Tessa Padden: Interviewing Frances Elton for Close Up (BSL)

Close Up: Frances Elton is new on the BSL Zone from Monday 14th May (see times and days of broadcast below).

I’ve been presenting TV programmes now for nearly 30 years. But I can honestly say that one of the greatest privileges in my career was to interview Frances Elton for Close Up, which will be shown on the BSL Zone in May.

Watch this article in BSL, translated by Nicholas Padden-Duncan, below, or scroll down to continue reading.

Why do I say that? Well, without Frances and one or two other people, I don’t think I would ever have become a TV presenter in the first place.

Frances is widely recognised as probably the foremost Deaf BSL teacher-trainer and BSL linguistics trainer in the UK.

She first taught me when I was training to become a BSL teacher myself at Durham University in the 1980s. It was thanks to her inspirational teaching, and that of others, like Clark Denmark and Dorothy Miles, that I and many other Deaf people started to come out of the shell we had been living in, being subordinate to the hearing society.

Clark had set up the British Sign Language Training Agency at Durham University, supported by the British Deaf Association, in 1985. The aim of BSLTA was to train Deaf people to teach our own language, BSL.

Frances was one of the star students on the very first course, and she was quickly headhunted to become a teacher and then a trainer on the course herself. From being a star student, she soon went on to become a star trainer.

When I trained on the course, from 1986, I immediately warmed to Frances. She was such a wonderful teacher and role model in every way. I learned a huge amount from her, not only about BSL and the linguistics of BSL, but about the psychology of teaching, how to manage a classroom, and so many other lessons.

One of her great qualities, which I do not think has had enough recognition, is that Frances was a very good manager in every sense – full stop. Watching how she organised her work and managed people was an important part of making me go on and become a manager, and to take an MA degree in management, not BSL.

Without Frances I could simply not have had the career in teaching, training, linguistics and TV that I went on to enjoy.

So when she came into the Close Up studio to record our interview, were my knees knocking? Was I trembling at the thought of interviewing one of my own icons?

Not at all, because as well as all the skills she possesses, Frances is one of the nicest people you could meet. Since the days when she was my teacher-trainer, we’ve gone on to become good friends and I’ve discovered that, as well as being a great teacher, she is a wonderful, generous, human being.

Frances took formal retirement from her university post at University College, London, in 2013. But for years afterwards, she carried on teaching people about the linguistics of BSL in her own incomparable fashion.

Yet Frances had never dreamed of being anything but a factory or office worker until she herself was approaching 40. In Close Up, she talks about her early years in Poole, where she had Deaf parents and a Deaf brother. After not doing well at school, she got a job in a sewing machine factory, and worked there for over eleven years.

She was nearly thirty when she moved to London. As a lesbian in the 1970s, she felt London suited her lifestyle better than Poole. There, she met her lifelong partner June Smith, and finally, in 1985, found a job in a Deaf environment, working with the BDA’s London Deaf Video Project. The rest is history. And what a history!

Please watch the Close Up interview with Frances, which starts on the BSL Zone on Monday May 14th, when it will be shown on the Film4 channel at 8am (for breakfast viewers!) It is then repeated in the great new BSL Zone peak-viewing slot at 10pm, on Together (lovely supper time watching!)  

I hope, like me, you will enjoy finding out more about this true humble heroine of the Deaf world, Frances Elton – an extraordinary BSL linguist, an inspiring teacher and a role model for us all. Oh, and she has a mischievous sense of humour as well!

Watch Close Up: Frances Elton on TV…

On Film4:

• Monday 14th May at 8am

On Together:

• Monday 14th May at 10pm
• Tuesday 15th May at 2pm
• Thursday 17th May at 7.30pm
• Saturday 19th May at 7.30am

Film4 – (Freeview 15, Sky 313, Virgin Media 428, Freesat 300)

Together – (Freeview HD 93, Sky 159, Virgin Media 269, Freesat 164)

By Tessa Padden.