Trailblazer Dawn Airey shares her remarkable story and reflects on 30 years of LGBTQIA visibility
BY ROXY BOURDILLON, IMAGE BY EMMA CATTELL
You look at Dawn Airey’s astonishing roll-call of top jobs at high profile organisations, from ITV, Channel Four, Channel Five and Sky, to Yahoo! and Getty Images, to National Youth Theatre and The FA. You wonder how one person can achieve so much. Then you speak to her. You witness her vigour first-hand, her forward-momentum, get-things-sorted attitude, her dazzling energy for life. We talk for over an hour and throughout our conversation she brims with enthusiasm, astute observations and gripping anecdotes. “I’ve done a ridiculous amount of stuff. My career’s like a Salvador Dali painting,” she quips. “I have an amazing capacity for work. I have to be busy all the time.”
Born in Preston, Lancashire in the 1960s, Dawn was the daughter of a working class, “aspirant” mum, and a dad who was hugely focused on his business. Both parents instilled their strong work ethic in Dawn. A self-confessed “daddy’s girl”, even as a child her hobbies were broad and wide-reaching. She loved sports, fishing and fixing things. She also enjoyed reading, television and theatre. Her parents divorced when Dawn was a teenager. “If anything, it taught me to be even more resilient than I was.”
Resilience is undoubtedly a key factor in Dawn’s success. After studying geography at Cambridge, she knew she wanted to pursue a career in TV and applied for a trainee scheme at the BBC. To her surprise, she was turned down but did secure a place at ITV’s Central Television. Under the mentorship of legendary TV executive Andy Allan, she thrived.
This was the 1980s and “without question, television was rampantly sexist”. There was “a sort of grudging affection and respect” for Dawn because she was undeniably good at her job, but the industry was massively male-dominated, a boys’ club where “banter” was rife. “I was subject to, honestly, stuff that today everybody would have been fired for. You could not get away with talking to anybody like I was spoken to or treated, but there were different norms.”
From Central, Dawn went on to hold senior positions at many of the UK’s major channels. Her meteoric rise in broadcasting caught the attention of the press, who relished publishing articles using snide nicknames like “Scary Airey”. What was that about, apart from blatant misogyny and tabloid sensationalism?
“I wasn’t going to fold,” explains Dawn. “If they decided to give me a mouthful of invective, they occasionally would get it back. The reality is I’m a bloody pussycat. That’s my nature, but I’m resilient and I’m a fighter. If you cross me or I see an injustice, I will just not put up with it. That comes from my mum, who instilled: ‘Stand up for what you believe. Do not be bullied.’” From the time I’ve spent with Dawn I can confirm that she isn’t scary. She is plain-speaking and business-savvy, but these qualities don’t preclude her overall warmth or humour. She laughs often. She asks questions. She is interested in people.
In 1994, the same year DIVA first hit the newsstands, Dawn became controller of arts and entertainment at Channel Four. Now Channel Four was producing notably lesbian-inclusive content for this time, including British TV’s inaugural pre-watershed sapphic snog on Brookside. Although Dawn was in a position of power at a demonstrably inclusive TV channel, she was not actually out at this point. There were rumours about her, what with her trousers and her toughness, but Dawn was living with her male partner, Martin, who she “loved dearly”.
What the gossips couldn’t know, what Dawn herself wasn’t yet dealing with in any tangible way, was that she had always been interested in girls. “In my early teens, I was attracted to slightly androgynous looking females. I didn’t give it a label. I didn’t think about doing anything about it. But it was there.” There may have been a connection between how driven Dawn was at work and how long it took her to come out. “From the 90s through to the mid 2000s, my career was really sky high and all-consuming. I filled myself with work to such an extent there wasn’t time for anything else.”
As she grew older and more confident in herself, her attraction for women became harder to ignore. “Also,” grins Dawn, “women were hitting on me quite a lot. It was hugely exciting, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
After 18 years together, she split up with Martin. “I broke his heart and that doesn’t make me proud,” she says, a tinge of sadness in her voice. She is glad to report that the pair remain good friends to this day.
Post-breakup, Dawn had various romances with women. At 40 years old she was experiencing a sapphic awakening. “I thought, ‘What was I missing all these years?’ It just felt right.” Then she got together with lesbian telly trailblazer and activist Jacquie Lawrence. They had met six years earlier when they both worked at Channel Four. “She was very famous because she commissioned all the gay and lesbian programming. Unbelievably attractive. I remember her shaking my hand once in the corridor and I went weak at the knees and thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s so bloody glamorous.’ She was staggering in her confidence.”
