EXCLUSIVE: Lorraine Kelly has told the Mirror about how cuts to her ITV show have given her more time to pursue her ‘real job’ and activated her nostalgia, making her feel like she’s ‘gone back 30 years’
She’s the nation’s TV mum, but Lorraine Kelly is making the most of her time to pursue her most important job yet after ITV’s savage cuts to her show.
Thanks to her 42-year TV career, many of us have grown up with her smiling face beaming into our living rooms. Her interviews with A-List celebrities are akin to hearing your mum chat to a childhood friend and watching her show gives you a warm feeling, even if this year’s ITV cuts means we see her for 30 minutes less than we did before.
Lorraine and Loose Women were the two major daytime TV shows who experienced changes when ITV slashed their budget. Both shows went from airing year-round to only airing for 30 weeks. Lorraine was also cut from 60 minutes down to a half-hour show. With less to prep for, Lorraine, 66, has said she has more time to pursue her “real job”.
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“It’s given me more time to do my real job, which is babysitting,” she says with a smile on her face. In 2024, Lorraine’s daughter Rosie gave birth to her first child and her mum’s only grandchild, Billie, who Lorraine can’t wait to spoil. “The main thing is to spend more time with that baby, which I would do all the time, basically she is the centre of the universe, and everything else just revolves around this child, and it’s a joy.”
She adds that how often she gets to just be “nana” has made her feel nostalgic, like she’s gone back 30 years. “Billie goes to the same nursery Rosie did, so when I picked Billie up from nursery, it was like, 30 years had disappeared, because I picked her up from exactly the same place, it was lovely, just lovely.”
For Lorraine, life has slowed down now that she has Billie. “When I had Rosie, I was in my early 30s, and you’re sort of building your career and you know what it’s like if you’re a working mum – you’re inevitably feeling guilty either way.
“But now I’ve got lots more time, and I think lots more patience, so I’m very happy to spend half an hour playing like we’re in Frozen, or just going for a wee walk and looking at a leaf. I’ll take as long as she likes.”
Lorraine fully intend to keep spoiling Billie as she gets older, not just with “blue smarties” and treats, but with the history she’ll pass down. She has been working with HP to create the National Book of Bakes, a collection of family recipes from across the nation, and is encouraging people to make sure the recipes handed down from mothers and grandmothers are copied down so that we can always come back to them.
The book features a recipe from each of Lorraine’s grandmothers – Margaret ‘Granny Mac’ McMahon’s Dundee Cake, and Margaret ‘Maggie’ Kelly’s Clootie Dumplings. The TV host remarks that these recipes are more than just a way to make food, they’re a way to remember those that aren’t with you anymore and make it feel like they are still there.
“It does evoke so many memories of people who, in the case of my grandmother, are not here anymore,” she says as she thumbs through the book. “Both of them are not here anymore, but when you make things like that and follow their recipes, and I’m not very good, my daughter’s much better than me, but when you do that, they’re there with you.”
For instance, making Maggie’s dumplings reminds Lorraine of how her grandmother used to boil them in a pillowcase and put a sixpence in it. She remembered how she and her brother and all the other Kelly children would go back for more and more helpings, hoping they would be would get the coin.
Rosie also loves to cook and bake. Whilst talking about her daughter, Lorraine remarks that she feels Rosie is a natural at motherhood. “She’s much better than I was, and she’s just taken to it. There are some people who are natural mothers and like I say, she loves to bake, she loves to cook, she loves to just take care of Billie.
“It’s instinctive, where I think I had to learn it with her a little bit. I think we’re all different. I love being a mum, it’s the best job in the world, but she’s really, really taken to it so, so much, and it’s great to see the two of them together, it’s just lovely.”
Of course, while being a mum is “the best job”, Lorraine works as a television host, one of the few in the UK who has a whole show named after her.
“It’s crazy!” Lorraine laughs. “It’s been lots of different names over the years, but I think they’ve kind of settled on Lorraine now. I really, I really enjoy doing what I do, I’m very happy to be doing it. It’s shorter now, but actually, it works, it really works, we get a pint into a half pint pot, and we still have great fun.”
She adds: “We have very, very consciously said that we’re going to be a little half hour of sunshine. We’ve just thought, let’s have some fun. On a Friday, we do our good news headlines, so we store up all the good news from the week. Oftentimes, they slip down the cracks, and you don’t maybe get them so much.
“I never take it for granted though, and I’m just delighted to still be here after almost 42 years. Can you believe that? I started in 1984, we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t, we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have the internet, we had nothing. I’ve seen so many changes, it’s been amazing, but at the end of the day, you know, what I do is all about people’s stories, and that trust, and like I said, I never take it for granted that people want to talk to me, it’s lovely, it’s lovely, it really is.”
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