Lorraine Kelly opens the front door with a huge smile. “You interviewed me, years ago, d’you remember?” Now she looks disappointed. “Ach, you don’t, do you?” Of course I remember. And she’s hardly changed. I’ve brought a photo of us on the GMTV sofa to show her. Back then, she’d just turned 40, was a staple of breakfast telly and was about to launch her own show; a household name, if not quite the mononym she is today. Now she’s 65, her show is still on ITV five mornings a week, and last year she was awarded a lifetime achievement Bafta. Oh, and she’s just reinvented herself as a bestselling novelist. The Island Swimmer, which reached No 2 in the Sunday Times hardback fiction charts, is about to come out in paperback.
“So how’ve you been?” she asks. Kelly is the kind of person who you can pick up with where you left off a quarter of a century ago. She’s also the kind of person you feel you know, even when you don’t. Perhaps that’s been her great gift as a TV presenter. She was a good journalist as Scotland correspondent for TV-am but not outstanding. She’s a decent interviewer, but she won’t be remembered for her incisive interrogations or scoops. What she is brilliant at, though, is being Lorraine – warm, likable, nosy, funny, occasionally steely and sharp-tongued, sometimes potty-mouthed and always 100% herself. Which is why it was a shock in 2019 when she told a tax court that the Lorraine on TV is different from the real Lorraine; that on television she performs the role “of a friendly, chatty and fun personality”.
