Katie Boyle - Background

Background

She was born in Florence, Italy, and is the daughter of an Italian marquis, the Marchese Demetrio Imperiali di Francavilla and Dorothy Kate Ramsden. She came to Great Britain in 1946 and started her modelling career, which included work for such publications as Vogue. She also appeared in several 1950s films, the first being Old Mother Riley, Headmistress, (1950) in which she was billed as "Catherine Carleton", followed by The House in the Square (1951), Not Wanted on Voyage (1957), The Truth About Women, Intent to Kill (with Richard Todd, and in which she was miscredited as "Catherine Boyl") in Les Carnets de Major Thompson/The Diary of Major Thompson (1955), with Jack Buchanan, filmed in France by American film director Preston Sturges.

Having been an on-screen continuity announcer for the BBC in the 1950s, in the 1960s Boyle became a television personality regularly appearing on panel games and programmes such as What's My Line? and Juke Box Jury. She was the presenter for the 1960, 1963, 1968 and 1974 Eurovision Song Contests, all hosted in the UK. According to author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor's The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History, Boyle hosted the 1974 contest minus her underwear, which was cut off from under her satin dress moments before the broadcast began. She also hosted the UK qualifying heat, A Song for Europe, in 1961.

In 1982 she played herself in the BBC radio play The Competition, which told the story of a fictitious international song contest being staged in Bridlington. Katie Boyle was guest of honour at the Eurovision fan club conventions staged in 1988 and 1992.

She appeared at the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest held in Birmingham as a special guest of the BBC. Her other work has included theatre, television (What's Up Dog?) and radio (Katie and Friends). In 2004, Boyle was a guest on a special Eurovision-themed celebrity version of The Weakest Link on BBC1, hosted by Anne Robinson. In a unique moment, Boyle became the first, and to date the only, contestant ever to vote herself off the programme.

In 1947 she married Richard Bentinck Boyle, 9th Earl of Shannon; the marriage was dissolved in 1955. The same year she married Greville Baylis, a racehorse owner, who died in 1976. In 1979 she married theatre impresario Sir Peter Saunders, who died in 2002. According to Queen Elizabeth II: A Woman Who Is Not Amused by Nicholas Davies, Boyle had a long standing relationship with Prince Philip in the 1950s.

She is also an avid lover of animals, dogs being special to her. She sits on the board of Battersea Dogs Home and is patron of the Italian Greyhound Rescue Charity. At home, just off East Finchley's prestigious Bishops Avenue, she has two dogs: Cassie (a Collie cross) and Totty (an Italian Greyhound), both of which came from Battersea. In 1989 she recorded an audio cassette with the dog trainer John Fisher entitled Think Dog!