Saturday Matters With Sue Lawley

Saturday Matters with Sue Lawley was a short lived, late night chat show presented by

Sue Lawley Susan Lawley (born 14 July 1946) is a retired English television and radio broadcaster. Her main broadcasting background involved television news and current affairs. From 1988–2006, Lawley was the presenter of ''Desert Island Discs'' on BBC R ...

, which aired on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

in late 1989. Originally intended as a breakout show for Lawley, who up until that point was best known as a BBC

news presenter A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet. ...

, although she had already proven her ability as a chat show host through being a regular stand-in for

Terry Wogan Sir Michael Terence Wogan (; 3 August 1938 – 31 January 2016) was an Irish radio and television broadcaster who worked for the BBC in the UK for most of his career. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 weekd ...

in his own show ''

Wogan ''Wogan'' is a British television talk show which was broadcast on BBC1 from 1982 until 1992, presented by Terry Wogan. It was usually broadcast live from the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd's Bush, London, until 1991. It was then broadcast ...

''. ''Saturday Matters'' departed from the format of traditional,

light entertainment Light entertainment encompasses a broad range of television and radio programming that includes comedies, variety shows, game shows, quiz shows and the like. In Great Britain In the early days of the BBC virtually all broadcast entertainment wou ...

-oriented contemporary talk shows of the period such as ''Aspel and Company'', '' Parkinson'' and the aforementioned ''Wogan'', in that it invited the guests to also discuss topics of current affairs as well as their own lives. The very first guest was the then Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Two days after the show aired, Ferguson revealed she was pregnant with her second child and the show and Lawley were criticised for not having discovered this as part of the interview. Lawley's fawning interview with

Cliff Richard Sir Cliff Richard (born Harry Rodger Webb; 14 October 1940) is an Indian-born British musican, singer, producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist who holds both British and Barbadian citizenship. He has total sales of over 21.5 million s ...

was also heavily criticised. The show was axed after one series, following poor ratings. BBC Television shows BBC television talk shows 1989 British television series debuts 1989 British television series endings {{BBC-tv-prog-stub