Jill Dando

Jill was born in Weston-Super-Mare Avon, in 1961.
Family: Jill's mother died 13 years ago of Leukaemia, her father still lives in Weston-super-Mare.

Education: Jill studied at Worle Comprehensive School and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre


She studied at Worle Comprehensive School and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre.
Jill's first rise to a position of responsibility was at Broadoak Sixth Form Centre in Loxton Road Weston-super-Mare, as Head Girl from 1979-1980.

On completion of her 'A' levels, a position arose at the Weston Mercury Newspaper as a trainee reporter. Having an avid interest in amateur dramatics, Jill soon took an interest in broadcasting. After five years in the print industry, she moved to Radio Devon where she presented the breakfast news programme. Following this was her break into the regional news programme Spotlight South West.

In 1986 she went to work for BBC Television South West to present the evening regional news magazine programme.

In 1988 at the age of 26, she made an important and high profile move to London to present the BBC's Breakfast Time, as presenters Kirsty Wark and Sally Magnusson left on maternity leave.

Following this in the early 1990's, she started her career in peak time television, presenting BBC1's Holiday series, and followed this in 1995 as a co-host with Nick Ross and Sue Cook on the popular Crimewatch programme.

Last Sunday she figure headed a new series of Antique Inspectors, with her picture prominently displayed on the cover of the Radio Times.

Her career has gone from strength to strength as she has presented a wide range of programmes including, 6 O-clock News, "Holiday", Crimewatch UK, Songs of Praise, D-Day Celebrations and Princess Diana's Funeral.

In her spare time, Jill enjoyed cycling, walking and playing tennis. She had achieved most of her career ambitions.

ALTHOUGH she always claimed to be mystified by the effect she had on the opposite sex - her nickname for herself was "Blando" - Jill Dando in understated two-piece suit probably made more male hearts pound than many a television blonde of more lurid assets. It was the air of efficiency she brought to what she did - the efficiency of a ward sister or WPC - that set pulses racing as well as securing her the respect of her peers in broadcasting.

Jealous female newspaper columnists might be catty about her neat appearance, but it was the message as much as the medium that gave her undeniable strengths as a broadcaster. Such programmes as Crimewatch, on which she worked in harness with Nick Ross, require the ability to co-ordinate and present a vast amount of information in intelligible form, in an excitable studio atmosphere which is being continually bombarded with new data. And in an age when so many young women presenters aim to skate by on a diet of barely-literate burbling, "wows" and giggles, Dando brought to her job a lucidity which had, as in so many of the best television presenters, been learnt in print journalism.

Indeed, there were many who felt that in advertising her latest job, presenting BBC Television's Antiques Inspectors, by adopting the leather-clad look of a James Bond girl for the cover of Radio Times, she was selling herself short. Wholesomeness was, after all, no crime and Ms Dando had no need to be trying to follow in the sultry footsteps of a Honor Blackman. Jill Dando was born in Weston-super-Mare, with a hole in the heart which was not discovered until she was 18 months old. An operation at Bristol Royal Infirmary corrected the condition and she was able to lead a normal life. In Weston she attended Worle Comprehensive School and then Broadoak Sixth Form Centre where she became head girl. She left school to study journalism at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, returning to her home town for her first job, on the Weston and Somerset Mercury which she joined in 1980. There, she cut her teeth on the diet of council meetings, funerals and flower shows which is the lot of the local reporter, learning in the process the homely but necessary virtues of speed and accuracy.

In 1985 she moved to BBC Radio Devon where she presented the daily breakfast news programme and after a year there she was on the move again to BBC Television South West, to present an evening regional magazine programme. This gave a much wider field for her talents and in 1988 she moved to London to present BBC TV's Breakfast News. From that moment on she was a household name throughout Britain, her blonde good looks earning her the sobriquet "Golden Girl of Television". Professionally she became known as one of a not-so-large clutch of television presenters who are equally at home fronting news, light entertainment and travel programmes. She had soon added the Six O'Clock News in which she was a stand-in newscaster, Crimewatch and Holiday to her portfolio of broadcasting activities.

Holiday, with its unparalleled travel opportunities, was at the furthest remove imaginable from the local paper she had started on. But she was always to say that it was the more gruelling Crimewatch which was her favourite. When she had first been invited on to the programme, she had been cautious about becoming a television policewoman, and quizzed its first presenters, Nick Ross and Sue Cook, as to whether either of them had ever been threatened. She was later to say, possibly prophetically: "I was aware that standing up in public doing this job could mean I was putting myself in the firing line. Most people on the programme would rather not be, so you might be seen as a threat." She was indeed the object of some unwelcome attentions.

Dando was involved, among many others, with Crimewatch programmes which shed light on the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell and generated the telephone calls which led to the identification of Michael Stone, who was later jailed for life. Her own fortitude on camera was put to its stiffest test when she interviewed Danielle Cable, the 17-year-old fiancée of Steve Cameron, who was stabbed to death in a "road rage" attack on him on an M25 sliproad. "At the end we both went off the set and burst into tears," she later confessed.

In the meantime, the label "Golden Girl of Television" could, as she was soon to find, be as much of a liability as an asset. When, last autumn, it was rumoured that the BBC's Six O'Clock News was to be relaunched with her fronting it, there was a swift riposte, with veteran newscasters letting it be known that blondeness rather than gravitas and experience appeared to be the Corporation's criterion in its thinking about the appointment.

The BBC dithered for several weeks. Eventually, angered about a handling of the matter which appeared to cast aspersions on her mental equipment, Dando declared that she would not be considered as a candidate in the circumstances.

When the dust settled she found herself in a better position than before, with renewed contracts for Crimewatch and further travel series, as well as her latest show Antiques Investigator.

She was thought to be wanting to scale down her television activities since her recent engagement to a gynaecologist, Alan Farthing. They were to have been married in the autumn.

JILL DANDO was that rarest of women - the object of fantasy for men of a certain age and yet equally admired and respected by women.

In that fine balancing act between popular television and fluffiness, she never crossed the line and was equally authoratitive in front of a bank of phones on Crimewatch or in front of a dazzling blue sea on the Holiday programme.
Despite the inevitable comparisons to Princess Diana in the wake of her untimely death, one of the secrets of Dando's enormous appeal lay in the fact that she did not seem unapproachable and was able to combine a "head girl" quality with that of the "girl next door".

She was seen as the latest in a long line of blonde, female holiday programme presenters when she took on what became perhaps her most high profile role, but if it is true that blondes have more fun, in her case you could rest assured that it was good clean fun.

The blonde ambition tag was not one that sat well with Dando. Earlier this year, she said: "Just because I've got blonde hair and haven't been to Bosnia doesn't mean I'm a bimbo. I am still a serious journalist."

Other efforts to update her image in more recent years included posing in a leather mini-skirt for a photo session, and then in leather again - this time a jumpsuit - for this week's Radio Times. - April 27

When she announced her engagement earlier this year, there was a collective sigh as many came to the realisation that their fantasies of Dando showing up on the sun lounger next to them on a tropical beach were just that - fantasy. Many more found themselves glad that she had found time between travels to find happiness in her home life.

{From The Jill Dando Website: http://www.muswell-hill.com/dando/profile.html )