Cover story

TV host, comedian, political animal; Sandi Toksvig is happy to have a go at anything – and more often than not, succeed. Ahead of a New Zealand tour, she tells Emma Day she has no intention of stopping any time soon.

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A women’s equality campaigner, political party co-founder, comedian, TV host, podcaster and author of more than 20 books, her CV manages to marry two rare qualities proli c and o en profound. But are there any avenues she is yet to explore, a er more than 0 years in the business

“Oh, always, I wake up every day with new excitement about something,” Toksvig, 64, enthuses from her spare room, to which she has been relegated thanks to the “20 builders downstairs”.

“My wife’s got a rule in the house that I’m not allowed to have a new idea until she’s had a cup of tea. I’m endlessly excited about life, still, and there’s so much I want to do. I want to go back to university and do my PhD, I’ve got a million books and plays I want to write, a million ideas for projects. Probably, on my deathbed, I’ll be going ‘ooh, and why don’t we…’.”

One upcoming project on her to-do list is Sandi Toksvig Live!, a series of comedy shows that will mark her New Zealand touring debut. Blending little-known facts, jokes, games and endearing vignettes, the former Great British Bake host vows that each of her three local performances will be bespoke.

“About a third of the show is the audience talking to me. I ask what they did during lockdowns, did anybody change their life, and people tell me the most astonishing things,” Toksvig says.

“With a theatre show, it’s that group of people at that time in that place; it’s completely unique.

“I also always look at the history and the women in the places that I go. I want to talk about Nancy Wake, the great war heroine. I want to talk about writer Katherine Mans eld. o there’s always a section where I talk about amazing women of the particular place where I am.”

That keen interest in local women’s achievements resulted in Toksvig nding herself in an unexpected location during her last visit to New Zealand.

“I did a slightly mad thing because I like to be spontaneous,” she says, reminiscing about her appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival in 2014.

“I read about a women’s boxing match, taking place as a means to prevent domestic violence, in a town south of Rotorua and I thought, ‘I’d like to go to that’. They had men with their tops o doing the numbers, like they normally have pretty girls going around, and it was this wonderful town that made this tremendous e ort. They had this problem with domestic violence and what they did was they gave women the con dence to stand up for themselves.”

Toksvig hopes to take in more of the country’s history during her coming trip, with plans to visit Wellington’s Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

“The su ragette Frances Parker, she was incredible and the medal given to her by the W P Women’s

ocial and Political nion in Britain is in that collection, I would love to go and see that.”

Time allowing, she also wishes to take in Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens, thanks to a habit inherited from her late father, prominent Danish journalist Claus Toksvig.

“He always used to try and nd something that was Danish-related, whatever story he was doing. I remember when he was doing Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ wedding, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang and he discovered that her earrings had been made by a Danish jeweller,” she says.

“I have discovered that there’s a tree in Christchurch that was planted in 1 6 to mark the marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and I was named a er the latter. My dad will, in heaven, be going, ‘yep, she found the Danish connection’.”

Indeed, her life appears to be littered with curious coincidences. The prime example While accompanying her father on his work as a foreign correspondent, a young Toksvig held the hand of Neil Armstrong’s secretary at Nasa Mission Control in Houston during the 1969 Moon landing.

It is no wonder she makes an intimidating rst interviewee for me, a er almost a year of nappies and bottles, but she is abashed when I express this.

“Look at me, I’ve got wet hair, I’m trying to deal with builders, it’s just life, just people.”

To her credit, 20 minutes with Toksvig, despite her many accolades and rst class Cambridge degree, feels like a chat with a friend. Peppering anecdotes with her now-signature terms of endearment – I get seven darlings, two sweethearts and one lovely – she exudes warmth.

“I think Roe v Wade may be the thing that we need to galvanise activism.”