, she got the role of the presenter of new quiz show ‘The Weakest Link’ where she got to be as rude as possible to nervous contestants. Setting a standard for the savage twenty-first century, she is much imitated worldwide, but Anne remains the original, even taking the show to America.

Anne Robinson was a more convincing subject than Big Brother contestant Jade Goody who appeared on an earlier programme of the series, and it will be interesting to see how the series progresses.

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One Response to “You Can’t Fire Me, I’m Famous”

  1. sam on August 21st, 2007 6:12 pm

    omg that sad dick off of britains got talent is an arse, hes realli rude , he was well out of order to abi titmus. wants a wack.

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