“Her warmth filled the kitchen every morning”: The magic – and perseverance – of Jenny Murray | Jenny Murray

Before taking over Woman’s Hour in 1987, Jenny Murray was the presenter of the Today programme. She joined the BBC in Bristol in 1973, becoming a television correspondent and presenter on the South Today programme, arriving with strong news credentials. But the day in the 1980s was inherently sexist – men did politics, women did the rest – and the format was too young for it.

The woman’s watch, on the other hand, was completely reshaped in her image: there was no preconceived notion of tone, and nothing was too serious or too light for it. Murray, who has died aged 75, could tear off a politician’s clothes, talk about hydrangeas and then campaign against domestic violence, all in the space of a few minutes. She was instinctively open and generous about her personal experience, but never closed off—an incredibly delicate balance.

People were always using words like “nice” and “round” about her voice, making it sound like a triumph in public speaking — RP scores again — but that was a misunderstanding. The main obstacle to her entry into the BBC did not seem posh enough. You had to talk that way, whether you were posh or not (and she wasn’t; her father was a civil engineer, her mother a government employee).

Her warmth filled the kitchen every morning, after the show moved from the afternoon slot in the early 1990s. He was married to a natural bead and wit. You knew you wouldn’t get bored. Murray was recalling her big political interviews, in which even the so-called failures were remarkably listenable.

When I spoke to Margaret Thatcher after she left office, I asked her whether sexism in public life had bothered her at all, and she made some of the most troubling remarks: Alan Clarke called her ankles beautiful, or François Mitterrand said she had the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe. “She looked at me and didn’t speak,” Murray said later. It occurred to her that the former prime minister might not have seen those comments, and “when I put those things to her, she was really shocked.”

Her aggressive investigations into Hillary Clinton — she actually went there about Bill’s infidelity — resulted in perhaps the most humane interview Hillary has ever given. She said marriage is about friendship, not necessarily about sex. It wasn’t a groundbreaking statement, but it seemed true to this couple. Murray was rarely dazzled by stardom, although years later she still recalled her horror while interviewing 81-year-old Bette Davis.

She had an instinctive feminine solidarity, and a keen eye for the young feminist activists coming after her. One show in 2013 — with Caroline Criado Pérez, then a fledgling activist for Putting Women on the Banknote, Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, and Allegra McFeedy, a chef who ponders the fundamental feminist question of what foods are best when drinking alcohol — was a very typical day for Murray, yet it drew on her intensity and determination to talk about what matters, with people who made a difference.

Murray was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. She hated talking about it, finding it boring, yet she had to talk about it. “I couldn’t disappear to have a mastectomy,” she said in an interview with Radio Times. “You develop a closeness to your audience.” With Murray, it was a two-way street.