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Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, feature today's trailblazers.

My guest today is the managing director of daytime television at ITV. She controls the seven and a half

hours of morning flagship shows. Good morning, Britain, The Rain, This Morning and These Women.

In this department, she manages over 400 people.

Over lockdown, ITV's daytime viewing figures hit an 11-year high and peaked at 1.8 million in December 2020.

The talent on these shows have often gone on to become celebrities in and of themselves.

And with that, they have brought controversy. Household names include Holly Willoughby and Phil

Goldfield, along with Susanna Reid, who often clashed with co-hosts, Pierce Morgan. Morgan,

famously went viral last year after storming out the ITV studios after a disagreement about Prince Harry and Meg and Markle.

Behind the scenes for all of this was my guest today, Emma Gormley. So Emma, thank you very much

for coming on the podcast today and also for being here in person, which we always enjoy. To begin,

would you describe yours as a happy childhood and if not, how would you describe it? Well, very nice to be here, Katie, and thank you for inviting me.

Yeah, I had a really happy childhood.

I come from a really normal family, but really, really happy.

Not Mary Poppins, but a great family and a very close family.

So that's really, really important in my life.

My dad, who is now 82, you know, was the first person to buy his house, which he still lives in,

which is our family home. My mom was a nurse and worked with the NHS for 50 years. Unfortunately,

she's no longer with us,

but both really, really hardworking parents, you know, really instilled that into the three of us.

I'm one of three. I have an older sister and I have a twin brother who's 10 minutes older.

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