Lorraine Kelly, broadcaster

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lorraine Kelly is a journalist and broadcaster who has been a mainstay of daytime television for over 40 years. She has hosted her own show Lorraine since its launch in 2010 and she was awarded a lifetime achievement BAFTA in 2024.

Lorraine was born in Glasgow and later moved with her family to the new town of East Kilbride. She became a junior reporter at the East Kilbride News when she was in her teens and in 1983 joined the BBC as a researcher.

In 1984 she started at TV-am as a reporter covering Scottish news. During her time there she reported on some of the biggest stories in the UK including the Piper Alpha disaster and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

In January 1990 she became a co-presenter of Good Morning Britain on TV-am alongside Mike Morris. In 1996 Lorraine and Eamonn Holmes reported for GMTV on the Dunblane school shooting in which sixteen pupils and their teacher were killed. The tragedy left a lasting impact on Lorraine, who formed a lasting bond with several affected families. She returned to Dunblane in 2021 to mark the 25th anniversary with a commemorative documentary.

Lorraine lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband Steve.

DISC ONE: Starman - Davie Bowie DISC TWO: Mama Said - Dusty Springfield DISC THREE: Careful - Horse DISC FOUR: Rock the Casbah - The Clash DISC FIVE: Truth - Hue & Cry DISC SIX: Warm Leatherette - Grace Jones DISC SEVEN: Love is All Around - Wet Wet Wet DISC EIGHT: That’s When He Told Her - The Proclaimers

BOOK CHOICE: South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance by Sir Ernest Shackleton LUXURY ITEM: A solar-powered digital photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Careful - Horse

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

There are more than 2000 programmes in our archive available for you to listen to. We have cast away other journalists and presenters including Sir Terry Wogan, Christiane Amanpour, Lindsey Hilsum and Clive Myrie. You can find their episodes on BBC Sounds or on our Desert Island Discs website.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.4	This is the story of a book.
0:09.8	It's a wonderful book.
0:10.9	She's an immensely valuable writer.
0:13.1	Award winning, commercially and critically successful.
0:16.6	Then, cancelled.
0:18.3	It just infuriates me.
0:19.9	You're reinforcing stereotypes.
0:21.9	I remember feeling sick by page 8.
0:24.5	A culture war about race, class, and who has the right to say what?
0:28.9	I do not think that I wrote in any way a racist book.
0:32.7	Shadow World, anatomy of a cancellation.
0:35.5	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:37.3	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:42.1	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:49.5	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier
0:59.9	than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the journalist and broadcaster Lorraine Kelly.
1:27.5	Though let's be honest, in daytime TV, no surname is necessary.
1:31.2	There is only one Lorraine, a morning staple in British homes for some 40 years.
1:36.7	She was born in Glasgow and started out as a reporter on the East Kilbride News.
1:41.4	In time, she graduated to covering stories across Scotland for ITV's morning news.
1:46.4	She was one of the first reporters on the scene in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing,
	...

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