Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey says she quit because her ‘indignation bank is depleted’

Show ‘just needs a reboot and now it’s going to get one’, she said

Jane Garvey (BBC / Guy Levy)

Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey has revealed why she is leaving the show after 13 years.

Garvey co-hosts the Radio 4 programme with Jenni Murray, who also announced she was stepping down in July after three decades.

Speaking to broadcaster Fi Glover on the pair’s podcast Fortunately… with Fi and Jane, Garvey talked about her frustration with discussing the same topics over and over again.

“It would be brilliant to have fresh indignation on the programme,” she said. “My indignation bank was somewhat depleted… It is frustrating."

She added: "I've been incredibly fortunate in every aspect of my life, really. 

"A lot of things I was talking about have never personally, thank God, impacted on me or my nearest and dearest – and I am talking about hideous sexual violence and all those terrible things that you are obliged as a presenter on Woman's Hour to visit quite regularly. It just needs a reboot and now it’s going to get one.”

Jenni Murray joined 'Woman's Hour' in 1987 (BBC)

Garvey also said that being part of the “comforting fabric of national life” is “lovely”, and described her replacement, Emma Barnett, as a “force of nature”.

Garvey will go on to host her own Radio 4 interview series in 2021. She will also become a “regular late-night fixture” with their Fortunately podcast arriving on the Radio 4 schedule.