Joan Bakewell /

Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, DBE (born 16 April 1933 in Stockport) is an English journalist and television presenter. Born Joan Dawson Rowlands, in Stockport, Cheshire, she was educated at Stockport High School For Girls - a grammar school in local authority control, on the site of what is now Hillcrest Grammar School - where she was head girl, and at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied Economics, then History. Joan Bakewell first became well known as one of the presenters of an early BBC Two 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, although Bakewell herself dislikes the epithet. Bakewell co-presented Reports Action, a Sunday teatime programme which encouraged the public to donate their services to various good causes, for Granada Television during 1976-78. Subsequently, she returned to the BBC, and co-presented a short-lived late night television arts programme; briefly worked on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, and was Newsnight's arts correspondent (1986–88). Later, Bakewell came to the fore as the main presenter of the documentary and discussion series Heart