She hates ‘rainforest’ showers, thinks Jeremy Clarkson is ‘appalling’ and loves her clashes with Coleen Nolan on Loose Women.
Now audiences in Dorset can quiz Janet Street-Porter as she hits Dorchester and Lyme Regis next month on her The Bitch is Back tour.
I think we can safely peg Janet, who turns 80 next year, as a National Treasure. She has been on our TV screens since the 70s, when her estuary English accent stuck out a mile in among the cut glass tones of most other presenters of that era.
She was awarded a CBE in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to journalism and broadcasting, having cut her teeth in the industry as deputy fashion editor on the Daily Mail, appointed in 1969 by Shirley Conran.

She said: “I was working on Petticoat, a magazine for young women, which was very highly thought of. A lot of today’s top journalists came through that way from working on Honey or Petticoat. That was my first job and they made me home editor. I was in charge of the design, and I modelled and I did some of the fashion as well. “So Shirley rang me up and offered me this job on the Daily Mail as deputy fashion editor and as a columnist. I was literally 21 years old. So I took the job. I mean, who wouldn’t? It was brilliant.”

“The day I arrived to work Shirley was nowhere to be seen. “She had fallen out with the bosses and never returned. “I think that’s what made me the thick-skinned woman I am today, because I had to start work in the office where I didn’t know anybody. “I worked with the fashion editor, Sandy Fawkes – she was a character. She could sink, like, five bottles of champagne at lunchtime, and still carry on.”

Janet’s first forays into television saw her presenting and editing, mainly ‘yoof’ programmes, which covered a surprisingly wide range of subjects for that time.
Alongside the TV and print journalism, she has modelled, studied architecture, she’s a keen cook (she won Celebrity Masterchef in 2020) and she’s an avid rambler – though that hobby has had to take a back seat after ops on her left knee and hip. “The left side of me is virtually bionic,” she said.
There’s not much Janet hasn’t tackled, including being an extra in Hollyoaks and a line in Neighbours.
“Neighbours was great,” she said. “But it has always been my ambition to be in Casualty. Just as a victim, just sitting there, waiting for attention. You’d think they could have found me that role.
“David Walliams has been in Casualty – he f****** beat me to it! I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s like The Archers – I’ve never been on that either. I’d love to be on The Archers. I’ve been on all the quiz shows and won most of them. Though I was possibly the worst Catchphrase contestant ever. I just didn’t get it.
“I might try again at Celebrity Mastermind. My specialist subject was The British Teapot 1740-1820, because I’d written a book on teapots.”
Off screen, Janet’s life has been extraordinary. She was married four times – two marriages lasted two years, the others lasted four and eight. But she has been with her partner, restaurateur Peter Spanton, nearly 30 years now.
“Husbands are all lovely for the first six months, then it slowly changes,” she said.

It’s not that Janet is unable to get along with people – quite the opposite. But she does find butting heads MUCH more interesting.
What would be your ideal Loose Women panel if you could choose anyone alive or dead? I asked.
“Well, see, I like working with Coleen very much because we disagree about everything,” she said. “There are things that we agree about. So we could probably agree that our dogs are nice…
“But I only like my dog. And she’s got loads of dogs. Now, who else? I hate choosing dead people. They have to be alive. “If I’m thinking of opinionated women, who would I really, really like? “Well, Caitlin Moran I’ve never met. That would be good. And I would invite that woman who puts up with Jeremy Clarkson (Lisa Hogan). I’d like to meet her because I find Jeremy Clarkson appalling. So she’d be a good one. “Then I’d have our current Home Secretary, actually. She’s doing a pretty good job. Shabana Mahmood. Now, I’d like very much to have dinner with her, because she’s so clever. And very articulate – she presents herself extremely well. I mean, I might not agree with all her policies. But I think presentationally, she’s brilliant. “Then I’d invite my next-door neighbour, Rebecca Warren. She’s a sculptor. She’d be a very good panellist, if I could coax her out. She’s quite shy. “The best thing about having a dinner party is having people who don’t really agree. The worst is to sit around nodding going: ‘Oh yeah, it’s terrible. Isn’t it terrible?
“Rachel Reeves is terrible, taxes are terrible, you might as well not bother.” Most of Janet’s career has been about conversation, interviewing famous names such as The Clash, Sting, and Johnny Rotten, as well as David Bowie and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I’ve got a soft spot for Johnny Rotten,” she said. Her knack for conversation propelled her into a spot on the Loose Women panel in 2011, where she has been a fixture ever since.
But, while she’s certainly made up for it since, conversation was lacking in her childhood.
Her parents were married to other people when Janet was conceived. They married each other when she was six, but didn’t tell her. She found out when her dad died. “My mother just spoke Welsh all the time,” she said. “Even the budgerigar spoke Welsh.
“The way I’ve ended up now and what I’m like now is really derived from things that happened in my childhood. What my mad mother was like, the very weird relationship between my mum and dad.”
Her 1950s childhood figures large in her The Bitch is Back tour, which includes Lyme Regis on January 20, and Dorchester on January 21, then Exeter on the 22nd. In February she’s in Southampton on the 12th and Ringwood on the 13th.
She said: “I also talk a bit about things that really wind me up. Like rain showers. I hate them, especially when you’ve just had your hair done. We want sideways
showers because all our bits are either underneath or on the side. We don’t want some f****** deluge.”
So, given the name of your tour are you actually a bitch? I asked.
“I’m quite acerbic. I’d go as far as Janet is sarky, yes.
“Snappy, yes, opinionated, yes. I didn’t notice the menopause because I’m in a bad mood all the time. I only knew it was over when I started being in a better mood.
“I think I’ve mellowed a bit, actually.
“Honestly, I’ve been on HRT since the year dot and I’m gonna be on it till I’m being incinerated at the end.”
n Book tickets at
janetstreetporter.com/tour