“I never thought I’d write a book. Life works in mysterious ways” said Stacey Dooley onstage at Hay Festival today to promote her new book On The Front Line With Women Who Fight Back.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Imogen Walford, Dooley talked about how far she has come since being approached to feature in a BBC Three documentary in 2008 whilst she was working at Luton Airport. “You could say that documentary chose me but I have worked really hard to make it work. I may not the best journalist but I don’t know anyone who works harder than me” she said.
The Hay audience were shown a selection of clips from some of the forty documentaries that Dooley has made over the past decade, from investigating the ethics of sweatshops in India to challenging sex offenders in the United States.
Most extraordinary was the clip of Dooley embed with the all-female Yazidi battalion in Northern Iraq, a group of women she repeated referred to throughout the interview as "inspirational". “I believe in what I do, I believe that these women deserve to have a voice and you hope that, if you were in a similar situation, that other women would help you have that voice too” she said.
Talking about her Strictly Come Dancing win and the success of her TV show Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up, Dooley challenge those who say she should stay in her lane saying “you can enjoy frivolous things and still be interested in human rights”.
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