Janet Street-Porter

Janet Vera Street-Porter (née Bull; born 27 December 1946) is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer and media personality. She began her career in 1969 as a fashion writer and columnist at the Daily Mail and was appointed fashion editor of the Evening Standard in 1971. In 1973, she co-presented a mid-morning radio show with Paul Callan on LBC.

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 served as 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 (1996–2025), I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (2004), Deadline (2007), Celebrity MasterChef (2013) 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 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 and worked as a school dinner lady and in the civil service as a clerical assistant in a tax office. Her mother was still married to her first husband, George Ardern, at the time, and was not to marry Stanley Bull until 1954, hence Street-Porter's name being recorded as Ardern in the birth records. She was later to take her father's surname. She then spent two years at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter.

Career Street-Porter began her career as a fashion writer and columnist on the Daily Mail, and was appointed as the newspaper's deputy fashion editor in 1969 by Shirley Conran. She became fashion editor of the Evening Standard in 1971. The intention was sharply to contrast the urbane Callan and the urban Street-Porter. Their respective accents became known to the station's studio engineers as "cut-glass" and "cut-froat". Friction between the ill-matched pair involved constant one-upmanship.

In early 1975, Street-Porter was launch editor of Sell Out, an offshoot of the London listings magazine Time Out, with its publisher and her second husband, Tony Elliott. The magazine was not a success.

Television

Street-Porter began to work in television at London Weekend Television (LWT) in 1975, first as a reporter on a series of mainly youth-oriented programmes, including The London Weekend Show (1975–79), then went on to present the late-night chat show Saturday Night People (1978–80) with Clive James and Russell Harty. She later produced Twentieth Century Box (1980–82), presented by Danny Baker. and cancelled the long-running music series The Old Grey Whistle Test.

In 1992, Street-Porter provided the story for The Vampyr: A Soap Opera, the BBC's adaptation of Heinrich August Marschner's opera Der Vampyr, which featured a new libretto by Charles Hart. Street-Porter's approach did not endear her to critics, who objected to her diction and questioned her suitability as an influence on Britain's youth.

In 2011, Street-Porter became a regular panellist on ITV's chat show Loose Women. In 2013, she appeared in Celebrity MasterChef reaching the final three, and returned again for a Christmas special in 2020, in which she was crowned the winner. She also appeared on the television show QI. Street-Porter co-hosted BBC One cookery programme A Taste of Britain with chef Brian Turner, which ran for 20 episodes in 2014.

Street-Porter has appeared on many reality TV shows, including Call Me a Cabbie and So You Think You Can Teach; the latter saw her trying to work as a primary school teacher.

Newspaper work Street-Porter became editor of The Independent on Sunday in 1999. Despite derision from her critics, she took the paper's circulation up to 270,460, an increase of 11.6 per cent.

Editor-at-large column Following the death of Ian Tomlinson, Street-Porter dedicated her editor-at-large column in The Independent on Sunday to painting a picture of Tomlinson as a "troubled man with quite a few problems":Knowing that he was an alcoholic is critical to understanding his sense of disorientation and his attitude towards the police, which might on first viewing of the video footage, seem a bit stroppy.

Other activities A rambler, Street-Porter was president of the Ramblers' Association for two years from 1994. She walked across Britain from Dungeness in Kent to Conwy in Wales for the television series Coast to Coast in 1998. In 1994, for the documentary series The Longest Walk, Street-Porter visited long-distance walker Ffyona Campbell on the last section of her round-the-world walk.

In 1966, Street-Porter appeared as an extra in the nightclub scene in Blowup, dancing in a silver coat and striped trousers. In 2003, she wrote and presented a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival titled All the Rage. She published the autobiographical Baggage in 2004, about her childhood in working class London. Its sequel is titled Fallout. Street-Porter has been married five times. While studying architecture she married fellow student and photographer Tim Street-Porter, In 1999, she began a long-term relationship with restaurateur Peter Spanton, who became her fifth husband on 31 January 2026. She has no children but has spoken frankly about having two abortions in the 1960s.

She currently lives in Haddiscoe in Norfolk, as well as in Kent and London. She previously had a home in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire.

Health During the COVID-19 pandemic, Street-Porter regularly appeared as a guest on This Morning to review the political decisions taken by the government, alongside Matthew Wright, via video call from her home in Kent.

Street-Porter was diagnosed with basal-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, in January 2020. On 23 June 2020, she announced the news on Loose Women (from home, via video call, owing to COVID-19 restrictions).

Filmography Film

Television