Joan Bakewell (born 1933) is a British journalist and television presenter. In the 1960s she was dubbed "the thinking man's crumpet", and the epithet has stuck.
Born in Stockport , Cheshire, Bakewell was educated at the University of Oxford, where she first came into contact with another famous journalist, Brian Redhead. She first became well known as one of the presenters of an early BBC2 programme, Late Night Line-Up . Later she came to the fore as the main presenter of the documentary series Heart of the Matter . She is a CBE. Her autobiography, The Centre of the Bed, was published in 2004.