Anne Robinson

Born Anne Josephine Robinson on September 26, 1944 in Crosby, Liverpool, England, this famous host of the BBC and NBC quiz show The Weakest Link (2001) started her career as a journalist for Rediffusion. She made her way up by working on the Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Daily Mirror.

Was a reporter for the Liverpool Daily Post newspaper before moving on to the London Daily Mirror and later the Daily Mail in the 1970s.

It was at the Mirror where she was to make her mark, being Assistant Editor throughout the 1980s and early 1990s; she was the first woman to regularly edit a national newspaper. She credits that most of her formative education was gleaned not from attending the convent boarding school or university, but from working on her mother's "marled" stall.

She is well-known (even in America) for her red hair, her dark Giorgio Armani suits, her impatience with organizations that give customers a raw deal (she was the host of the prime time BBC 1 consumer affairs show Watchdog (1985)) and, of course, her wink (which was developed when, in 1987, the director of right-to-reply show Points of View (1961) asked her not to wink - she subsequently winked at the end of every program).

She is one of Great Britain's most distinguished broadcasters and journalists and was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool's John Moores University in 1996.

Made her peace with the Welsh by fronting an advertising campaign for the Welsh Tourism Board. The ads highlighted the fact that Wales's major tourist locations were open despite the foot-and-mouth crisis in the United Kingdom. [April 2001]