‘Her warmth filled the kitchen every morning’: the magic – and tenacity – of Jenni Murray | Jenni Murray

Jenni Murray was the host of the Today show before taking over Woman’s Hour in 1987. He joined the BBC in Bristol in 1973 and became a TV reporter and presenter for South Today, so he came with solid news credentials. But Today in the 1980s was so sexist (men took over the politics, women mopped up the rest) that the format was too small for it.

The Woman’s Hour, on the other hand, was completely recast in her image: there was no bias in tone, and nothing was too serious or too light for it. Murray, who has died aged 75, could rip a strip from a politician, talk about hydrangeas, then campaign against domestic violence in a matter of minutes. He was instinctively open and generous about his personal experience, but never solipsistic; It was an incredibly fine balance.

People have always used words like “soft” and “round” about her voice, which makes it sound like an oratory triumph – RP gets points again – but that was a misunderstanding. When he joined the BBC the main barrier to entry was not being flashy enough. You had to talk that way whether you were posh or not (and he wasn’t; his father was a civil engineer and his mother a civil servant).

After the show switched to afternoons in the early 1990s, its warmth filled the kitchen every morning. He was married to a natural charm and intelligence. You knew you wouldn’t get bored. Murray was reminiscing about his great political interviews, in which even the so-called failures were quite listenable.

When she spoke to Margaret Thatcher after leaving office, she asked her if sexism in public life had ever bothered her, and listed some of the more chilling remarks: Alan Clark says she has beautiful ankles, or François Mitterrand says she has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe. “He looked at me and didn’t speak,” Murray later said, realizing that the former Prime Minister may not have seen the comments and “was genuinely shocked when I presented them to him”.

Her unabashed investigation of Hillary Clinton — she really went out there about Bill’s infidelity — yielded probably the most human interview Hillary has ever given. He said marriage is about friendship, not necessarily about sex. It wasn’t a groundbreaking statement, but it felt realistic to the couple. Murray was rarely starstruck, but years later he still remembered the terror he experienced when interviewing 81-year-old Bette Davis.

She had an instinctive female solidarity and a keen eye for the young feminists who followed her. A show in 2013 – with Caroline Criado-Perez, then a novice campaigner for women being placed on bank notes, Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, and chef Allegra McEvedy contemplating the quintessentially feminist question of what foods are best for a hangover – was a fairly typical day for Murray, but it distilled her sharpness and determination to talk about the things that matter, with people who make a difference.

Murray was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. He hated talking about it, he found it boring, but he had to talk about it anyway. “I can’t disappear to have a mastectomy,” she said in a Radio Times interview. “You develop a rapport with your audience.” And for Murray, it was a two-way street.