Entertainment

Steph McGovern admits reservations about hosting new show from home

The former BBC presenter said she was a ‘very private person’.
The former BBC presenter said she was a ‘very private person’. The former BBC presenter said she was a ‘very private person’.

Steph McGovern has said she had reservations about recording her new Channel 4 show from home, as she wanted to protect her family’s privacy.

The former BBC Breakfast presenter, 37, is preparing to broadcast live from her Yorkshire residence because of new coronavirus lockdown rules.

She told the PA news agency she was a “very private person” who did not often talk about her family life in public.

She said: “I am a very private person in terms of my family and things like that.

“I don’t really talk about who they are or whatever, because I want to protect them, because I’m the media person, and this is my life, on telly.

“It’s going to be one room in my house and it’s no different really, I imagine, to anyone else who has got a kitchen and who has got a sofa and a few succulent plants, that I’m struggling to keep alive.

“I don’t have some massive, flashy house. Hopefully people will see it and go: ‘Oh, that looks a bit like mine.’

“And that will soon become not part of it, it will just be more like: ‘Oh, I wonder who she’s going to have on today’.”

The daily programme, which starts on Monday, was meant to air from a studio in Leeds.

McGovern came up with the idea while on maternity leave last year but was forced to adjust her plans following the outbreak.

She added: “I think it feels mad in one way, because I’ve never done things where I’m filming inside my house before, but equally, it’s mad times.

“Everything is surreal, everything is strange, you know, the word ‘unprecedented’ has never been used so much in our lives has it?

“And I just felt like we either postpone the show, because we’ve got to keep everyone safe, or we do it from my front room.

“And if you’d have asked me six months ago ‘How would you feel about doing a show from your front room?’ I would have said ‘No way’.

“But now I’m like ‘Yes way’ because I want to get on air.

“I’m itching to get on and start talking to people, do something fun and do what I’ve done all my career, which is just find out what’s going on out there, and do that with everyone together.”

The Steph Show airs daily on Channel 4 from Monday March 30.