Broadcaster Sarah Kennedy tells Viv Hardwick why she’s unrepentant about her controversial remarks.

SARAH Kennedy isn’t the slightest bit perturbed to discover that she’s the woman who I wake up with in the mornings.

“Don’t tell anyone,” laughs the familiar voice, which broadcasts between 6am and 7.30am on BBC Radio 2’s Dawn Patrol, offering a wake-up call for about five million listeners.

Many of them have snapped up tickets to attend an Audience With Sarah Kennedy at Harrogate Grand Pavilion today, which she agrees is a little surreal “because people mostly recognise me by my voice and say ‘No, you’re dark-haired with brown eyes’ and I reply ‘No, I’m blonde with blue eyes’. They’ve imagined me and it is very funny.”

Asked what her audience is likely to hear about her career, which includes the ground-breaking ITV entertainment show Game For A Laugh, the 59-year-old jokes: “I’ve managed to cut this down to about four-and-a-half hours, give or take.

That’ll have them running for the loos.

On a more serious note she says: “I remember my mother putting her arms around me once and telling me ‘you’re looking for a job that hasn’t got a name’. And, of course, prostitute went straight into my head and I don’t think I’d have been good at that. She was absolutely right because broadcasting has made me a jack of all trades and master of none.”

There’s bound to be a story from TV’s Game For A Laugh, which ran from 1981 to 1985, particularly as her boyfriend Adrian McGlynn – described on the Dawn Patrol as her “Much Beloved” – was a schoolboy fan. “He said he was going to have me as his girlfriend and he did,” she says.

IN spite of apologies from the BBC on her behalf, Kennedy remains unrepentant about the comments she chooses to make on air. Having recently expressed the view of being glad she’s not the wife underneath 6ft 5in “pure English oak” cricketer Freddie Flintoff and called Enoch Powell “the greatest prime minister we never had”, Kennedy responds: “If Paul Merton said something like that, people would laugh. Don’t forget that people are looking for trouble.

I’d say it again. There’s nothing wrong with that. The programme is billed as ‘news and views’ so that’s it.”

Despite the BBC announcing that it had warned her about future comments concerning Enoch Powell, Kennedy replies: “I’m not apologising for it because the quote ‘the best prime minister we never had’ came from Cicero. My Much Beloved was told at a do that the Press wanted to pigeon-hole me for something.

And if you think I’m losing sleep over a Press campaign then I’m not.”

The famous slurred speech incident in 2007 due to over-tiredness is also given short shrift.

“Something happened that I’d never talk to anyone about and perhaps I shouldn’t have gone in, but it was a Friday and I tried.

This show is a relentless, punishing routine,” says Kennedy who rarely attends evening events because she’s heads for bed at 8pm most nights.

Her most controversial storyline at present is her ongoing negotiations with the BBC about the Dawn Patrol’s future when Chris Evans replaces Terry Wogan in January.

Kennedy denies saying on air that her show was being reduced to an hour from 6am.

“The fall-out from Terry affects everyone from newsreaders to travel. It’s a new era.

Nothing has been decided and things are being made up all the time. We’re laughing about it because it is so unbelievable.

I’m not being difficult I just cannot tell what the plan is because everything is up in the air at the moment. I’d like to tell you more, but nothing is settled,”

says Kennedy.

■ An Audience With Sarah Kennedy, Harrogate Grand Pavilion, today at 1.30pm.

Box Office: 01423-544544