They started a relationship. “The rumour mill was really swirling. My boss at the time said, ‘Oh, I hear you’re a dyke.’” The papers were sniffing around too. Photographers hid in a white van outside their home, waiting to snag pictures of them together. In 2002 Dawn got wind that the Mail On Sunday was planning to out them as a couple and her as a lesbian in a gratuitous front page splash: “Sky boss with lesbian lover”, Jacquie cast as “the filth-peddler of Channel Four”. Dawn wasn’t yet out to her parents and had to tell them before the national press beat her to it. She wrote them both letters. As soon as her dad read his, he rang her up. “He said, ‘I love you. You love a woman. When can I meet her?”
The same weekend the Mail On Sunday were planning to run the story, news of former prime minister John Major’s affair with Edwina Currie pushed them off the front page. “I have something to thank the Tories for,” chuckles Dawn dryly. “We then got a double page spread, page four and five, all about the ‘dirty, seedy life that this woman has been leading’. It was horrendous. I felt a real sense of intrusion.”
In February 2007 Dawn and Jacquie entered a civil partnership. A month later their first daughter was born. One day Dawn was walking out of the tube at Warren Street station, when she noticed a stack of Evening Standards. The poster on the side of the dispenser declared: “TV boss has child with lesbian lover.” “I thought, ‘I wonder who that is.’ So I got the Standard and saw: ‘Fuck, it’s us!”
The press were coming after them once again. The Mail had cameras poised over the hospital where Jacquie gave birth to Dulcie, forcing them to leave via the back entrance. “That really did step over a line. I went to see the managing director of the Daily Mail. I said, ‘Look, I have a child. Back off.’ And to be fair, they did. But it was a right old rollercoaster and not pleasant at all.”
Today Dawn and Jacquie are happily married with two daughters. Dawn’s career has continued on its dizzying trajectory. From media to theatre and sport, Dawn has held, and continues to hold, leadership roles in organisations that are all about visibility. She tells me, “At Getty Images I was keen to champion and shift the narrative on how the LGBTQIA community was photographed.” She’s mentored queer women, engaged with LGBTQIA networks and participated in many queer events, panels, forums and juries. While she is heartened so see the “huge strides made” in representation, she points out, “A big challenge now is how do you extend that inclusivity to our trans colleagues? Diversity is never done.”
The arts remain close to her heart and she is Chair of Trustees of the National Youth Theatre, of which the Duke of Edinburgh is the royal patron. Although Dawn has been inaccurately reported to be a “notable republican” in the past, she is full of praise for “the modern royal family”, especially Edward. “He’s phenomenal in terms of true passion for the arts, real dedication to young people. He’s given us a huge amount of time. I’m most definitely a monarchist.”
And then there’s Dawn’s lifelong love affair with football. The sport has always been big in her family. Her dad trialled for Preston North End. When she was a child, Nobby Stiles’ parents lived next door. She is related to iconic female footballer Alice Kell, captain of the Dick Kerr Ladies. Jacquie, a Geordie, is “obsessed with football”, and their daughter Matilda is on the emerging talent programme for the FA, hoping to play professionally.
“Actually, it was looking at Matilda. I thought, ‘Why can’t you look forward to the same career as a little boy can?’” As Chair of the Women’s Super League, Dawn has a pivotal role in growing the women’s game. “What is amazing, just in the four years I’ve been involved, is the explosion of interest. The women win the Euros, what’s the first thing the Lionesses do? They send a letter to the prime minister saying every little girl has to have the opportunity of playing football if they want to. And that was enacted. They’re all extraordinary role models and ambassadors. And in terms of visibility of gay women, look at women’s football!”
It is fascinating to think about the last 30 years of LGBTQIA representation in relation to Dawn’s journey. In the nineties she was one of the most powerful women in TV, literally influencing the content that is broadcast into people’s homes, yet she was deeply closeted. In the 2000s she finally came out, fell in love with a woman and had children, but this was also the decade when she was salaciously outed by the press. Today she has managed to carve out a life as both family woman and professional powerhouse, using her considerable career might to help create a more inclusive world across sport, media and more.
Looking back on how far we, and indeed she, has come, she reflects, “I came out late, but it has always been my intention to make up for lost time and champion and support the community in all I do. It is a privilege, and indeed obligation, to fly that Pride Progress flag.”
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