'Strictly? I'd die from the STRESS!

TV presenter Julia Bradbury on why she loves exercise, but would never go on Britain’s best-loved dance show

- GEMMA CALVERT

Like most in television, Julia Bradbury’s career contains many rich and diverse chapters. 

In the mid-90s, the focus was entertainment and she spent a year in the US as GMTV’s LA correspondent before helping to launch Channel 5 in the UK, she then presented motorsport for Channel 4, but it was as the host of UK Living talk show Moral Dilemmas, Julia caught the eye of the editor of Watchdog, which she went on to front for four years alongside Nicky Campbell.

It was an invitation from a BBC commissioner in 2009 to host BBC4’s Wainwright’s Walks: Coast to Coast, following fellwalker Alfred Wainwright’s favourite mountain routes, that paved the way for other naturalworld presenting work, including Countryfile, Britain’s Best Walks and, most recently, Julia Bradbury’s Irish Journey for Channel 4, where she returned to the country of her birth.

Now 53 – an age at which in the past some women in the industry have struggled – Julia’s career is brilliantly buoyant because of the booming wellness market and popularity of outdoor therapy.