Journalist, author, presenter and media personality, Janet Street-Porter is a woman of many talents – and even more opinions, as PA Life editor Colette Doyle discovers.
When she gave a keynote speech at International Confex earlier this year, she joked it should be subtitled “How to get your own way in business”. That she likes to get her own way should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen this formidable media doyenne on TV, or read her articles in print; she is the kind of person who epitomises what it means to be forthright.
“I talk like a tannoy,” she says, and freely admits to having made a career out of speaking her mind. She grew up in the early 1950s with lots of rules in her household, enforced by her authoritarian father, and claims that is how she came to inherit the “bossy gene”.
She has no time for politicians – “they’re like ill-mannered schoolboys; they’ve never worked in the real world” – or political correctness. It transpires Janet was once asked to sit on the Equality Committee by the BBC and refused because, as she says in her inimitable manner, “It would have been a backwards step; women are already the superior sex.” Her coruscating style is compelling to watch and she punctuates her uncompromising views with liberal doses of humour, as you might expect from someone who wrote and starred in her own one-woman comedy show.
“Bribery [in the workplace] is acceptable; if someone gives you a good idea, rework it as your own and give them a gift to compensate.” With her tongue firmly in her cheek, she continues: “Always promise a glowing reference to the youngest person in the workforce; that way they’ll spy on their co-workers so you can find out what’s going on.”
Say what you like about Janet, and many have – homing in on her unequivocal London accent and certain orthodontic aspects of her appearance – she is no stranger to the concept of hard work. At 21, she became the youngest columnist on the Daily Mail and it took “20 years of sheer graft” for her to reach the top.
However prickly and exigent she may come across on the surface, underneath Janet wholly appreciates the importance of collaboration in business, having worked with teams across various media, including newspapers (she was the editor of The Independent on Sunday, making her a rarity in ‘quality’ journalism) and television (she’s presented countless programmes and can currently be seen as a regular panellist on daytime talk show Loose Women).
According to Janet, management is the “conduit between bosses at the top and the workers below”. She recalls having to take directives and mission statements from company bosses and turning these into deliverable goals that employees will sign up to enthusiastically. And she showed her mettle when she took over at the Independent on Sunday, and had to address the staff just two hours after the previous editor had been dismissed. “Don’t waste time trying to get people to like you,” she cautions with trademark candour. “One-third [of the workforce] will like you, one-third you can win over and the other third will hate your guts, so sod ‘em!”
The life lessons she has learned along the way include establishing there is only one way to do things – “my way or the wrong way” – and she openly acknowledges that she often finds it annoying to have to listen to other people’s points of view. Although she accepts that you are obliged to take on board the comments of staff when you’re the boss, she describes management as a form of “benevolent dictatorship”.
How has she made it this far? “Be ruthless” is another of Janet’s tips for success. She already had the killer instinct by the time she was 14. “I was just a plain teenager, but I thought I was right and [everyone else] was wrong,” she recalls. She may be the antithesis of the airy-fairy New Age life coach, but she lives firmly by the mantra of “believe in yourself” and it is such inner strength that has helped her shrug off the denigrating comments she has faced over the years, including her less-than-flattering caricature on the satirical puppet show, Spitting Image. Rather than let anything like that faze her, she simply chooses to ignore criticism, telling herself it doesn’t matter because “I’m the most intelligent person I’ll meet all day”.
All of which leads her to the next piece of advice: don’t dwell on your mistakes; there’s too much preoccupation with nostalgia in her considered opinion. “Focus on today, having fun and the future,” she urges. And she practises what she preaches: “I’ve had four husbands and been passed over for Controller of BBC2, so there’s a lot of material there, but I’ve airbrushed loads of stuff [I’d rather forget] out of my CV.”
Part of her philosophy stems from her love of hiking; she’s Vice-President of the Ramblers association. When walking in the Himalayas, the guides taught her to “deal with one day at a time” in order to learn how to break down the task at hand into smaller sections, so that it becomes more easily achievable.
When it comes to how you present yourself in a work context, Janet is of the firm opinion that you should never show your true feelings, pointing out that your boss is “not a nanny, a counsellor or your best friend”. This attitude worked in her favour when she took part in the 2004 edition of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Her tactic was to find something to focus on, so she decided to take charge of the cooking. “I didn’t show any fear, so the public left me alone,” she notes.
In an age where soap stars and reality show contestants are constantly vying for public attention, desperate to be admired, Janet’s stance cuts through the prevailing zeitgeist with commendable frankness. “Don’t worry about being popular,” she comments, adding that real leaders don’t care about how well-liked they are. “They’re there to inspire, whereas managers just run things.”
“Be flexible” is another piece of wisdom that she shares and lives to the full: she’s involved with five different companies, pens two columns a week, takes part in the Loose Women show and still finds time to write about walking and travel. She says this diversity is all for the best, describing herself as an “obsessive perfectionist – you wouldn’t want to work with me five days a week!” She also makes a serious point, noting that people shouldn’t restrict themselves in this technologically advanced age. Instead they should take advantage of options such as home working, if possible, and learn how to multi-task.
She also advises women starting off in their careers, or looking to change jobs, to develop a good CV. “Make sure you have a wide range of interests outside the office that demonstrate your adaptability. Many people have the same qualifications – the job will go to the person who is more rounded and has a wider experience of life.”
Asked to comment on the infamous glass ceiling, she accepts that there is “still a long way to go until women make up 50 per cent of the boards of the FTSE 250 companies.” Specifically, she says, there are not enough female faces at the top of the legal profession, the police force, or at Cabinet level in government. “There are certainly not enough women MPs, so you could argue that women have a very long way to go,” she adds. “What I find incredible is that organisations such as the BBC and the NHS, which receive government or tax payer funding, are not ordered to make their boards 50/50.
“At middle management, women are doing well, but they need to ensure that low-paid female workers receive fair pay and conditions and are not the first to be made redundant. A disproportionate number have been laid off since the start of the recession.”
And she flies the flag for her own gender. “It’s up to women to make themselves indispensable. We are worth more than most men because we have key skills like multi-tasking, team-building and good people handling.”
Janet does have a PA, but she only works for her one day a week, as she doesn’t like “having too many people around”. She is apparently well compensated in return, though, as Janet explains: “She’s paid really well to deal with call centres – I need to take a headache tablet to cope. They always say, ‘This call is being recorded’ and I shout back, ‘Yeah, and I’m recording it too, and I’m going to write about it in the Daily Mail!’” And with that, another poor sap has been put firmly in his place by the incorrigible Ms Janet Street-Porter.
