Angela Rippon has claimed the BBC tried to make her quit at 50 and described the move as “patronising twaddle”.
The newsreader and presenter, 75, claimed former BBC Director General John Birt told her she would have to “make room” for younger generations.
She said she was taken aside by Birt at a party in 1996 and informed she had “had her day”.
Nearly 25 years later, she is presenting the BBC’s Rip Off Britain and Holiday Hit Squad.
She told the latest Woman’s Weekly magazine: “What he said was, ‘Angela, you’ve had your day and you have to make room for the other women coming up behind you’.
I don’t know what John Birt is doing now, but I’m working full pelt and into next year, too, if not beyond.
“I’m well into my 70s and I’m still doing a full-time job in television and broadcasting, so I suppose that’s my revenge for having to listen to that kind of patronising twaddle!”
Rippon, whose TV career began in 1966, said she was also working on children’s books and a novel.
She added: “I’ve got lots of things I want to do, but I also want to go on enjoying life.”
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