Clare Balding: 'I want to make the world better, for women mainly'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/jan/11/clare-balding-interview-world-better

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Not long before Christmas, Clare Balding was leaving an awards ceremony when she was surrounded by young female journalists out hunting for diary stories. To her irritation, all asked the same questions. Firstly: "Do you worry about your work/life balance?" Secondly: "Do you worry about your image?" She tenses as she tells me this, the only time in our interview that the temperature drops a degree. "I said, 'Would you ask John Humphrys that, or Jeremy Paxman, or any other male presenter? You wouldn't. The same way women always get asked about childcare. Men never do' … I said, 'I don't want to be unkind, but really think about what you're asking me, and why you're asking it. Because you want me to play some game of stereotyping, and I don't want to.'"

It's no surprise she resisted those questions. Over the past 16 years, Balding has built a career far beyond the boring stereotypes that often bind female presenters, and which therefore influence ordinary women, too. Where other women in the public eye seem to be held to stringent rules – to be remarkably thin, impossibly glamorous, happy to be the sidekick – she has always seemed to operate outside them. And it's paid off beautifully. Before last year's Olympics and Paralympics, she was a well known, well liked sports presenter, but last summer her skills pushed her into another league. The Games required viewers to become instantly interested in any number of obscure sports, and with her command of facts, innate enthusiasm and gentle authority, Balding drew everyone in effortlessly. She was rewarded with her first Saturday primetime series, Britain's Brightest, which began on BBC1 last week; a rare honour for a female presenter. When her partner, Alice Arnold, was interviewed this week and spoke out about sexism in TV, "a culture that prizes looks and youth so highly", she was able to point to Balding as someone who had broken the mould.

We meet at her agent's office, where she's just finished an ideas meeting, and she buzzes hungrily between thoughts. She's about to start presenting Good Morning Sunday as well, a topical faith and religion programme on Radio 2, which she takes over from Aled Jones later this month. The established format sounds a bit staid until Balding starts discussing it. She declares an interest in "everything!", and gives pagans as an example. Also cults, leylines, Mormons, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Muslims, Hindus. During a 10-minute discussion of the programme's potential content, she moves from the Osmond family to ancient Greece, Germaine Greer's views on Justin Bieber, a walk she once took with a druid, everyday saints, the startling nature of 3D cinema, a depressing country song about a mastectomy, a neuroscientist's near-death experience, and shows me a picture of her dog, Archie, a Tibetan terrier.

She was confirmed in the Church of England while at school, but doesn't really consider herself a part of any organised religion now. "I think I can be spiritual, and I can feel that I want to live well, I want to do things that I'm proud of, and I think that's important. Now, do I need a church to tell me that? Actually, no, I don't … It makes me sound really worthy," – she adopts a muppety voice – "'I want to be a really good person,' but actually I want to think about the decisions I make, and make the right ones."

Balding was head girl at her boarding school, Downe House, and still has a hearty, gung-ho goodness. It would be easy for her to steer clear of contentious subjects – everything she says is picked over by the press, which seems to make her slightly fretful – but she feels a responsibility to address them. There's a strong note of feminism running through her recent memoir, My Animals and Other Family, underpinning tales of the dogs and horses who brightened her childhood. She writes that she was "a disappointment from the minute I popped out," on account of being a girl; she comes from a family with strong aristocratic roots on her mother's side, which reach back to the Plantagenets, a bloodline peppered with earls and ladies. Her father was a successful horse trainer, and her Uncle Toby, who she loves, had a famous saying that the rest of the family used to laugh at: "Women ain't people." Balding never laughed, she writes, "because I was appalled".

She was a leading amateur flat jockey in her late teens, and says knowing she could do something really well gave her a confidence she'd love every girl to have. At 19 she went to Cambridge, to study English, soon becoming president of the debating society, the Cambridge Union. "I wanted to write, and I wanted to change the world, as lots of us do when we're young. In a way I haven't stopped … I want to make the world a better place, for women, mainly."

She hopes to do this partly through the promotion of women's sport; she has two big projects this year, although it's too early to divulge the details. "Women's sport helps break down a lot of barriers for women in other areas," she says, "whether in religion or politics. It's to do with being allowed to be judged on your talent, but also it's to do with clothing. If you look back at British history, women being allowed to play sport in schools meant they had to change their clothing. They couldn't be running around in their long skirts and corsets, because you can't." In countries where women are still required to cover up, she thinks sport might lead to them gaining more freedom generally.

