‘I’ve never lost that little bit inside of me that says, I’m not good enough’: Soap queen turned author Tina Baker on feeling out of place

She is the daughter of a fairground traveller and a window cleaner whose first home was a caravan. But she went on to become the “Queen of Soaps” who, as one of Britain’s best loved soap-opera critics, shared the GMTV sofa with Lorraine Kelly for a decade.

Sheffield-born Tina Baker, 65, was part of a vanguard who brought working-class accents to a broadcasting world previously dominated by the crisp, clipped, received pronunciation of the English upper classes.

Today, Tina has turned her talents to writing. With her fourth book, crime thriller What We Did In The Storm, out now, Tina told The Sunday Post: “I knew Lorraine from the TV-am days, then we ended up working together on GMTV. I was on the Lorraine sofa for 10 years.

“I have four books out now, but it took me, like Lorraine, 60 years to do it,” she added, referring to Lorraine’s debut novel, The Island Swimmer. She smiled: “We both had books coming out at the same time and both were set on islands, Lorraine’s in Orkney and mine on Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly. I first went there while I was working with Lorraine. It’s where I met my husband, Geoff.” She giggled as she admitted: “They all assumed I met him in the aisle of Tesco, not in the Isle of Tresco!”

Call Me Mummy

Her chart-topping dark debut, Call Me Mummy, published in 2021, featured on the Lorraine Show. Lorraine described their interview as “a reunion”, sharing clips from Tina’s TV heyday and calling for her debut to be made into a movie. “Lorraine is so supportive,” said Tina from her home in London. “People like us, from working-class backgrounds, don’t write books. We just think authors are these magical unicorns.”

She added: “Even now Lorraine says she feels shy going to posh publishing dos as we are working class and there are very few of us writing novels. I am lucky to be well educated but I have never lost that little bit inside of me that says, ‘You’re not good enough’.”

Tina, from the mining town of Coalville, grew up in the care of a volatile and partially literate mother with mental health issues, and a loving, but largely absent, father. Despite this she says she was encouraged to do well at school and with a grant was able to graduate with an English degree from Sheffield University, and a post-graduate qualification in journalism.

Her first newspaper job in Northampton was followed by a post as a researcher for the BBC’s Nationwide programme. She remembered: “I was the first non-Oxbridge researcher they hired. I turned up on my first day in a red leather mini skirt, saying ‘Hiya’ in my Sheffield accent. It was like Educating Rita. University was a culture clash. I had never gone into a book shop until I went to university. I read but I got my books from the little library in Coalville.”

TV career

Tina was head-hunted by media executive Greg Dyke, later to become BBC director general.

“I went for an interview for a job on Greg Dyke’s Six O’Clock Show which I didn’t get, but he remembered me and wanted me to go and work at TV-am. It was sheer luck, being at the right time in the right place. So, from having my accent vilified at university, it was suddenly no longer a big shameful thing to sound like I did on telly. A couple of years before, I wouldn’t have got in. Now there are lots of presenters with regional accents on TV and radio.”

She admits the poverty of her youth and her struggles in adulthood – the heartache at not being able to have a child, the impact of menopause and the harrowing stories she covered as a journalist like her interview with the mother of missing estate agent Suzy Lamplugh – colour her fiction.

© VEERLE EVENS

Remembering her late parents, Tina said: “My mum could hardly read and write because she was from a fairground family. She got pregnant as the fair was passing through. Back then you had to get married. They never really got on.

“My mum had mental health problems but, as she was working class, she didn’t get help. Therapy was not a word you used or something you could afford, and there was nothing on TV about these issues, like there is now.”

Her mother suffered physical abuse at the hands of nuns at a convent school and later brought up two children under four in a caravan. “My dad worked two jobs, cleaning windows all day and playing the double bass in a band at night for not very much money. When we didn’t have money to buy our tea, my brother and me had bread and jam, mum and dad had nothing.”

Tina recalls her mother coming at her with a knife in the days before she left for university following a row over her decision to use the contraceptive pill. “In my teens I hated my mother, but I felt only compassion for her when I was older,” she said.

“The worst was her not talking to me for long periods. It was like being a ghost in your own life. At other times she would lose it and go at us with the dog strap which was leather with studs in it. I see now she needed help.”

Meeting her husband

Tina met Geoff on holiday in Tresco. They had a long-distance relationship before marrying in Barbados 20 years ago.

Tina revealed: “We have tried to have kids, but couldn’t. We went through treatment; it didn’t work and then I had the menopause. I remember being on GMTV with a cold hair dryer on my face because the make-up was sliding off me. An asthma sufferer, when lockdown hit she had to shield. “I shielded so well I had to have hypnotherapy to get out of the house. Like my mum, it was a form of agoraphobia. Last year I was in hospital with a collapsed lung, I got pneumonia.”

And in tears she remembers the older people whom she had taught to keep fit and who died during the pandemic. She raged: “They died because of the neglect of this government who were isolating in their beautiful second homes while poor people delivered their food.”

Her gripping latest offering is set on beautiful Tresco, where the have-nots serve the haves in their high-end holiday homes. But the fictional version has a dark underside and as a storm grips the island two women are attacked and one goes missing. As the hunt for the perpetrator heats up, secrets begin to surface.

Of her past, she admits: “It’s probably why I write a lot of working class characters. It’s not a surprise that I write what I write – it is dark. But I am quite a jolly person, warm and open and I love teasing and being funny. I hug people a lot. But then you open my books…”

Trapped in a killer costume

Tina Baker is no stranger to Scotland, and is a fan of its crime writing scene, travelling from her North London home to attend Scottish book festivals whenever she can.

The TV personality and fitness trainer-turned-author was at Aberdeen’s Granite Noir crime writing festival last year and has twice attended the Bloody Scotland book fest in Stirling – where in 2021 she dressed as a bee to introduce its Killer Bs section starring fellow crime writers Chris Brookmyre and Mark Billingham, later unwittingly becoming caught up in a climate change demonstration.

She beams: “I did Bloody Scotland straight out of lockdown. I have been twice. I bloody love it! I had two minutes to do my introduction, so I dressed as a bee, they think I’m mental,” she laughs. “Then I got trapped in the bee costume because the zip broke. I came out of the venue still wearing the costume and bizarrely ended up in an extinction protest about insects with loads of other people who were dressed as bees. That was my first taste of Bloody Scotland,” she chuckled.

Tina, who has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing, travelled to Scotland with her husband Geoff. She tells P.S: “We took part in the Torchlight Parade the last time. It was fabulous.”

What We Did In The Storm by Tina Baker is published by Viper.