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Lynn Faulds-Wood - Journalist, Presenter and Writer
A tv presenter, journalist & survivor of bowel cancer. From Auchendennan, Dunbartonshire, she was a Brownie."Scottish women are bright and determined. Being Scottish is a great benefit, wherever you live."
Scotland and being Scottish...
I think Scottish women are bright and determined - don't know about tough. The Scottish education
system is the best in the UK, in my opinion. When you look round the developed world, intelligent
Scots (including lots of women) are in there somewhere leading the professions - medicine, journalism,
politics etc.
I live in London because I presented BBC and ITV shows for 20 years and the shows were based
in London. I also had columns in national newspapers and magazines, most based in London, though
I have also had columns for a national magazine group based in Dundee.
I regularly meet bright, determined Scottish women who
also live here but ask us to define ourselves and we
all still feel grateful to have been born North of the
Border. Being Scottish is a great benefit in life, wherever
you live.
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon - being from the West of Scotland, I had never even
heard of this book until my husband TV presenter John Stapleton was making a TV programme in
Aberdeen and I came to the city with him. All the bookshops kept referring to "Scotland's premier novelist" and I had never
even heard of Grassic Gibbon, born in Aberdeen at the turn of the twentieth century.
He died
tragically in his early 30s but left this wonderful book, the saga of a farming family and the
tough life lived by our immediate ancestors down through the generations. It is warmly recommended
and it helps to be able to understand East Coast dialogue!
Sunset Song is a wonderful book and must have inspired Bruce Chatwin to write another
brilliant classic On the Black Hill about life in a Welsh hill farm.
My favourite building in Scotland must be the house where I grew up, in the grounds of Auchendennan Youth Hostel two miles from Balloch on Loch Lomondside. Auchendennan is a castellated mansion, an amazing youth hostel, and my home was the Stables for the big house, complete with chiming clock tower on top - our own mini Big Ben.
The most interesting programme - without a doubt - BBC Watchdog. Watchdog was a short strand
in the evening news programme and I helped it become a programme in its own right and presented
it for eight years. We used to get thousands of letters and calls every week. I used those letters to help change
laws, put wicked people out of business, get dangerous products redesigned etc.
My husband and
I were the first married couple to present TV programmes in this country, before Richard and
Judy, when we presented Watchdog, though we never made a big thing of being married. We still appear together sometimes on the sofa at GMTV, where I now do the consumer spot and
John presents the News Hour.
I've been doing an investigation for the last 18 months into counterfeiting, most of which now benefits organised crime in this country.
You might think fake DVDs or famous name handbags are just a bit of fun but I now have to be accompanied by the police in raids on counterfeit sellers (I've seen one pull a knife on the two policemen with me) and I'm told I have to wear a stabbing jacket on some raids.
My disappointment is with Glasgow City Council and the Trading Standards Dept which hasn't closed
down a shop in the city which sells only counterfeits - music, computer software etc. With the
GMTV cameras, I visited the shop last year and the guy who runs it swore at me, seriously threatened my cameraman - and was given five months in prison. What happened when he came out?
He was straight back into selling counterfeits again in the same premises.
I would extend the law which seizes the possessions of people who have enriched themselves by
scamming the public and ripping off old ladies. At the moment their targets are often the old,
the confused and the vulnerable.
Phoney prize draws, internet scams - I hear of new ones several
times a day and I hear of confused old ladies who believe they have won prizes, they respond
- and end up with every scammer in the world sharing their details to capitalise on their confusion.
One old lady sends out money to hundreds of these schemes a month and her neighbours are powerless
to stop it happening. If we could find the people behind these scams, I'd share the proceeds
with the people who report them (offering rewards may be the only way to find the scammers)
and give the rest to boosting the policing of scams.
Most rewarding - I run a voluntary bowel cancer charity (Lynn's Bowel Cancer Campaign) and have heard from over 50 people who say I've helped to save their lives. Most disappointing - that I haven't saved everyone from this terrible cancer.
I've had cancer, bowel cancer which was the commonest cancer in Europe last year. It's also
the second biggest cancer killer in the UK.
When I was a teenager I ate a lot of bacon sandwiches (my staple diet for lunch on a white roll
when I was at university) I wish I had realised that exercise and a good diet (especially fruit
& veg) were good for the body and I wish I had done more of them at that formative stage
in my life.
Most important things - without a doubt, don't smoke & don't do lots of binge drinking. It's so hard to give up smoking (I watched my husband give up three times on TV, so publicly, then have to admit he had gone back to smoking again.)
Unfortunately half the girls who smoke and who can't give up will die of smoking related diseases. And binge drinking may increase the numbers of women getting serious diseases like breast cancer in their 20s.
Have a good time but don't overdo things. Cancer is horrible - do anything you can to avoid it.
Being alive to see my son grow up - he was only three when I was diagnosed with advanced cancer
- now he's going into his last year at school, a drummer in a rock band and a great person.
I've had other great achievements - Glasgow's Caledonian University gave me an honorary doctorate
last year for my work on bowel cancer; I've been consumer journalist of the decade in the 1980s;
I've been married to my lovely husband for nearly 30 years - but our son is the greatest achievement.
To find out more about Lynn please see her website
Go to main inspirational women page