Lorraine Kelly has been an ITV host for decades but amidst rumours she could quit she came out fighting for her show
Lorraine Kelly won a Special Award Bafta last year(Image: Getty Images for BAFTA)
Lorraine Kelly has appeared to drop a defiant hint to ITV bosses about her plans to fight for her show to survive – as she said “I’m not done yet”.
ITV cuts to their daytime schedule announced last month mean Lorraine’s show will be slashed to 30 weeks a year and go from an hour to 30 minutes on screen. But in her first interview to air since the cuts were announced, she expressed her love of making the show and being on ITV for four decades.
Told she is a “national treasure” and everyone feels they know her, Lorraine said: “Well, that’s nice, but it’s only because I’ve been around for so long. I’ve been doing telly for over 40 years. It’s mad isn’t it? It’s absolutely crazy. I started in breakfast telly in 1984, and I’m still getting away with it. Extraordinarily.”
Lorraine has been on television for 40 years(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Speaking to Tom Kerridge on the Proper Tasty podcast, she added: “40 years in TV last year was incredible. I got a BAFTA. ‘Here’s a BAFTA for being alive.’ I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m not done yet.’
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“I think now I can be a lot cheekier. Because I’ve always been a bit naughty. Not so much in the morning, but if I do a wee show on Channel 4, or The Last Leg, or something like that. You can be unleashed. And I quite like that. You do have to have a self-edit button, and I’m finding mine is not operating as much as it should.
“So, when I’m sitting there and I look at something and I think, ‘Gosh, what an absolute k**b that person is,’ or how silly they are, I say it and I don’t realise I’ve said it. So I have to watch.”
Speaking about the start of her career, she told of her nerves and said she still had them now, although not quite in the same way. Lorraine said: “I remember being so scared about doing a piece to camera and just being unbelievably nervous. And that doesn’t go away for a long time. It doesn’t ever completely go away I don’t think. I don’t think it should.”
Lorraine’s show has been cut from 52 weeks to 30 weeks and will only air half an hour(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
Lorraine also referenced in the podcast her recent operation which saw her off screen for weeks as she returned to the TV screens mid May after her laparoscopy, a surgery where small cuts are made for procedures inside the stomach or pelvis area.
Speaking on the podcast, she said: “I’m good. I had a wee procedure. Everything is absolutely fine. They whipped out my ovaries and fallopian tubes, and everything is fine. It’s all good. It was keyhole surgery, which was amazing. I’ve just got three wee tiny holes.”
The cheeky star added: “I mean, I’ve got more holes than that, but I’ve got three wee tiny holes where the operation happened. So, it’s fine. It’s all good.”
It is understood shortly after she recovered from the operation she was called into a meeting with ITV boss Kevin Lygo. He arranged for Lorraine to be told of her show’s huge changes separately in a show down in the days before. She is said to have turned down an idea to merge her show with Good Morning Britain.
Days later, the rest of ITV daytime learned that 220 production staff out of 440 will lose their jobs as part of cutbacks.
Lorraine has been on screen on ITV as a show since it launched in September 2010, with the host having previously worked on GMTV and Good Morning Britain, meaning she has been a regular for 40 years.
Lorraine is fighting to save her show(Image: ITV)
Last week, the Mirror told how Lorraine is fighting to save the long-term future of her show. A source said: “Lorraine was not happy about what is happening and also had concern for the production team which works on her show and will be cut back too.
“But the truth is she has to roll her sleeves up and work harder on her own show than she has in recent years, otherwise the long term future does not look good. She has been an icon of ITV TV but serious cuts need to be made and her show has been cut to just 30 minutes, which after ad breaks will be a very short chunk of time.
“She needs to show bosses it is worth keeping on air. You can expect her to be pulling hard to get big name celebrities on her show instead of GMB or This Morning to prove her worth. She was left in no doubt after the meeting there are some tough times ahead.”
Lorraine is so attached to her show, she feels like interviewees are being invited into her own house before she speaks to them.
Speaking passionately about her programme, she said: “I always say I treat people with huge respect and all of that. I’m inviting them into my house, in a sense.” However, Lorraine changes her interview tactics when she prepares to grill politicians.
She added: “I always remember Piers Morgan said I was an ‘iron fist in a velvet glove,’ and I loved that description. He’s very cheeky and very naughty, and he makes me laugh a lot. But I like that, and it’s very true.
Lorraine loves her guests – but not so much when it comes to politicians!
“When it comes to politicians it is completely different. You know what really annoys me. When I first started out you’d get the Secretary of Education and the Shadow Secretary of Education sitting down, and you could have a debate with them. Now, they won’t do that. Nobody does that anymore. They actually refuse. And I think it’s outrageous.
“Because the whole thing about them is … I do like to give them a chance to talk, politicians, because people are not daft, and they can make their own minds up about them. I don’t like the gladiatorial style, because that doesn’t get you anywhere at all.
“Give them enough rope and let them talk, and then you can go in with the wee killer question. At the end of the day, they are accountable to us. But more importantly, to our viewers. You’ve got to make sure you ask what matters to people and their lives.”
After taking politicians to account, Lorraine loves to drift off to sleep by listening to the Shipping Forecast – a BBC Radio 4 weather report, which lists gale warnings and wind speeds among other elements – despite having “no clue” what it is about.
She said: “Do you ever listen to the shipping forecast? I do. I have no idea what she’s going on about. Not a clue. But it’s very reassuring. I feel reassured. I feel I can go to sleep at night, and I don’t even know what it’s about.”
Hopefully the shipping forecast is still doing the job at the moment, even in the face of such nightmare news about the cuts to staff and her hours on screen. Lorraine has dropped anchor at ITV and doesn’t want to leave.
