Janet Street-Porter

Her first two screen credits are uncredited walk-ons: a girl dancing in a club in Blow-Up in 1966, and a salon receptionist in Deadly Sweet the year after. That is a very good joke about a career otherwise spent talking, at length, as herself.

Street-Porter came out of print. She was writing about fashion for the Daily Mail by 1969 and was fashion editor of the Evening Standard by 1971, then moved into radio in 1973 with a mid-morning LBC show co-presented with Paul Callan. She later edited The Independent on Sunday, and stepped sideways into an editor-at-large role in 2002.

What she has been on television for three decades is a professional contrarian, and she is better at it than the format usually permits. The credits here are the British opinion circuit end to end: Have I Got News for You and its extended version, Room 101, Loose Women, Through the Keyhole, Richard & Judy, This Week, The F Word. What makes her good on those shows is that she does not perform reluctance. She arrives with a position, states it flatly, and declines to soften it when the room turns, which on a panel show is worth considerably more than being funny.