Not long after the Olympics she went to a meeting at the House of Lords about the promotion of women's sport. One concern for her "is independent schools having all these fantastic sports facilities and state schools not having them. Sport apartheid, you know?" She makes a face. "Not fair." In terms of women's sport, there were a raft of proposals, to which she personally added there should be "funding for women's football to go professional, and more women working in governing bodies, and as [sports] editors in newspapers". Her break as a sports presenter at BBC Radio 5 Live, in her early 20s, came when the channel's sport was run by Bob Shennan, now controller of Radio 2, who is a strong promoter of women, she says. Now only 5% of sports coverage is of women's sport, and change will "come top-down.

"You need your editor to be demanding women's sports coverage – whether on 5 Live sports bulletins or in newspapers. The editor needs to be looking for it and saying, 'Make sure I have a full page of women's sport every day. Make sure women's sport is in the sports bulletin every hour.' Things become important because we make them important."

We go back to religion, and she says she was surprised when the laity voted against allowing women bishops last year. "I don't understand the fear. I don't understand why women can't be part of organised religion." When I ask her about gay marriage and the church, she moves swiftly to the C of E decision that gay men in civil partnerships can become bishops – but only if they don't have sex. The Reverend Richard Coles, who is in a celibate relationship, is due to appear on her show, "an openly gay man who is also a reverend, very publicly, who really believes in the job that he does and obviously has a very strong faith. Why should he be marginalised? It's the same thing as it is for women. What's the fear? Prejudice is based on fear and ignorance. What disappoints me is the focus on sex, because you never ask a straight couple what they do in bed. That is not the point. The point is a commitment to each other, a love for each other, a trust in each other, a supporting of each other."

Balding has been in a relationship with Arnold, a broadcaster and journalist, for more than a decade, and they became civil partners in 2006. She thinks to be truly equal, marriage and civil partnership should be available to straight and gay couples. "Why not say, here's your choice, you can either be civilly partnered, which is a bit of a mouthful – we can come up with something sexier, hopefully – or you can be married; which would you rather? Then it's up to everybody. To me, that's equality. The defenders of the institution of marriage who say [gay marriage] is the most dangerous thing that has ever happened to marriage … well, I think probably divorce was. And given that the Church of England started because the king wanted to get divorced, it's an odd position to take. My point is that if you want to live in a world where people are kind and generous and look after each other, you want to encourage more people to commit to each other on a level basis." She says it's important to have a relationship recognised publicly, "and that is not about it being in the papers," she qualifies quickly. "It's about being able to say, this is my civil partner."

Balding was treated for thyroid cancer in 2009, and when she was ill, "Alice could come in with me, to the hospital, to the doctor, and say, 'I am her next of kin.' We couldn't have done that 10 years earlier. That's a massive step forward. In those moments, where you really need that – that's when it matters. Luckily, I never really wanted the whole big wedding, with my father walking me down the aisle, and then, 'Oh God, what is he going to say?' There's another issue – how many women do you hear speaking at marriages? Still. How many women speak? You get father of the bride, best man, husband. Where are the women? Oh, they're bridesmaids, lovely, let's give them a present. Whereas, at the party after our civil partnership, we both spoke. Of course we did."

It's important for people in the public eye to be openly gay, she says, because it might gently change attitudes. "I get some late-night homophobic, drunken abuse on Twitter, but nothing that affects me. It hasn't affected my career, and it's important for people to see that. That is really important. And I think, for men, if you look at Graham Norton, Paul O'Grady, Stephen Fry and Alan Carr – those are four really successful entertainment presenters who are openly gay, and there are lots more around."

It's important to have openly gay sportspeople too, and she was glad to speak to former rugby player Gareth Thomas, who said that since coming out, "his sponsorship offers increased". She can understand why it might take longer in football, where the tragic experience of Justin Fashanu, the only professional player in the UK ever to come out – who killed himself in 1998 – still casts a shadow over the sport. "I think [David] Beckham's important in all of this, because he's so gay-friendly, he is metrosexual – if one of his boys was gay, it's no big deal. You really believe that."

Balding is up to her ears in work – she became the face of Channel 4 racing this year, too – and she's loving it. There's nothing she likes better, she says, than when she's presenting live and is told to, "rip up the running order. I bloody love it. Whoopee! Come on! Let's go." There was a point she wanted to make in her book, "that if you were born in 1971 into a family that says, 'Women ain't people', you're going to have to find a way to prove them wrong, and you can." And she has. "I think I have. I hope so."

<em>Good Morning Sunday with Clare Balding is on BBC Radio 2, Sunday, 7am, from 20 January</em>