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The voice is unmistakeable - rich, commanding, with a Northern lilt beneath the received pronunciation. It's a voice that every UK adult has heard countless times on radio and TV. For eight years, between 1992 and 2000, it was our national voice of fair and impartial debate. "Order, order!" With those words, Baroness Betty Boothroyd, the first woman speaker of the House of Commons, turned our MPs from a playground rabble into a working parliament. With those words... and a fearsome glare that gave the impression she might throw her gavel at the nearest trouble-maker if pushed too far.

When Boothroyd addressed the London Business Forum (LBF), she looked more approachable than she ever did - or, indeed, ever could - at Westminster. The wig, the ruffled collar, the gold-braided gown, the adornments - all were gone. Instead, she wore a bright red skirt-suit, and black patent-leather shoes polished military-style. With her blow-dried silver hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, she had a touch of Miss Moneypenny about her. But the truth of her former status, and continued reputation, was conveyed by the gold brooch she wore - a portcullis, custom-made to replicate the UK's parliamentary logo, encrusted with diamonds.

From the tone of Boothroyd's speech, it was clear she was very proud to have been the "First Commoner of the Land." However, she said: "I never was ambitious... I never felt I'd become a member of Parliament, let alone anything else." She explained that her parents, textile workers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, had been active members of the Labour Party and the Textile Workers' Union. "I think my mother more than anything else probably influenced me, because our front room used to be a committee room on local-election polling day," she said. "It was just full of local people, who were very much involved in politics." Her interest in politics, she said, was like "miner's coal dust under my fingernails... very difficult to scrub out."

The young Boothroyd dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, and achieved some success on the stage during the 1940s. However, by the age of 25, having failed to break into London's West End, she decided to change direction and work for the Labour Party full-time. In those days, she explained, MPs had to pay their staff out of their own pockets, which meant secretaries were often shared. Accordingly, Boothroyd worked for two MPs, and was "invited to go all over the world with various parliamentary delegations". As she carried out research on behalf of her bosses, she began to think to herself: "If they can do it, I can do it."

Boothroyd contested her first parliamentary seat in 1957. However, she had to wait another 16 years and five elections before finally entering the House of Commons as MP for West Bromwich. Then her career really took off. She became an assistant government whip, a Member of the European Parliament, a member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee. In 1987 she became a deputy Speaker and in 1992 she was elected the 155th Speaker of the House, the first woman ever to hold the position.

"It was just beyond my comprehension, it was wonderful," she said of the latter post. She had been encouraged to run by friends such as George Roberts, then Secretary General of NATO, but had never expected to win. Achieving great things, she suggested, is a simple matter of being courageous enough to "have a go" and to "pick yourself up and do something else or do it all over again," if you're not successful. "It's just the inevitability of doing what you want when the time comes, and taking advantages of opportunities that are there," she said.

The first problem Boothroyd encountered as Speaker was one of tradition. Her full-bottomed wig kept of falling off. "I just couldn't cope with it," she said. "I couldn't have a good laugh disguised in something so imperious." It seemed a simple matter to arrange for the headgear to be changed, but this required the authority of the House, and was thus an important early reminder of the ancient responsibilities of her new position. Feathers were similarly ruffled when she failed to memorise the names of new MPs and described them using terms such as "the Rt Honorable Gentleman with the red tie" or "the Rt Honorable Lady with the glasses".

Mostly, however, the job was was one of hard grind. There are "no textbooks on how to do the job, only standing orders to assist and several hundred years of precedence and tradition," she explained. The working day typically lasted 14 hours. It began with detailed planning of the "order paper", the parliamentary agenda. Likely speakers in the debates were identified and supplementary questions accepted or rejected. At 9.30am, Boothroyd would meet the head of her 12-strong staff to go over her diary in detail. Correspondence followed, and the planning of overseas visits, of which there were many during her tenure.

Midday saw a crucial briefing session with the three senior Clerks of the House (the three people who sit before the Speaker in the Commons chamber). Boothroyd referred to this meeting as her "wash-up session" for the previous day's events, based on questions such as: "What was the mood of the House?"; "How might we have done it better?" and " How could we improve it in any way?" It was also an attempt to anticipate the mood of the House for the coming day: "What could develop, based on yesterday's events?" and "How might we best deal with it?"

She kept a 20-minute spot open at 12.30pm for "courtesy calls from ambassadors and high commissioners and other VIPs who might be in London". Then she would chair the first of the afternoon debates. "Following that three or four hours in the chair there would be a series of meetings with party leaders, with chief whips, with minority party leaders, with the heads of the departments in the Commons," she said, "to listen to their problems, to try and soothe them down or to be helpful if I could, and of course there was always the daily security report, which was ever-increasing in those days."

On top of all this, Boothroyd also had administrative duties. "I think it's understandable that the general public think all the Speaker has to do is to sit under a canopy in a medieval dress and call, 'Order, order,' from time to time," she said. "But nothing could be further from the truth."

Around 1,600 staff are employed by the Speaker to run the establishment through six departments, she explained. These include: the Clerks Department, which employs about 250 people and is principally concerned with procedure and the staffing of committees; the Sergeant at Arms, with 400 doorkeepers, cleaners, maintenance and security staff; the library, with a staff of 200 spread over three buildings; Hansard, the official report of proceedings in the chamber and in all committees, which has a staff of 150; catering, with 320 staff working in 18 different outlets such as cafeterias, bars and dining rooms; and finally accounts, with another 120 staff.

The total expenditure of the Commons for 2005-05 was £313m, of which £152m was spent on MP's pay and allowances and the remainder on administration, capital and working projects.

It is hardly surprising, given this huge workload, that Boothroyd failed, by her own account, to achieve any kind of "work/life balance". "I've never been married, and I don't think seriously anybody would have me because of the life I led, because I was never available," she said wistfully. "There are not many men... who are willing to stay in the background and help their girl along." However, she added, the higher salaries of today's MPs have made it possible for female politicians to juggle their politics and family more effectively.

"I admire those young women who do tackle it, and who make some success of it too," she said. Indeed, she suggested, the continued low proportion of women in the Commons - 118 out of 646 MPs - should be a call to arms for women in the LBF audience. "How about a career change for some of you ladies here today?" she asked "We could use some more in there."

She was only half-joking. As we heard Boothroyd describe the battles she had fought with big-dog politicians such as John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Gerry Adams and Iain Paisley, it was clear that she had done it all out of an indefatigable sense of duty and fair play. "I've got a number of godchildren... but I have no family closer than that, and I sometimes think when I see families together [that] I might have missed out," she said. "But I always say if I got a second innings I'd do it all over again."