Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Anneka Rice, television presenter

'I started to write to the BBC at 14'

Anneka Rice, 49, began presenting "Challenge Anneka" in 1989. Today she launches the "Working Life Begins at Fifty" campaign (0800 100 900 or www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/guidance)

I have a very strong memory of my childhood because I wrote a diary from the age of eight. My parents bought me a diary with a lock, which seemed very glamorous. I kept it going till I was about 14. I can look up the entry for 2 January 1969 and see what I had for lunch.

I just loved Dunrobin, in Limpsfield, Surrey, a most phenomenal private school with a sense of eccentricity, which I think is very important. Miss Pace, the really inspiring headmistress, used to invite us into her study and play us Joyce Grenfell monologues: "Oh George, don't put that into your mouth..."

There was a piano in every room and singing every day. Mrs Swaddling, with her big bosom, would play songs from The King and I and Salad Days and, when it came out, Mary Poppins, which we thought was very racy. All this put me on to the artistic road, with a love of performance and music.

At 11, most of us moved on to St Michael's, a small private girls school, again, very eccentric. It had started out as a missionary school, and chapel was part of the fabric of the day. I remember playing the organ; I wasn't very good at it but I could crash out, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". My real passion was sport: tennis and netball, and I played county lacrosse. We did O-levels at a very young age – I did nine at 15.

There was a crisis in my schooling. Some of the girls were mucking around with a lighter and set fire to the curtains in the common room. It was arson and the police were called in because of the potential danger: the whole school could have gone up. The girls who had been in the common room were expelled; I had been at a music lesson and so wasn't. There were only four of us left in the A-level class, which was a bit limiting, especially for sport.

The decision to move to Croydon High School was the wrong decision. I hated it. In my year alone there were over 100 girls, and I never felt I belonged there; I was academic but I found the rarefied atmosphere very off-putting. There were some nice people but it's telling that I can barely remember four or five of them.

I did English, history and French A-levels, and got two Bs and a C – and in those days that was really good. Everyone else was doing Oxbridge, but I had started writing to the BBC at 14, and at 17 I got a traineeship. I loved it.

At 35, I did my sixth year of Challenge Anneka: 60 projects, some quite dangerous. We'd worked under UN protection in Croatia, because of the danger from snipers. I suddenly thought, "Time to call it a day. Quit while you're ahead".

When I was in my twenties, my husband had bought me Step by Step Art School, a smock and an easel, and I'd be painting when I should have been filming, for example, at Ayers Rock. So I went to Chelsea College of Art with my portfolio and did a three-year, part-time diploma course in fine art, painting and drawing.

Since then, I still dip in and out of courses all over the place. One involved architectural drawing in different places in London, such as the pagoda in Battersea. There's a monk who lives in a retreat; he invited us in and gave us tea, and we said prayers with him. People commission me – "I want a nude life drawing to put over the mantelpiece" – and I get a fat cheque, which is nice.

Being in a learning environment when you're older is very exciting. I'm fronting the "Working Life Begins at Fifty" campaign – but I'm not quite 50!