LAST year saw the end of an era - although no one realised it at the time. For 40 years, Angela Rippon has been one of the most recognisable faces in TV news and current affairs.

But, in the summer of 2005, she decided to take a break from the live show she presented on the ITV News Channel in order to do something a bit less demanding - new daytime antiques and travel show Sun, Sea & Bargain Spotting (BBC2, Monday, 4pm).

While she was away filming, the decision was taken to pull the plug on the ITV News Channel, which ended Angela's show. She now feels that, at 61, it has heralded the end of her long association with news and current affairs.

"You have to be a pragmatist about these things," she says. "News and current affairs these days is a young person's job, as it was when I was doing it. And it's not likely that either the BBC or ITV is going to give me my own news programme now.

"That's my suspicion anyway. Trevor McDonald is now retired from news, Michael Buerk has retired, Anna Ford is about to retire - news and current affairs are not really looking for people of my age to come and read the news," she laughs. "It's just a practicality of life.

Shame

"Personally, of course, I miss not being involved with it. But I understand why it happens. Well, sort of. It's a shame that there's this vast reservoir of knowledge and ability and expertise sitting there doing nothing."

Mostly, though, Angela is fiercely positive about this unconscious end to her news career. For a start, she feels it frees her up to try new things, as she no longer has to protect what she calls her "news image".

And trying new things she certainly is. While she has often ventured away from behind the news desk to present programmes as varied as the Eurovision Song Contest, Holiday and Top Gear, she feels they have all been journalism-based.

But now she has donned her dancing shoes to tread the boards for the first time, playing Evangeline Harcourt in the currently touring stage version of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes.

Of course, the thought of Angela Rippon, news broadcaster extraordinaire, dancing is not a new one. She famously performed a high-kicking routine on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas show in 1973, and helped re-launch Come Dancing in 1988.

Anything Goes

Nonetheless, she was surprised to be offered the chance to join the cast of Anything Goes. "Well, crikey, it is something new for me. But I knew the director, Ian Talbot, who I've interviewed a number of times. He told me that he always thought I had great timing, and that doing a musical was something I could do if I ever wanted to.

"I thought if someone of his calibre as a director has enough confidence to think that I can do it, maybe it's something that I could try."

She'll be on the road with Anything Goes until the beginning of June, but we'll see her back on TV before then. She returns next week in a second series of Sun, Sea & Bargain Spotting, which debuted on BBC2 last October.

In the series, Angela follows budding antique enthusiasts as they compete against each other to find profitable antiques in the flea markets of France and Italy.

At the same time, she visits local areas of interest, making it a travelogue as much as an antiques and game show. It's a job she leaves you in no doubt she loves.

Antiques

"It was an absolute joy to do, such a fun job," she grins. "I've got an interest in antiques having worked on The Antiques Roadshow, and I have friends in the antiques business.

"And, because I also worked for the BBC Holiday programme, it was a perfect combination of two things that I enjoy enormously, and programmes that I've made before. It proved a bit of a dream job really."

Brought up in Plymouth, she began her career in journalism when she served an apprenticeship as a junior reporter with the city's Sunday paper, the Independent. Later, she joined BBC Plymouth as a TV and radio reporter.

"I remember my first ever broadcast perfectly," says Angela. "I've still got the original script on the little cue cards which I typed out on the typewriter, and I have my original contract with the BBC."

Angela will be celebrating her 40th anniversary in broadcasting this September as she celebrates every landmark anniversary in her career - by inviting to dinner all those people who have been key influences or helped her in some way.

"I did it when I reached my 21st anniversary," she says, "because I didn't think it would go on much longer. Then when I hit 30 years, I did the same and I thought, that's it, 30 years. I didn't realise it was coming up to 40 years until recently when someone reminded me of it. I've been so busy that it's crept up on me." Tweet