Lorraine Kelly recently shared her reaction to being sacked from GMTV more than 30 years ago.
The TV legend, 65, has been a staple on screens for four decades. From stints on GMTV to her self-titled ITV show, Lorraine – which has recently been slashed as part of a cost-cutting exercise – the presenter has remained booked and busy.
However, in 1994, Lorraine was issued a career blow when she was let go from GMTV – just weeks after giving birth to her daughter Rosie.
TV’s Lorraine Kelly on GMTV sacking
Lorraine was a regular on GMTV from 1993 to 2010 as one of the show’s main presenters. In 1994 though, she ended up getting sacked – only to return a year later. In a new interview, Lorraine reflected on being a freelancer in the TV industry
“You know what it’s like, I’m freelance, so you work from contract to contract and back then it was only a year’s contract,” she said on the Bedside Manners podcast with Morning Live’s Dr Oscar Duke earlier this week.
Talking about her GMTV axe, Lorraine added: “And I had Rosie on June the 8th and I was supposed to go back to work end of August, which didn’t give me much time off, but that was the way it was.”
Lorraine Kelly was ‘so stunned’
However, it turned out bosses didn’t plan to keep Lorraine on – and she was left in tears when they told her they were letting her go.
“I think it was about a week before, I got a call from the boss just saying: ‘Well thanks for everything, but we’ve got someone else now, all the best,'” she explained.
Lorraine continued: “I just was so stunned I didn’t even say anything. I just went: ‘Oh, okay then,’ and I put the phone down. And I just burst into tears because I thought, I’ve got this tiny baby.”
Lorraine’s reaction to being asked back
Lorraine then revealed that she and her husband Steve, also a freelancer who worked as a cameraman, were hit with financial pressures at the time.
She shared: “Then what happened was, I got a call back from them about a month later to say that they wanted to do a mum and baby slot twice a week, because they got all this sponsorship from whatever company it was. And of course, the Glaswegian in me that wanted to say bugger off.”
Lorraine bit her tongue, though: “But I didn’t say bugger off. I said: ‘Thank you very much,’ and I went in to do that just twice a week. Tuesday and Thursday, for a couple of weeks. And it did really well because people were really interested in it.”
Lorraine calls ITV axe ‘the best thing that could have happened’
After GMTV was replaced by ITV’s Daybreak, Lorraine joined the lineup before getting her very own self-titled morning show.
“I ended up going from working really, really early hours with someone else [which is] not always easy, to having my own show,” she said, reflecting on her journey in the business.
Lorraine also said that it felt like “the world [had] ended” when she was axed from GMTV. But she eventually realised “it was the best possible thing that could have happened”.
Next year, her morning show on ITV1 will be reduced to 30 minutes, down from the current hour. It will also only air 30 weeks a year.
Read more: Lorraine Kelly pays tribute to Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson following his death aged 82
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