Oprah Winfrey has touched your life. Yes, she has. She has most likely affected the way you speak, the foods you eat, the books you read, and the music you listen to. And today, she'll be saying goodbye to the eponymous show that launched her onto the world stage – after almost 25 years, 24 seasons and more than 4,000 episodes.
I used to watch Oprah religiously as a child. Hearing the old theme tune now is as soothing as a lullaby and I have total recall of the cute Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards) Productions Inc animation at the end of her shows, in which a cartoon Oprah pulled a trolley and curtsied (it's not as weird as it sounds).
The show that ends this week is light years away from its original, vaguely tabloid incarnation; I remember Oprah urging confessions from her guests – women looking to win back their boyfriends by any means necessary, skinheads talking about racial superiority, that sort of thing – looking all the while like "one of us". The hairspray was abundant, the jumpers were brightly coloured, the weight fluctuated.
Oprah was the originator of the "talking on telly as therapy" trend, which is now the norm for talkshow formats. Nowadays of course, Oprah is a polished multi-million dollar enterprise, as much a brand as Coca-Cola or Apple. She sells us things the way no one else can. It does give the show the air of an hour-long advertisement with a few celebrity guests thrown in, but brands know that an Oprah endorsement is practically a licence to print money. So many careers have been launched on Oprah – we can, for example, blame her for the wild success of singer James Blunt, as well as Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret.
So many pop culture moments of the last couple of decades occurred on Oprah's couch. Tom Cruise's spectacularly ill-judged couch-jumping display, Ellen DeGeneres coming out and a shamed James Frey returning to face the ire of a disappointed Oprah. I remember the stark image of Oprah wheeling out a wagon of fat to illustrate how much weight she'd lost. It was she who gave away cars, holidays and extravagant gifts to her over-excited audience. Her unique, booming cadence and sing-song delivery – "You get a car, You get a car!" – saw her imitated and parodied; Maya Rudolph used to do a spot-on impression of her on Saturday Night Live.
For me, The Oprah Show was always a pleasure. I did not watch it as a cynic or with irony. It was, and still is, a thrill to see a black woman in such a position of power. Taking away the money element – Oprah was the world's only black billionaire between 2004 and 2006 and is still the only black woman billionaire in the world – here was a woman people listened to, respected and trusted. That was wildly inspiring. A large number of black British women cite Oprah as a major influence in their lives; like Ebony magazine, she is both black and universal. Oprah lives on in her magazine and OWN, the network she set up at the beginning of 2011. But it won't be the same.
I used to watch Oprah religiously as a child. Hearing the old theme tune now is as soothing as a lullaby and I have total recall of the cute Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards) Productions Inc animation at the end of her shows, in which a cartoon Oprah pulled a trolley and curtsied (it's not as weird as it sounds).
The show that ends this week is light years away from its original, vaguely tabloid incarnation; I remember Oprah urging confessions from her guests – women looking to win back their boyfriends by any means necessary, skinheads talking about racial superiority, that sort of thing – looking all the while like "one of us". The hairspray was abundant, the jumpers were brightly coloured, the weight fluctuated.
Oprah was the originator of the "talking on telly as therapy" trend, which is now the norm for talkshow formats. Nowadays of course, Oprah is a polished multi-million dollar enterprise, as much a brand as Coca-Cola or Apple. She sells us things the way no one else can. It does give the show the air of an hour-long advertisement with a few celebrity guests thrown in, but brands know that an Oprah endorsement is practically a licence to print money. So many careers have been launched on Oprah – we can, for example, blame her for the wild success of singer James Blunt, as well as Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret.
For me, The Oprah Show was always a pleasure. I did not watch it as a cynic or with irony. It was, and still is, a thrill to see a black woman in such a position of power. Taking away the money element – Oprah was the world's only black billionaire between 2004 and 2006 and is still the only black woman billionaire in the world – here was a woman people listened to, respected and trusted. That was wildly inspiring. A large number of black British women cite Oprah as a major influence in their lives; like Ebony magazine, she is both black and universal. Oprah lives on in her magazine and OWN, the network she set up at the beginning of 2011. But it won't be the same.
