The first female chat show host in the history of British television was a middle-aged woman from Briton Ferry, Mavis Nicholson, the daughter of a Port Talbot steelworks crane operator. Born in the 1930s, brought up in a small terraced house, she went on to study English at Swansea University under Kingsley Amis. She moved to London and was spotted by Thames Television in her early forties, and thus, in 1971, began her career in television. She co-hosted a weekly afternoon programme, Tea Break, along with Judith Chalmers, Mary Parkinson, Mary Berry. 

In 1984 she joined the new Channel 4, hosting her daytime interview show, Mavis on 4. She was the master of the long-form interview. Actress Maureen Lipman said there was a Frost-Nixon moment in every one of her interviews. She interviewed so many of the big names—Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolf Nureyev, Kenneth Williams. But she was as inquisitive of the lives of the people sitting next to her on the train as she was of the Lauren Bacalls and David Bowies of this world.

She presented radio too. She hosted Start the Week and Woman’s Hour, and deputised for Jimmy Young on Radio 2.

She was awarded the Bafta Cymru Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television in 2018. And what a contribution that was. I wonder if today’s Loose Women or Emma Barnett know who smashed the glass ceiling for them. It was Mavis Nicholson in her Briton Ferry lilt.

Mavis moved back to Wales over 20 years ago and died on 8 September in Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant at the age of 91.