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Listen to highlights from interviews with Trixi Blaire.

Trixi Blaire is a retired lecturer. She lives in Watford, Hertfordshire, but is originally from Hungary. Trixi wanted to use her time on the plinth to highlight the issue of ageism. At the time she was 63 years old.

Ageism is a subject in which Trixi has been interested in for many years, but was particularly inspired by Julia Neuberger's book 'Not Dead Yet', which is a manifesto for old age. After her plinth experience, Trixi commented, "it's the only thing that I have ever done where I have been a so called 'activist', you know. I think it's probably because I am old now, that… I didn't mind doing it. And lots of people said, 'how did you dare?' But I think there's a little side of me that's an exhibitionist. I quite enjoyed being over there… it was an empowering experience."

Trixi first became interested in the subject of ageism while studying at the London School of Economics in the late 1960s. She worked on a research study evaluating the effectiveness of the Task Force agency which arranged for young volunteers to befriend older people and aimed to challenge age discrimination. In her subsequent research and teaching work her interest in the subject of ageing, and how older people are treated, continued to grow. She is particularly interested in the idea of older people forming self-help organisations, such as the Grey Panthers founded in America in the 1970s.

Trixi came to Britain from Hungary as a child with her sister and parents. They left after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and arrived in Britain, via Austria, in 1957. She found it "a hugely traumatic experience … everything seemed grey and dull and rainy and I … hated it, which is the reason why I think I never lost my accent. I never felt English and I still have problems with it now, about identity on that level". Trixi's family was originally Jewish, but she was christened a Catholic and sent to a convent in England, which added to her confusion about her identity.

In her adult life, Trixi worked in education and is married, with two daughters and two grandchildren. She has now retired, and is training to be an advisor with the Citizens Advice Bureau. Since the end of the Cold War, Trixi has been able to visit Hungary again, which she has loved.

Watch Trixi's appearance on the plinth at the UK Web Archive

Listen to Trixi's pre- and post-plinth interviews in full in the Wellcome Library catalogue

Photograph courtesy of Artichoke