Hospital Radio: From Ruby Wax to Germaine Greer – How TV still matters

This week I spoke to Anthi, a volunteer at Torbay Hospital Radio and she suggested I write about television, that supposedly old-fashioned, endlessly mocked box in the corner, that has an uncanny knack of getting under our skin.

We scroll, we stream, we binge, but somehow it’s still TV that sneaks into our conversations

Ruby Wax is a perfect example of someone whose relationship with television has been both chaotic and transformative. Anthi reminded me of her sharp wit and manic energy, the interviews that felt like rollercoasters.

But it’s her more recent work that has stayed with me. Her latest tour, built around her book I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was, is brutally honest and unexpectedly comforting. She talks about mental health with a kind of frankness that makes you feel less alone, and her commitment to mindfulness is something she’s studied, lived, when things have got a bit much.

And yet, for many people, the moment they really saw Ruby Wax was in the jungle. I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has a way of stripping people back to basics. Watching Wax navigate creepy-crawlies, hunger, and the peculiar politics of camp life was oddly moving. The woman who once sparred with Madonna and O.J. Simpson suddenly looked vulnerable, human, even fragile. For all its silliness, good old telly can reveal truths that more “serious” platforms never quite do.

Anthi also reminded me of another woman who understood the power of the small screen long before we were all glued to it: Germaine Greer. When The Female Eunuch exploded onto bookshelves in 1970, it was a publishing event, but it was Greer’s television appearances that made her a cultural force. She was fierce, articulate, and openly provocative. TV didn’t just broadcast her ideas; it amplified them, sending shockwaves through living rooms that had never encountered feminism in such a direct, uncompromising form.

What fascinated Anthi is how these ideas continue to echo. Just recently, Call the Midwife slipped a reference to The Female Eunuch into one of its storylines. It was a small moment, almost a throwaway line, but it landed with surprising weight. There’s something delightful about a cosy Sunday-night drama quietly tipping its hat to a book that once shocked everyday Britain. TV not only shows us what’s going on — it influences what we all talk about.

Wax and Greer might seem like an unlikely pairing, but they share something important: both have used television to challenge the stories we tell about ourselves. Wax brings humour and vulnerability to the conversation around mental health; Greer brought fire and fury to the conversation about feminism. And television, with all its flaws, helped carry their messages further than any book tour or lecture circuit ever could.

Is that why TV still matters? Not because it’s glossy or clever or endlessly available, but because it creates shared moments — the kind we talk about at work the next day, or text to a friend about, or quietly mull over while making tea. A celebrity in a jungle, a feminist on a chat show, a midwife quoting a radical text, these little moments get us chatting all over the country.

We like to pretend we’re too sophisticated now, (well maybe not me) or too distracted for television to have the same pull it once did. But the truth is, it still shapes us. It still surprises us. It still has the power to make us think, laugh, argue, or remember something we’d forgotten about ourselves.

And maybe that’s why I’ll always have a soft spot for it. Because every now and then, in between the noise and the nonsense, television gives us a moment that feels like a nudge - a reminder that ideas matter, that people matter, and that the stories we share, that still have the power to change us. Thanks Anthi, very thought provoking.