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All In A Day’s Work
BAFTA member Jacqui Harper MBE is a nationally known
television presenter, a wife, a mother, managing director of Crystal 24 Media Training Limited and a tireless voluntary worker on behalf of
the North London Mentor Trust. As such she takes an extremely positive view of life and its possibilities, as Ron Allison found out.
SEVEN
PHILL JUPITUS’
SIX OF THE BEST
Industry personalities hand out their very own BAFTAs
J ACQUI
HARPER’ S
Awarded her MBE in the Millennium Honours List Jacqui Harper has already packed more into her 37 years than many people manage in a lifetime. The drive down the Mall to the Investiture was just one stage - though a very special one - on an exhilarating journey which began in Ilkley in Yorkshire.
Now not many folk, looking at Jacqui or listening to her, would guess that that she was a Yorkshire lass but, after they had come, separately, to Britain from Jamaica in the early sixties, her parents married and settled “oop north”, where they found the people warm but the weather less so. Soon they were in London.
Jacqui prospered, graduated in English and American Literature, spent a year at the University of California, was bitten by the media bug, wrote and broad- cast, came back (“home-sickness and no green card”), talked herself into the BBC
and was up and running. She worked as a presenter alongside John Stapleton and Guy Michelmore on London Plus and Newsroom South-East before going on to GMTV, Sky News, BBC 2’s Advice Shop and many other programmes. She loved the work and was good at it; what she wants other black youngsters to know is that they can succeed as well.
Grateful for the mentoring she received in California, Jacqui has involved herself in helping young people from the ethnic minorities to make the most of their opportunities. She has worked with the North London Mentor Trust for over ten years and there she uses the same skills as are involved in Crystal Media Training, the business she set up in l985.
Only the clients are different - top busi- ness people seeking advice on communi- cating in the contemporary styles - broad- cast, print, video, conference, the net etc It was for her voluntary work though that she received her honour.
Today Jacqui has a husband, Peter, and a 14 month old daughter, Carla, who ensure that her life is most definitely not “all work”. Hectic though, it most certain- ly is but her thoughts are once again of on-screen work - alongside everything else of course.
Would she be able to fit it all in? Yes, but whatever happens that dedication to help- ing others fulfil their potential will always be a hugely important part of her life. ■
SIX OF THE BEST
Best Film
A doddle this one, A Matter Of Life and Death. Cinema’s many theories on the afterlife have provided some memorable images, Woody Allen dancing with Death
in the final moments of Love And Death. Albert Brooks gorging himself at the celestial buffet in Defending Your Life. Powell and Pressburger’s wartime epic is rammed with classic scenes. The heart- wrenching dialogue between the doomed (so we think) pilot and the helpless American radio operator is a moment I genuinely feel will never be equalled.
Best TV Programme
When looking back, one can’t help but whack on the rose-tinted spectacles. I have a great fondness for pop
TV’s finest moment, Revolver. Chronologically resting between
The Old Grey Whistle Test and The Tube, this odd little show had Peter Cook in the role of iras- cible host cum club manager. When beat gurus XTC were on the show performing their single ‘This Is Pop’, Cook announced
them by saying “That
was TCP and that was pop, and if that’s pop I hope I never meet mum...” The man was a god.
Worst TV Programme
Big Brother is a waste of so much of humanity’s time on so many levels, I can’t begin to formulate a cohesive argument because I simply hate it. I understand it’s very popular. As was Hitler.
Best One Liner
One might think it’s impossible to select one line from The Simpsons’ bulging coffers of top notch, high octane gags but this one was so dark I have never for- gotten it. Bart and Lisa are com- menting on a low quality cartoon and the following exchange takes place...
LISA - “It’s one of those
campy 70’s throwbacks designed to appeal to Generation X-ers.”
BART – “We need another Vietnam to thin their ranks out a little.”
I would dearly love to buy the writer of that line a very large drink.
Best Comedy Character
Paul Whitehouse’s characters are all so massive and at the same time beautifully understated. I have a particular fondness for the inaudible gentlemen’s club booze- hound Rowley Birkin. I recently met Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and his speech patterns are eerily similar.
My big question about television
What are the ratings like for the little blonde girl with the clown on the test card? ■
Phill Jupitus is hosting
Photo left: Roger Livesey in A Matter Of Life and Death (1946) Courtesy Kobal Collection 24