Angela Rippon Angela Rippon, OBE (born October 12, 1944) is a well-known British television journalist. She is often erroneously stated to have been the first female newsreader on prime-time television news, on BBC2 in 1974 (later presenting the BBC's Nine O'clock News). However, Barbara Mandell predates her, having first appeared on the second night of ITV in 1955. However, she was the first female newsreader to hold the job on a regular basis. She recently hosted a weekend news show called Live with Angela Rippon on the ITV News Channel. She famously guest-starred in a Morecambe and Wise Christmas show (first appearing behind a newsdesk and then emerging to do a high-kicking dance routine), and later presented Come Dancing.
In 1977, she hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK. She was the first presenter of BBC Television's Top Gear motoring show. She appeared briefly on TV-am following its launch in 1983. After a much publicised exit from TV-am (with most of its other founder presenters) Rippon worked as an arts correspondent for a television station in Boston, MA for a spell.
During the early 1980s, she wrote a series of children's books, called Victoria Plum. It told the adventures of a girl/young woman living in a forest, and her adventures with her forest-friends.
In the mid-1980s she hosted the TV quiz show, Masterteam on BBC One.
Rippon was awarded the OBE in June 2004. In 2005 she co-hosted a new series of Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting for BBC2 daytime.
She is currently (April 2006) touring the country as part of the cast of the musical 'anything goes'.
