Much-loved TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has spoken out on covering the Dunblane massacre after she thought nothing would be “as bad” as covering the Lockerbie bombing.
The 64-year-old TV personality stated the 1996 Dunblane gun attack, which left 16 students and a teacher dead and 15 others injured at Dunblane Primary School, “hit particularly hard” for her as a parent during her remarks on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in honour of her 40 years in the industry.
She continued by saying in order to keep herself from becoming too upset after the 1988 Lockerbie terror incident, she persuaded herself “somehow it wasn’t real”. The terrorist bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 killed a total of 270 people in the Scottish borders town on December 21, 1988.
Asked about how those incidents had affected her early career, Kelly said: “I think Lockerbie, I was very young and very inexperienced, and the only way I think anybody got through that was thinking that somehow it wasn’t real, and you had to almost close everything off and just be very focused on the story you were trying to tell.
“And the reason that I love doing what I do so much, is we’re allowed to have emotions, we’re allowed to somehow try and tell everyone what it was like to be there on a story like that.
“I thought when I did Lockerbie, ‘nothing will be as bad as that’, the worst terrorist atrocity in Europe that there has ever been, and I thought, ‘nothing will be as bad as that’.
“Then Dunblane happened, and I think because Rosie (her daughter) was about two then, and I think when you’re a parent, it hit everybody hard, but when you’re a parent it hit particularly (hard).”
The Scottish presenter went on to speak about growing up in “poverty” and how it had shaped her career. She said: “When you grow up like that, that’s your reality, isn’t it?
“And I had amazing parents, I mean, they were so young (18), I thought I was five months premature for ages, but mum and dad had to get married. But our house, there was always books in our house, they taught me to read and write before I went to primary school.
“I went to an amazing primary school, the teachers were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and really encouraged us, but yeah, there was real poverty.”
Kelly added: “(My parents) got married, moved into a one-room in the Gorbals with an outside loo and managed somehow, they just were grafters, I’ve learned so much from them.
“I’ve learned that work ethic, that you work hard, you’re decent to people, you treat everybody the same, and as I say taught me a love of reading, which has allowed me to do this job.”
Kelly started her journalism career on the East Kilbride News, turning down a university place to study English and Russian to join the newspaper, before joining BBC Scotland as a researcher in 1983.
She started working for TV-am in 1984 as an on-screen reporter for Scottish news. She then moved on to appear on Good Morning Britain in 1990, and in 2010 she was given her own program, Lorraine.
Lorraine Kelly: 40 Unforgettable Years, a special documentary celebrating her career, will premiere on ITV1 at 9pm tonight. Additionally, this morning’s Lorraine show honoured her career.
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