Dame Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, (née Rowlands; born 16 April 1933), is an English journalist, television presenter and Labour Party peer. Baroness Bakewell is president of Birkbeck, University of London; she is also an author and playwright, and has been awarded Humanist of the year for services to humanism. Early life and education Bakewell was born on 16 April 1933 in Heaton Moor, Stockport, Cheshire, England, and moved to Hazel Grove before she was three. Both her grandfathers were factory workers: the Rowlands branch stemmed from the lead mining villages of the Ystwyth valley, in Wales. Her great-grandfather moved to Salford, where he was a preacher in the Church Army. Her grandfather was an iron turner. On the maternal side, her grandfather was a cooper in Ardwick Brewery. The family lived in Gorton, a district of Manchester. Bakewell was educated at Stockport High School for Girls, a grammar school in local authority control, where she became head girl. She won a scholarship and attended Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, where she studied Economics, then History, and joined the Marshall Society and the Mummers Acting Society. Career Broadcasting Joan Bakewell began her career as a studio manager for BBC Radio, before moving into television. Bakewell then left after a year to try supply teaching. She then became an advertising copywriter with McCann Erickson, then with Hobson Bates, and later David Williams Ltd. In the early 60s Bakewell was TV presenter for ATV’s Sunday Break, Southern Television’s Home at 4.30, BBC’s Meeting Point and the BBC series The Second Sex. She first became known as one of the presenters of the BBC2 programme Late Night Line-Up (1965–72 and 2008). Frank Muir dubbed her "the thinking man's crumpet" during this period and the moniker stuck, but Bakewell herself dislikes the epithet. In 1968, she took the role of narrator of the BBC TV production of Cold Comfort Farm, a three-part serial, and played a TV interviewer in the 1960s film The Touchables. Bakewell co-presented Reports Action, a Sunday teatime programme which encouraged the public to donate their services to various good causes, for Granada Television in 1976–78. In the 1970s Bakewell worked for both the BBC: "Where is Your God?", "Who Cares" "The Affirmative Way" and many Holiday Programmes between 1974 and 1978. Bakewell starred in 4 series of Granada’s pioneering Reports Action, a series that first encouraged the public