Jenni Murray

If ever there was a year where Dame Jenni Murray deserves an accolade for her Femail Magazine column, it’s this one. One of Fleet Street’s oldest weekly columnists at 74, she has turned what, for her, has been an annus horribilis healthwise, into punchy, opiniated, powerful copy that really challenged Mail readers’ views.

Jenni’s catalogue of health problems include a broken foot, fractured spine and double pneumonia. She has written frankly about it all, her bravery, stoicism and humour carrying her through several stays in hospital and a period of recovery in a home for the elderly, where she insisted on going to spare her beloved sons the responsibility of looking after her. Ever the pro, she filed from her various hospital beds and from the old people’s home, rarely missing a column.

No one comes in for more remorseless scrutiny than Jenni herself. She kicked off the year with an account of spending New Year in A&E, being cared for amid the junior doctors’ strike. To her surprise, the experience made her more sympathetic to the doctors, not less. The article received over 1000 comments and clearly made Mail readers reconsider their animosity towards the strike. No mean feat.

More recently, she has achieved that increasingly unusual thing: a fresh take on Mounjaro. Having been brutally honest about her lifelong weight problems, she was surprised to discover that not only did the weight-loss jab combat her obesity, it cured the pain from her sciatica completely. The discovery turned her column was a ratings hit on our news Mail Online subscriber section Mail+.

Jenni’s innate generosity led her to take in a Ukrainian refugee and her teenage son. For two years all three of them lived together, squeezed into Jenni’s tiny north London flat. It may have been laudable, but it wasn’t easy - all she could feel when her guests left this year, she admitted, was relief: ‘I feel like myself again’.

Who else would be so frank? As a 70-something woman, Jenni is a rarity in the media, not only an authority on women’s issues – with unrivalled knowledge honed over 30 years as lead presenter of Radio 4’s Women’s Hour – but someone who gives voice to the everyday frustrations, aches, pains and vulnerabilities most of us try to hide.

No wonder Jenni’s forthright take on life continues to amuse, engage – and yes, enrage – so many Daily Mail readers.