I got to know Heather working on the Millennium Commission, which was a great organisation with which to be involved. It really changed the face of Britain, investing in buildings, projects and community schemes up and down the country [Couper was one of the founding commissioners, alongside Michael Heseltine; Benjamin joined in 1999]. We’d both worked for the BBC in the 1980s, but you know what it’s like with big organisations – you’d see each other in the canteen or the corridor, and not get to know one another at all. But then we sat across the table from each other, and, goodness, just thinking about her, I can see her in the room right now.
She made such an impression from the off – that big, wavy hair and her eyes, so piercing and full of brightness. Her eyes sparkled and got at you as she was speaking. She was a tour de force of a person. I never once saw her down. If anything negative happened, she’d use that adversity as an energy to leapfrog her on.
What I liked most about Heather was that her passion to change the world had to include the way we talk to and educate children. I felt we were kindred spirits in that way. She brought her childhood love of space and the stars to the table every time she spoke, because that love had endured. She wanted to make sure other people could experience that joy throughout their lives too. She’d often talk about how children would benefit from learning about worlds they might not have known existed, whether they were living in a palace or a council flat. She wanted every child to know that they absolutely had the opportunity to open their eyes and their minds to the world beyond their four walls, then to the stars and beyond.
Heather lived life very much in the moment, and never talked about her background, although it was very impressive. She was especially driven to get science and space projects up and running across the country, like the National Space Centre in Leicester and the Eden Project in Cornwall. Lots of people would come to us with other good ideas, but you could often see them struggling with their paperwork and presentations. Heather would see their passions and go to meet them – whether they were in Glasgow, Norwich, Northern Ireland – and get her hands dirty, to help them along. Her great skill was to talk to people and to help them feel they could do anything. Thanks to her advocacy and support, many of these projects flourished.
As a rare woman in her world, Heather used that status as a springboard, to help pave the way for others to stand on her shoulders. I’ve often been that only woman in the room trying to persuade other people to see something my way, and men don’t always take too kindly to it. Heather was brilliant at it, though – she was always opening a door to others when she spoke, encouraging them in. I also liked that she wasn’t afraid of being feminine. She always looked good and smelled good. She never tried to be tough and hard. She had a great laugh too, throwing her head back with joy.
Many of the projects she helped champion, like the space centre, are still thriving 20 years on. I want to make a film about how those projects changed lives, focusing on kids born in 2000. It would be a great testimony to Heather’s work because so many people don’t know how much she did. She gave people the tools to think about the cosmos and our world’s place within it, to help give us a better understanding of who we are on this planet, and nothing would stop her. More than anything, she wanted other people to experience that kind of belief in life alongside her.
