Lorraine Kelly

Lorraine Smith (née Kelly; born 30 November 1959) is a Scottish television presenter.

Kelly was born on 30 November 1959 and lived in the Gorbals area of Glasgow until she was two.

She has Irish ancestry.

Her father, John, worked as a television repairman.

She spent the first few years of her life in Glasgow before the family moved to East Kilbride where she attended Claremont High School.

She turned down a university place to study English and Russian in favour of a job on the East Kilbride News, her local newspaper, and then joined BBC Scotland as a researcher in 1983.

She moved to TV-am as an on-screen reporter covering Scottish news in 1984.

In early October 1984, Kelly joined TV-am as Scotland Correspondent.

She has presented various television shows for ITV and STV, including Good Morning Britain (1988–1992), GMTV (1993–2010), This Morning (2003–2005, 2016), Daybreak (2012–2014), The Sun Military Awards (2016–present), STV Children's Appeal (2016–present), and her eponymous programme Lorraine (2010–present).

On the back of her coverage of the Pan Am Flight 103 disaster in Lockerbie, in July 1989, Kelly presented TV-am's Summer Sunday programme with chief reporter Geoff Meade.

Throughout the rest of 1989, Kelly provided cover for the presenters on the main weekday programme.

On 31 January 1990, she became a main presenter of Good Morning Britain alongside Mike Morris.

In January 1993, Kelly helped launch GMTV by presenting a range of programmes.

Her first job was presenting the new Top of the Morning.

In March, when Fiona Armstrong walked out of the main GMTV show, Kelly moved to the main breakfast show with Eamonn Holmes.

In June 1994, Kelly went on maternity leave, but shortly afterwards she was sacked from the main presenting roles, she returned in November 1994 to do a mother and baby slot.

This led to her becoming the presenter of Nine O'Clock Live.

The show proved so popular that it was moved to the earlier 08:35 slot, retitled Lorraine Live.

Kelly also had a stint in radio, with her own daily program broadcast on air by then new British phenomenon of Talk Radio (precursor of TalkSport) around 1997-99.

In Autumn 2000, as GMTV rebranded to GMTV Today, Kelly's show changed its name to LK Today.

Between 2004 and 2007, Kelly was Rector of the University of Dundee.

According to the Sunday Mirror, in 2007, Kelly was prevented from appearing in an advertising campaign for Asda as GMTV managing director Clive Crouch felt that such a move would create more bad publicity for GMTV, which had recently been fined £2 million by broadcasting regulator Ofcom for its misuse of premium-rate phone lines.

As part of the later rebrand that took place in 2009, the show again changed its title to GMTV with Lorraine, to coincide with GMTV Today changing back to GMTV.

Lorraine moved for the first time into the main GMTV studio, instead of Kelly having her own part of the studio to host from.

In April 2010, to make GMTV's programming more consistent, GMTV with Lorraine began airing all year round, instead of breaking during school holidays, with guest presenters.

On 9 July 2010, as well as the announcement that GMTV had been axed to make way for Daybreak, it was also revealed that Kelly's new programme Lorraine would replace GMTV with Lorraine.

On 15 July 2010, Kelly presented her last show before leaving.

On 6 September 2010, GMTV ended with ITV Breakfast taking over.

Lorraine launched with a brand new look, alongside Daybreak.

In 2011, Kelly presented the ITV series Children's Hospital, and was a guest presenter on the BBC Two series Never Mind the Buzzcocks in series 25.

She provides voice-over and narration on the CBeebies show Raa Raa the Noisy Lion.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to charity and was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity.

On 4 May 2012, it was confirmed that Kelly would take over from Christine Bleakley as presenter on Lorraine's sister programme Daybreak.

She debuted on 3 September 2012.

She co-hosted the programme with Aled Jones from Monday to Thursday, with Kate Garraway co-hosting on Fridays.

In February 2014, Kelly announced that she would leave Daybreak to focus on Lorraine which she began hosting five days a week from 28 April 2014.

Daybreak was replaced by Good Morning Britain in April 2014.

Lorraine would occasionally report for GMB whenever her show wasn't aired.

In 2024, Kelly has come under significant scrutiny on social media for her frequent absence of her show, Lorraine, which she leaves in the hands of Christine Lampard and Ranvir Singh.

An account on X, tracking her attendance of her own show, has gained more than 10,000 followers.