Wake up – it's a beautiful morning!
Strong coffee and taxi bikes – This Morning’s presenters reveal what it takes to bring us daytime TV with a smile
Ray Burmsiton
- Paul Kirkley
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Where else but This Morning would you have the Prime Minister on the same show as a woman who’s having her labia tattooed?” asks Ben Shephard, not unreasonably, recalling the 2024 sofa encounter between then-PM Rishi Sunak and ‘Britain’s most tattooed mum’, Becky Holt. “It’s all here,” agrees Shephard’s co-host, Cat Deeley. “The rich tapestry of life.”
On the two days when RT visits This Morning in mid-June, the show’s dizzyingly eclectic mix of consumer news, lifestyle and celebrity chat finds room for everything, from Hollywood stars Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson to TV ‘dogfather’ Graeme Hall, alongside items on smartphones, student loans, hair transplants, prostate cancer and tips to get your feet flip-flop ready. Oh, and Freddie the ‘mystic monkey’, who’s supposed to predict that night’s England World Cup result live on air, but instead gets into a fight and scarpers up a tree. “He’s a bit of a diva, but that’s live television for you,” Shephard tells RT. (Fortunately, they’d pre-recorded his prediction as a back-up.)
Getting ready to put the show together in the gallery. Ray Burmiston
For the unflappable This Morning team, a belligerent monkey is just another day at the office. “I once met a penguin walking down the corridor,” says Sarah, one of the show’s publicists. In the toilets, meanwhile, RT bumps into Damian Lewis. “Lovely pomegranate and vanilla fragrance,” he reports, approvingly. “Highly recommended.” Down the corridor, Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson arrive with a Hollywood-sized entourage, who somehow all manage to file out of the same lift.
Recently, daytime cutbacks have seen staff laid off and the show relocated from White City to a new shared basement studio beneath Covent Garden. Which is why, as This Morning gets underway at 10am, the Lorraine set is being packed away in a corner of the studio while, towards the end of the show, the Loose Women desk emerges from a panel in the wall. The famous This Morning picture window, meanwhile, is now an LED screen, and there’s no parking, so even the PM – before his bombshell news, Keir Starmer dropped in for a chat on the Monday between our visits – has to risk a ticket if his driver lingers too long on the double yellows.
“The year everyone’s had… it’s been hard,” admits Dermot O’Leary, who’s hosted the Friday shows with Alison Hammond since 2021. “But because of that, people here are very protective of each other. There’s a lovely vibe.”
It’s been hard but people here are very protective of each other
The atmosphere is certainly convivial – and, for a team putting together a combined four hours of live telly every morning, surprisingly chilled. “It is, but only because you’re here,” smiles Vivek Sharma, the editor now tasked with running all three shows.
When This Morning launched from Liverpool’s Albert Dock in October 1988, with husband-and-wife duo Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan as hosts, critics dismissed it as “knitting pattern TV”, and staffers at Granada predicted that, like the war, it would all be over by Christmas. But 38 years and 17 presenters later, the show’s berth in ITV’s daytime schedule looks as secure as ever.
It’s weathered a stormy few years, of course, dogged by scandals including Phillip Schofield’s “unwise but not illegal” affair with a junior production assistant, and accusations of a “toxic culture” between some former presenters. But Deeley and Shephard, who took over as the main hosts in 2024, seem to have steadied the ship (“Seem to have?” says Deeley, mock-offended), and there’s been an impressive, social media-driven uptick among those hard-to-reach 16-34-year-old viewers.
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“Our job has only ever been to do the best show we can,” says Shephard of shutting out all the tabloid noise. “The thing about this show is that the audience have always been really honest with whoever’s hosting and whatever’s happening, because it’s their show. They have ownership of it. Ever since Richard and Judy, it’s been apparent that this show is about the viewers. It’s not our show – it’s yours.”
Authors
Paul Kirkley
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