Dame Jenni Murray should be an icon for all the ambitious young women in towns like Barnsley - Jayne Dowle
Sadly, I never met her, but Dame Jenni Murray, who died last week at the age of 75, was born in my village of Worsbrough, Barnsley and went to local schools and chapel.
Like her fellow broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson, born and brought up in Cudworth, another Barnsley pit village, the long-standing presenter of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour proved that with a decent education, hard work and aspiration, anything was possible.
Parkinson was born in 1935, so almost a generation older than Murray. They both lived through challenging times – the Second World War and its aftermath – but how fortunate they were in many ways.
Both had hardworking parents – Murray’s father an electrical engineer, Parkinson’s a miner - who wanted them to excel and not undersell themselves in adulthood.
Both found a clear way forward from the rough and tumble of their village schools to selective education, Parkinson going to Barnsley Grammar School and Murray to Barnsley High School for Girls.
Taking part in communal activities, competitive sport – Parkinson was a fine cricketer – and Sunday School, where Murray enjoyed singing hymns and Bible study, by all accounts, was not frowned upon but provided an outlet for young expanding minds.
Both had the confidence – because no-one told them they couldn’t, probably - to wade into the media, a field then dominated by public school types who’d been to all the right schools and universities.
They weren’t fighting to concentrate in classrooms where fights were breaking out, nor held back by lazy parents or assumptions that they would never achieve much, or paralysed by the overwhelming fears and anxieties that prevent so many young people today from fulfilling their potential.
They weren’t stuck in a spiral of downward mobility; instead they saw that there were opportunities out there and struck out boldly to grasp them.
Both are gone now, but their legacy lives on and should be celebrated.
I only learned about Murray’s roots 20 years ago, when I helped a local history group compile a fund-raising book about our village.
Members came forward to share that they knew ‘Jennifer Bailey’ as a girl, that her mother made her have elocution lessons so she didn’t sound ‘common’ – their relationship was difficult, it turned out - and that after high school she went on to the University of Hull to study French and Drama.
I wish I had known about Murray when I was growing up; the example she set would have been of huge inspiration as I struggled through school with an unformed idea that somehow, I was getting to London to work in the media – or fashion.
She should be an icon for all the ambitious young women who come after her in towns like Barnsley, and talked about in schools, but sadly I very much doubt this will come to pass.
Murray’s strong views on gender – she was firmly on the side of ‘women are born women’ – contributed to her being edged out of national broadcasting, leaving her 33-year career at Women’s Hour in October 2020.
In a national newspaper tribute fellow radio presenter Jane Garvey, writes: “When she was made a dame in 2011, she felt it was such an amazing thing for the girl from Barnsley.”
I’ve never subscribed to the theory that a person – be it a broadcaster, a sports professional – such as England cricketers Darren Gough, Martin Moxon, and the late, great umpire Dickie Bird – a writer like Joanne ‘Chocolat’ Harris, or indeed any of the many notable Barnsley-raised individuals, have achieved great heights in spite of hailing from this mining town in South Yorkshire.
Rather, I’ve long argued that in many cases, outstanding individuals are that way because this town shaped them and gave them the tools they needed to excel in their chosen field, toughness and tenacity being key.
It’s a mantra that 29-year-old boxer Callum Simpson, who held the British and Commonwealth super-middleweight titles from August 2024 until December 2025 and the European super-middleweight title from June 2025 to December 2025, celebrates.
“It’s shaped me massively as a person,” Simpson said in an interview with online magazine The Real, last year. “I think in Barnsley we’ve got a great community; everyone helps each other out and we all get behind each other. We’re working class and I feel like we’ve been brought up in that way; we’ve got that Yorkshire grit, that toughness, that ruggedness.”
It’s not just Barnsley, it’s other towns too, across our region. We don’t talk half enough about the positives of growing up in such strong communities, where people actually are desperate to support those who show talent and ambition and want to rejoice with them when they do well. The joyous crowds that turned out to see Callum Simpson fight at Oakwell have proved that.