Friends at ITV laud Lorraine Kelly as friendly, down-to-earth and inquisitive, which they say accounts for her forty-year tenure on television.
Although Lorraine has bluntly stated: “I’m just basically nosy. I don’t think I’ve changed in 40 years. I still think of myself inside as that kid who came down to London, thinking, wow, this is amazing.
“I think I will always have that curiosity. It is what keeps me young. I love that I learn something new every day. There’s not many jobs it happens in, so I’m very lucky.”
An ITV special airing on Wednesday night is set to celebrate Lorraine’s remarkable four-decade stretch on the small screen, highlighting that she’s more than a bubbly presenter.
Before transitioning to television, she dedicated five years to newspaper journalism, honing a craft she continues to excel at behind her seemingly casual conversations on the couch.
Lorraine was welcomed into the world in Glasgow on November 30, 1959, with teenage parents nestled in the challenging Gorbals district. Later relocating to Bridgeton when she was two, her family didn’t have much, sharing one bedroom for sleep, reports the Mirror.
Lorraine recalls the influence of her parents as she said: “Mum and Dad taught me to read before I went to school. There were always things to read in our house, all different kinds of subject. I always find it weird going into a house where there are no books.”
While attending Strathclyde primary school, Lorraine thrived in English and has fond recollections of the library across the street that made her “curious about the world”.
The Scottish star was all set for university to study English and Russian, but was halted when she saw an advert in the East Kilbride News.
She said: “It said, ‘opportunity for a junior reporter’. And something just clicked. I thought, I won’t have a chance but I’ll apply. Amazingly, I got the job. I didn’t really have a plan as such.”
Her mother Anne added “She did that and liked it and that was it, university out the window. She thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Lorraine found it easy to talk to people to gather stories and had her own column before landing a job at the BBC as a researcher five years later.
When a boss there told her she was “never going to make it on television” due to her accent, she wasn’t discouraged and applied for a new morning ITV show called TV-am.
Lorraine quickly secured a position as their Scottish correspondent. Speaking about her early TV days, she said: “What I liked about TV-am was the fact they were a bit maverick, because nobody knew whether breakfast television was actually going to work. The job was amazing. I got to cover absolutely everything. And I loved the fact that you could kind of be yourself.”
Lorraine was lauded for her exceptional reporting of the Lockerbie disaster and other significant incidents. She reminisced: “Not only was it the best job in the world, one morning in walks Stephen Smith, our new member of the crew.
“I just looked at him and I thought ‘He’s the one’. I knew right away. We just clicked.”
The duo tied the knot in 1992 and have since been inseparable, bonding over their shared passion for travel and collecting fridge magnets from their journeys.
Lorraine, now 64, took a brief hiatus from ITV to welcome her daughter Rosie into the world, during which she was replaced on GMTV, the successor to TV AM.
Just a fortnight before her scheduled return, she received a devastating phone call saying they’d found someone else. Lorraine continued: “I’d just got this massive mortgage and this tiny baby. The bottom just dropped out my world. What do I do now?”
A short while later, fortunes changed when a baby food company, sponsoring a new mother-and-baby section on ITV, invited Lorraine to present it.
She fondly remembered: “It was a lovely little show. It did well. That led on to me coming back with my own show later in the morning. It worked out fine, but it was scary.”
Since her comeback in 1994, Lorraine has held her own following GMTV and now GMB, interviewing an array of figures from prime ministers to George Clooney. Her journalistic expertise ensures that she not only entertains but also uncovers fresh insights.
Piers Morgan describes Lorraine Kelly with apparent regard, saying: “Lorraine is an iron fist in a velvet glove. She creates a persona that people think is very benign, very nice, very smiley but underneath it is a proper journalist.”
Reminiscing on past interviews, she revealed speaking with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, was a big moment for her.
She said: “I watched the moon landings and I’m a total space geek. At TV-am I interviewed stars from the golden age of cinema like Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis Jr and Lauren Bacall.”
Lorraine also notes the joy certain musical guests bring to her: “I also get excited when we have my favourite bands from the 1980s on the show, like Hue and Cry, The Cure, Madness and Human League.
“Our campaigns are very special. Our Change and Check campaign has saved the lives of more than 100 women and is an amazing achievement, especially for our producer Helen Addis who had the idea after going through breast cancer herself.”
Lorraine is available to watch weekdays on ITV from 9am.