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Janet Street-Porter

Janet Vera Street-Porter CBE (née Bull; born 27 December 1946) is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer, and media personality. She began her career as a fashion writer and columnist at the Daily Mail and was later appointed fashion editor of the Evening Standard in 1971. In 1973, she co-presented a mid-morning radio show with Paul Callan on LBC.

Not to be confused with Janet Porter, an American anti-abortion activist.

Janet Street-Porter

Janet Vera Bull

(1946-12-27) 27 December 1946[1]
  • Broadcaster
  • journalist
  • writer
  • producer
  • media personality

1967–present

Tim Street-Porter
(m. 1967; div. 1975)
(m. 1975; div. 1977)
(m. 1979; div. 1981)
David Sorkin
(m. 1997; div. 1999)

Peter Spanton (1999–present)

Street-Porter began working on television at London Weekend Television in 1975, first as a presenter of a series of mainly youth-oriented programmes. She was the editor and producer of the Network 7 series on Channel 4 in 1987, and was a BBC Television executive from 1987 until 1994. She was an editor of The Independent on Sunday from 1999 until 2002, but relinquished the job to become editor-at-large.


Since 2011, Street-Porter has been a regular panellist on the ITV talk show Loose Women. Her other television appearances include Question Time (1998–2015), Have I Got News for You (1996–2023), I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (2004), Deadline (2007), Celebrity MasterChef (2013, 2020), and A Taste of Britain (2014).


Street-Porter was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to journalism and broadcasting.

Early life[edit]

Street-Porter was born in Brentford, Middlesex (now in the London Borough of Hounslow). She is the daughter of Stanley W. G. Bull, an electrical engineer who had served as a sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals in the Second World War, and Cherry Cuff Ardern (née Jones), who was Welsh[3] and worked as a school dinner lady and in the civil service as a clerical assistant in a tax office.[4]Street-Porter is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and considers herself nonreligious.[5] Her mother was still married to her first husband, George Ardern, at the time, and was not to marry Stanley until 1954, hence her name being recorded thus in the birth records. She was later to take her father's surname.[4]


Street-Porter grew up in Fulham, West London, and Perivale, Middlesex, after the family moved there when she was 14 and the family would stay in her mother's home town of Llanfairfechan in North Wales for their holidays.[4] She attended Peterborough Primary and Junior Schools in Fulham and Lady Margaret Grammar School for Girls (now Lady Margaret School) in Parsons Green from 1958 to 1964 where she passed 8 O-levels and 3 A-levels in English, History and Art. She also took an A-level in pure mathematics but did not pass the exam. Whilst studying A-levels, she had an illegal abortion.[6] She then spent two years at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter.[4][7]

Scandal! (1981)

The British Teapot (1983)

Coast to Coast with Janet Street-Porter (1998)

As the Crow Flies: A Walk from Edinburgh to London - in a Straight Line (1998)

Baggage: My Childhood (2004)

The Walk of Life (2005)

Fall Out (2007)

Life's Too F***ing Short (2008)

Don't Let the B*****ds Get You Down (2009)

Honours and awards[edit]

Street-Porter was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to journalism and broadcasting.[31]

at IMDb

Janet Street-Porter

at the BFI's Screenonline

Janet Street-Porter

Official website

Desert Island Discs episode, BBC Radio 4, November 2008

Janet Street-Porter 2008 Interview