SCOTTISH broadcaster, Lorraine Kelly, has ended speculation about her immediate future by signing up for a new ITV show, called ‘Lorraine’, which will be launched in September, immediately following a revamped GMTV breakfast programme which will also go on air in September.
There were widespread rumours that Kelly might be lured to BBC TV’s One Show to replace Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, who have joined ITV to present a revamped breakfast show, Daybreak.
ITV goes back to the future with its new breakfast show as it takes its name from ITV’s first morning news show in 1983. It will focus on breaking news to compete with BBC TV’s Breakfast show and BSkyB’s Sunrise programme, hosted by Eamonn Holmes.
ITV are taking over the running of the breakfast programme from GMTV. Spokeswoman, Alison Sharman, revealed: “We have set out to transform a business lagging behind its competitors.”
It is not yet known who will be in Chiles and Bleakley’s co-presenting back-up team. Four of the current presenters – Emma Crosby, Andrew Castle, Ben Shephard and Penny Smith – are already leaving or reported to be set to leave the current programme.
News of Kelly’s career progression, which is being promoted by ITV as the “home of celebrity interviews and inspirational stories of exceptional people”, understandably garnered major coverage from her home-town regional morning newspaper, The Courier, Dundee.
And by a strange quirk of fate, on the same day as this story was breaking, Kelly featured in the letters-to-the-editor slot.
The tongue-in-cheek letter, from a Dr Bill Samson, Broughty Ferry, read: “I was intrigued to read in Jack McKeown’s article in The Courier’s new C2 supplement (July 6), that Lorraine Kelly has spent ‘half a decade on Planet Earth’.
“This raises the question of where she might have spent the other 45 years. I am aware of Lorraine’s keen interest in astronomy. Perhaps this explains it.”
Kelly has been at GMTV for 17 years. She currently commutes via Dundee Airport to London from her new home in Broughty Ferry.
