Alice Arnold (broadcaster)

Alice Arnold (born 1962) is a British broadcaster and journalist. She was a newsreader and continuity announcer on BBC Radio 4 for more than twenty years until the end of December 2012.

For other people named Alice Arnold, see Alice Arnold (disambiguation).

Alice K. Arnold
Born1962 (age 60–61)
Esher, Surrey, England[1]
Occupation(s)Broadcaster, journalist
Spouse
​
(m. 2015)​

Early life

She attended the independent Claremont Fan Court School in Esher, Surrey, where Michaela Strachan was three years below her.[2]

After gaining a degree in politics from the University of Sussex,[3] she trained as an actress at the Drama Studio in Ealing and was in the musical Evita for a year.[4] She was a magistrate for ten years[3] from the age of thirty[4] in Tottenham.[5]

Career and public profile

Arnold joined the BBC Radio Drama Company in 1988. After meeting Peter Donaldson at a party in 1994, she joined Radio 4's presentation team in that year. In 2004 she became a newsreader, and regularly read the afternoon and evening news on Radio 4. For a brief period her early appearances as a newsreader were credited as "Eva Arnold", perhaps to keep her newsreading 'persona' separate from her identity as an actor. In 2005, she featured as a news presenter in BBC Two comedy Broken News. In June 2006, she was promoted to read the news on Radio 4's Today programme. From 2007 to 2011 she co-presented comedian Jon Holmes's show Listen Against, a parody of various programmes on Radio 4.[6]

Arnold gained media attention in May 2012.[5] While returning home, stuck in traffic, she observed an empty plastic bottle being thrown from the car ahead of her and threw it back into the vehicle through an open window. On Twitter, colleague and friend Corrie Corfield said Arnold deserved a damehood for her action.[7][8]

Towards the end of October 2012, the ending of Arnold's role on Radio 4 emerged.[9] Her final shift ended in the early hours of Saturday 29 December 2012. During 2013, she worked for the BBC in a training capacity and was involved in the Expert Women's Days where she coached potential female interviewees for Today.[10] Arnold has suggested adopting a smile or frown while talking as appropriate to the context.[11]

Since then she has written for The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.[12][13]

Personal life

Arnold entered into a civil partnership in 2006 with the BBC presenter Clare Balding.[14] They live in Chiswick, London. In April 2015, the couple officially married in a private ceremony.[15]

Balding and Arnold are keen amateur golfers. Arnold wrote about the Scottish Muirfield golf club in The Guardian after it rejected proposals to admit female members: "Another argument put forward by the 'no' campaign is that not many women would want to join. Spot on. I do not want to join your snotty club. Golf is my hobby. I love it and I would like to play it where I feel welcome, not like some second-class citizen".[16]

References
  1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  2. Walton & Weybridge Informer Thursday 14 August 1986, page 16
  3. "Radio 4 People — Alice Arnold". BBC. 10 February 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
  4. Alison Roberts "Alice Arnold: You look at men of a certain age on TV and think: 'If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be there' ", Evening Standard, 8 January 2013
  5. Arnold, Alice (12 May 2012). "Alice Arnold: litter, Twitter and my media storm". The Guardian.
  6. "Listen Against". Retrieved 28 April 2013. Alice Arnold and Jon Holmes take a satirical look back over the last week of radio
  7. Furness, Hannah (9 May 2012). "BBC newsreader is "litter crusader" after confronting lout with bottle". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 May 2012.
  8. "Angry BBC newsreader throws rubbish back into car in traffic jam". The Evening Standard. London. 8 May 2012.
  9. "Farewell for now, but we haven't heard the last of Alice Arnold", The Guardian (blog), 26 October 2012
  10. Maggie Brown "BBC to hold Expert Women's Days in Salford, Glasgow and Cardiff", guardian.co.uk, 18 March 2013
  11. Martinson, Jane (18 March 2013). "Expert women at the BBC: is a database and training enough?". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  12. Arnold, Alice (21 January 2013). "Alice Arnold: BBC has taken a positive step to get more women on air". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  13. Arnold, Alice (12 May 2012). "Alice Arnold: litter, Twitter and my media storm". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  14. France, Louise (10 December 2006). "One year of being Mr and Mr". The Observer. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
  15. "Clare Balding marries Alice Arnold". Hellomagazine.com. 4 April 2015. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  16. Arnold, Alice (20 May 2016). "I love golf, Muirfield, but I don't want to join your snotty club". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
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