How Lorraine Kelly became the queen of morning TV

Once told she’d never make it on TV because of her Glasgow accent and now set to receive a Special Award from Bafta, the daytime legend’s career is celebrated by Katie Rosseinsky

In the summer of 1989, Lorraine Kelly, then the Scotland correspondent for ITV’s breakfast show TV-am, travelled down to the London studio. One of the usual hosts was on holiday, and Kelly had been drafted in as backup. The gig was only meant to last a week – but Kelly never really left. If you’ve tuned in to ITV on a weekday morning at any point over the past four decades or so, there’s a high chance that you’ll have been greeted by her soft Glaswegian tones.

Whether it wasTV-am in the Eighties, (the original) Good Morning Britain and GMTV in the Nineties and Noughties, or her own show Lorraine, which has been on air since 2010, Kelly has perched on a colourful sofa, delivering headlines, disarming famous guests, and juggling the strange high-low mix of breakfast telly: a feature on a dancing animal or a fashion trend one moment, an emotional report the next. She “always manages to make the daily demands of live broadcasting look easy”, as Bafta’s Hilary Rosen put it when the presenter was announced as the latest recipient of the organisation’s prestigious Special Award (she’ll receive the trophy, which recognises outstanding contribution to TV, at the Bafta Television Awards on 12 May).

What sets Kelly apart and coaxes us out of our morning stupor is her combination of everywoman warmth undercut with a certain steeliness: her one-time ITV colleague Piers Morgan once called her an “iron fist in a velvet glove”. Although she is sometimes written off as a purveyor of easy-watch fluff, Kelly’s reporting credentials are impeccable.