The little dogs with a big part in Radio 4 Jenni Murray’s battle back to health

Jenni Murray has had a difficult few years, but has survived, thanks to her Yorkshire grit and her beloved dogs. Gabrielle Fagan met her.

Jenni Murray, doyenne of broadcasters, who’s interviewed everyone from celebrities to prime ministers, is looking rather incongruous as she sits at home wearing a colourful kaftan – with a dog’s tail poking out of each of its voluminous sleeves.

It’s even more disconcerting when the tails wiggle, but the much-loved Radio 4 presenter of Woman’s Hour for 24 years happily introduces the tails’ owners – her pet chihuahuas.

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“This is Butch and Frida. That’s their favourite snuggling place as they like to sit their with ‘mummy’,” she says proudly as the tiny creatures emerge and start running around the spacious kitchen of her Yorkshire home.

She’s unashamedly devoted to them and it’s their love and companionship which she credits as key in helping her recover from a litany of traumatic events in her life, and she’s devoted a heart-warming new book to them, My Boy Butch.

“I’d had this charmed life really until 2006,” she explains. “If you’re a working-class girl from Barnsley and you find yourself presenting a show like Woman’s Hour, you do kind of pinch yourself occasionally and say, ‘How did I manage to do this?’

“And niggling away at the back of my mind was always the thought: ‘One of these days, someone’s going to find me out, or something will go wrong and hit me hard. It’s too perfect – great job, great family, and good health.’ Well, when it did go wrong, it certainly all happened at once.”

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Four years ago, Jenni, 60, was diagnosed with breast cancer on the day her mother died. Six months later, her father died of lung cancer, and during that period of double loss, she underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy.

Those events also coincided with her experiencing “empty nest” syndrome as sons, Edward, now 28, and a vet, and Charlie, 23, left home to study, and she and her partner, David, were living alone for the first time in years.

“All hell broke loose at once, in a way, but I did cope and recover from all of it because you just have to. I come from a long line of stoic Yorkshirewomen and was brought up not to whinge. And, in a way, the greatest pressure was a bit of a doom-laden sense that David and I were now the older generation, which makes you re-evaluate your life,” she says.

“But our home just felt so empty and lacking in life and energy after the boys had gone. I got a deep yearning to have something to nurture, cuddle and look after – a dog. It was as strong as the ticking of the biological clock.”

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In December 2007, they got Butch (“It was love at first sight when I saw this tiny scrap that, as a puppy, could literally sit on my hand”) but within weeks, Jenni’s world was once again plunged into turmoil when she began suffering pain in her leg.

“It was very frightening,” she says quietly.

“An unexpected and inexplicable pain to anyone who’s had cancer can only mean one thing – the nasty cells have gone walkabout. It got so bad I was exhausted by the constant pain and was reduced to crawling up and down stairs on my hands and knees.

“The light of my life throughout all that horribly uncertain period was my bouncy, lively, loving little dog, who stuck by my side constantly and even adjusted his top-speed pace to suit my own snail’s pace. And he was the perfect sounding board if I wanted to moan.”

She was diagnosed with avascular necrosis, a little-known side-effect of chemotherapy, where a disrupted blood supply can result in damage to the bone and cartilage in the hip.

She had to have two hip joints in 2008.

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“One of the reasons I did the book was to show what an incredible difference a dog can make to your life and especially if you have been ill like I have,” she says.

Jenni, who was awarded an OBE in 1999 for services to broadcasting is now engaged in another battle – against her weight.

She’s following the Dukan diet, which has a low-fat, protein-only element and whose fans reportedly include Kate Middleton’s mother, Carol. She has gone from 19 stone to 15, with her target weight, 12.5 stone. She’s also practising an adapted form of Tai Chi, originally a martial art.

She is also a non-executive director of the cancer hospital where she was treated.

My Boy Butch, by Jenni Murray, is published by Harper Collins, priced £12.99.

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