Biography

Her sister is called Pricilla. The family used to call her Prick. When at university, she would introduce her sister, not realising what was funny. When she found out, they stopped calling her Prick.

She has three children: Emily (born 1978), Daniel (born 1980) and Rebecca Wilcox (born 1981).

Suffered from amoebic dysentery from a bug she picked up in Zimbabwe.

Her daughter Emily was diagnosed with ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) in 1992 after getting glandular fever and took around 12 years to fully recover.

She met her husband Desmond Wilcox in 1968 but did not marry until ten years later.

[on Jimmy Savile] He raised huge sums of money for charity. He did a great deal. I never did the marathon which he did, but I know people who did. He was exactly off screen as he appeared on screen: eccentric, idiosyncratic, he was a one-off, he was his own invention, with the cigar, the shiny shell-suits. When we met he'd kiss my hand, not many people do that.

Paedophiles have a disguise. Monsters don't get near children, nice men do. That's the mask they have to wear in order to get to kids.

I didn't work in the same department with Jimmy [Jimmy Savile], but I felt in a strange way responsible. We all joined in the mythology of Sir Jimmy, we gave him this status so that he was out of reach. It was on a level of gossip. People may say 'why didn't you pass it on?' Who to? We know that the police investigated complaints and couldn't take it further. You heard the rumours. I never liked the man, he was always a creep, but creepy is never evidence. He had his life in compartments. The people he ran marathons with had no idea of the other Jimmy Savile.

[on Sir Jimmy Savile] It is a measure of his status, his role in society at that stage. He was a sort of clown-saint. He managed somehow to manipulate us all to believing that he was funny, entertaining and doing an awful lot of good. And that mask was impenetrable. I met the man half a dozen times. I never felt I knew him, there was always a very strange creation, he created this personality, but I didn't actually see behind it the depraved, sadistic paedophile we now know existed.

[on Sir Jimmy Savile] I think the nature of his crimes is still a shock. I think reading what he did to vulnerable people, whatever their age, but particularly the very young and disturbed and with mental health issues, is just revolting.