Anneka Rice marks 50 years at BBC and reflects on career

Anneka Rice says she is celebrating 50 years at the BBC this autumn. In a broadcast interview, she looked back over a career that began as a trainee at the World Service and later took in newsreading, children's television, factual entertainment and the entertainment show Challenge Anneka.

She said she joined the World Service aged 17 on a two-year training course. Her interest in broadcasting was sparked when she saw a recording of The Generation Game at Television Centre at the age of 15. She described the BBC as a source of security in her childhood, recalling listening to Junior Choice with Ed Stewart on Saturday mornings. She now presents that show on Christmas Day, which she called thrilling. She said she was not initially set on becoming a TV presenter and would have been happy to hold up Bruce Forsyth's cue cards or type scripts.

After her training, she split from her boyfriend, felt rudderless and resigned from the BBC. She flew to Hong Kong, where she spent two years and had what she called amazing adventures. She later became a newsreader on a local station, but said she enjoyed the newsroom and sub-editing more than being on screen. On returning to the UK, she got a job as a reporter at Thames TV. She then auditioned for a new programme called Treasure Hunt. The producers were looking for a fit bloke. The audition involved a fake run around Hyde Park. A cameraman, Graham, told producer Malcolm that it had to be Annie because she was the only one he could keep up with. Rice said she got the job for all the wrong reasons.

She said she is proud that her programmes changed the media landscape and the way women were seen. Before that, she said, women were usually studio bound, flanked by men, chased by Benny Hill in a bikini, or draped over a car on quiz shows. Treasure Hunt put her in control, with wind in her hair and calling the shots. She said the experience fed into Challenge Anneka.

Challenge Anneka grew out of her time on Treasure Hunt. She saw the large budgets used on Treasure Hunt and wanted to make a show that created something lasting rather than a programme people watched once on VHS. She visited Chicken Shed, an integrated theatre group for children with disabilities. There she saw children in wheelchairs being pushed by able-bodied children, a signer for a deaf child, blind children and children with Down syndrome. The performance was called Ferris in Wonderland, about a girl locked in her autistic world. Rice said she saw a community on stage and realised that was what Challenge Anneka was about. She ran into Michael Grade's office at the BBC and asked to make the impossible possible. He agreed.

The original run of Challenge Anneka was from 1989 to 1995 and drew audiences of up to 12 million. In the show, Rice was set tasks she knew nothing about, often with a short deadline, and mobilised volunteers. The programme built orphanages, playgrounds and soup kitchens. A clip from the first episode showed her by the River Thames at Albert Bridge, waiting by a bus stop with a 38 tonne lorry and an impossibly short deadline. Hearing the clip, Rice said she felt tearful and emotional.

She also noted that the interview programme is repeated on the World Service, which meant she could feel she had bookended her career. She said the BBC had always felt like coming home.