It's hard to believe that it's been 13 years since Josie Gibson first appeared on our screens in popular reality show Big Brother. The Bristol-native won the hearts of viewers which was made clear when she crowned the winner of the 11th series with a whopping 77.5 percent of the public vote; the highest percentage out of any other Big Brother series.
She followed this up with an appearance on Ultimate Big Brother the following year in 2011, but left the house after just three days. However, that hasn't stopped her going on to become a household name as she used her newfound platform to turn to presenting, starting by being a regular guest host on the Channel 5 magazine series OK! TV.
But it wasn't until 2021 that Josie landed the biggest job of her career when she became a regular host on This Morning, three years after she joined the ITV daytime show as a regular segment presenter like her now pal Alison Hammond did when she joined the programme more than 20 years ago.
Join our new Coronation Street WhatsApp group by clicking here
And Josie, 38, has been a big hit with This Morning viewers with many flocking to social media to demand her permanent place at the helm every time she appears on screen, most recently alongside Holly Willoughby amid the fallout of the Phillip Schofield scandal that has rocked ITV in recent weeks.
Josie has previously creddited the show's former hosts, husband and wife duo Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, for helping her get her big break. She shared how she was interviewed by the TV couple on This Morning, with Eamonn imploring her to "send some ideas to the bosses at This Morning" after saying he liked her because she was "different".
"And then they gave me a chance, and even though I wasn’t great to begin with, my This Morning lot stuck with me," she previously told HuffPost UK. "They’ve helped me grow. They’d only give me a minute of TV first of all, then they’ve give me a couple more, and then four minutes, five, and now I’ve been presenting the show!"
And despite the current around the show, Josie, who syas her career is a 'fluke', couldn't have spoken more highly of the programme recently. Speaking to OK!, Josie said there was one time she had a panic attack in the studio but the show gave her another chance.
She said: "My career is a complete fluke. I didn't think I was even going to go on Big Brother, and then when I got out, I thought that I'd quite like to do some presenting. I wasn’t very good at the start, because I couldn’t see the autocue, but then I had my eyes lasered, and This Morning gave me a chance.
" Fair play to the show – they even stuck with me after I had a panic attack in the studio because I was so nervous. But they really nurtured me and they’ve been brilliant to me. cannot believe I work on This Morning. I actually cannot get over it. If someone had told me I’d present one of the biggest daytime TV shows I would have laughed in their face. I feel so grateful and honoured."
And Josie also credits Phillip Schofield with issuing her with precious advice. She says he told her: "You don’t want to talk over your partner, otherwise it would be a mess. So, if you want to keep going with a question because you think you’re on a roll, or you want to say something, you’ve got to listen and you take little breaths. They are listening all the time. They make it look so streamlined, but you won’t notice it."
While her career flourishes, away from the small screen, Josie is not currently in a relationship and is a doting single mum to her son, Reggie. During her time in the Big Brother house, Josie struck up a romance with fellow housemate John James Parton and upon leaving Big Brother, the couple confirmed that they were dating.
In October 2010, she and John James appeared in a one-off fly on the wall show following their lives together called Josie and John James: What Happened Next. In May 2011, she appeared in three-part reality TV series There's Something About Josie but in the same year, she split up with John James.
She later met ex-fiancé Luke Sanwo, a plumber, and after dating for six months, the pair got engaged in early 2012 before splitting in April 2015. After their split, Josie said: "The passion is slowly drifting and now it's virtually non-existent. I feel like it's the right thing to do at the moment."
Josie later got in a relationship with her now ex-boufriend Terry after having known each other for over 20 years. The couple tragically suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks in November 2017 but there was joy when they revealed they were again expecting in May 2018. They then welcomed Reggie into the world in September that year but Josie and Terry split months after welcoming their son.
The TV star has since been single after breaking up with her ex who she said she was left ‘devastated’ by Josie previously opened up to New! magazine about the split, and said their split was sparked after a disagreement over her shoes being in the hallway.
"So I kicked off and said, 'Well, we’ll go then!' and he went 'Alright!' and bagged up our stuff. So Reggie and me headed to a hotel," she said. "[It was] two days before New Year’s Eve. Me and Reggie stayed in a hotel for two nights before going to my house. We watched the fireworks out of the window while we unpacked. It was the worst New Year’s Eve ever."
When on Loose Women in 2019, she described the split as 'devastating' and 'not what [she] wanted.' However, at thee beginning of the coronavirus lockdown in early 2020, Terry opted to move in with Josie as she didn't want to risk taking Reggie even to the supermarket, so picked up the phone and told Terry he should move in with them.
However, once restrictions began easing again, her ex decided to pack up his bags and leave. The star said at the time: "He's [Terry] moved out now. I'm choosing to do it on my own for a little bit at the moment."
Now single, Josie says she ‘couldn’t do’ dating apps to find love again. She told The Sun: "I couldn’t do dating apps because I haven’t got the minerals. I could not go and meet them. I just wouldn’t have the confidence to go and meet them if I didn’t know them, and I like to know people who know people."
Aside from her love life Josie, who is the eldest of three brothers and three sisters, has undergone a few transformations over the years. She revealed that after staring her weight loss journey in 2013, she dropped six stone in weight in over a year with a combination of healthy eating and exercise, she told Closer magazine in 2021.
It saw her go from a size 20 to a size 8-10, and Josie released her workout DVD 30 Second Slim. She also released the DVD Josie Gibson's 21 Day Fat Burn that same year and published a healthy living book in 2014, The Josie Gibson Diet: Love Food, Get Slim, Stay Slim, which detailed her weight loss journey. She said then that she believed getting rid of sugar from her diet had a huge impact on her health.
In 2016 Josie, shared how sh'ed had surgery to remove to remove 6lbs and 13 inches of loose skin of excess skin following her weight loss. But she then put on around four-and-a-half stone while pregnant. She then went on to shed two stone in just 12 weeks in 2019, crediting MuscleFood’s Do The Unthinkable: Diet and Exercise Plan as she went down from a size 18-20 to a 12. She lost another 10 lbs in January 2021.
Speaking in a video on her Instagram in 2021, she revealed that stress had caused her to gain weight during lockdown and saw her go up to a size 18. In the video, Josie was seen trying on a pair of size 14 jeans which she "squeezed" into, jumping for joy and claiming she was "so happy".
She also told Closer magazine the same year: "I don’t want to be really, really slim because it just kills me to get there – it takes a lot of exercise. I used to cycle to the gym, do two HIIT sessions back to back and then cycle home again. I was so fit, but how can you do that with a two year old? I’m a mum with a job so it’s not do-able any more."
She added, "I did enjoy being super-skinny, when you’ve been fat all your life it was great being there. I felt like Pamela Anderson when I was a size 8. It was lovely! But even now I’m comfortable wearing bikinis because I’m happy with my curves."
