Book review: A Long Walk In The High Hills

Published on Saturday 30 May 2009 11:18

A Long Walk In The High Hills by Selina Scott is published by Ebury, priced £14.99.

SELINA SCOTT is an angry woman. While the 58-year-old broadcaster's legal action against Five for age discrimination rumbled on last year, she claims that her father, 81, who was dying in Scarborough Hospital, was treated appallingly by NHS staff because of his age.

"I've had letters from people all over the country who've experienced similar in the NHS," she fumes.

The same month she reached an out-of-court settlement with Five, for a rumoured 250,000. Selina accused the TV channel of ageism after it gave Natasha Kaplinsky's maternity leave position on Five News to Isla Traquair, a woman half Selina's age, rather than herself. Yet she's not blind to the irony that she may have started the trend for the younger female/older male set-up on the TV studio sofa during her time with Frank Bough at Breakfast Time. "I used to call it the 'second wife syndrome'. I looked like the younger second wife to Frank Bough. I had to snuggle up to him and look winsome and pay attention. It's still the same," she says.

She lives on a farm in North Yorkshire and runs a business selling Angora socks, made with the wool from her herd of 24 goats. She escapes to her lovingly-restored holiday home in Majorca, the subject of her latest book, A Long Walk In The High Hills. In it, she describes the house that captured her heart, the neighbours who became friends, and those that didn't, the hills and wildlife that enchanted her, the building work that nearly broke her and the dog which changed all her best laid plans. Single, she says she does not bemoan the fact she's never had children. In fact she says: "I have no regrets at all."