As soon as Holly Willoughby announced last October that she was quitting This Morning, the guessing game about her replacement became as fervent as speculation over the next James Bond.
The only difference being that instead of hunting down despots who want to blow up the world, Holly’s replacement would be talking about air fryer meals for under a fiver, Brazilian butt lifts and how to find late-life love.
Three weeks ago it was revealed that Cat Deeley, best known for being Ant and Dec’s sidekick on Saturday morning kid’s TV, had landed daytime telly’s most prized gig, hosting alongside Good Morning Britain’s Ben Shephard.
Despite a shaky start, Ms Deeley was one ‘cool cat’ on her first day with co-host Ben Shephard
‘We’re having fun, aren’t we?’ trilled Cat to co-presenter Ben Shephard during their first show as the new presenting team, following Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield’s departure
Today was their first day in the job. And although both are old hands at live TV, things didn’t start well when Cat missed her cue and we caught the tail end of her private conversation with Ben.
‘. . . by this time next week,’ was what we heard before the 47-year-old Brummie realised she’d gone live.
What’s going to happen by this time next week? Will she finally have found a way of shutting up newspaper reviewer Gyles Brandreth who rabbited on so much about the Princess of Wales ‘photogate’ disaster that the rest of the show ran seriously behind schedule?
Maybe, by this time next week, Cat will have purchased an air fryer after committing This Morning blasphemy by admitting that she doesn’t own one. Doesn’t she know that’s like Question Time host Fiona Bruce saying she doesn’t pay much attention to politics?
Susanna Reid (left, Ben’s former Good Morning Britain co-star) was one of the celebrities who wished the duo well before their debut earlier today
The opening credits of This Morning welcomed Ben and Cat into the fold
Looking wholesome in ‘Geri Halliwell white’, Cat told viewers she was ‘excited’ to be there and that ‘This Morning has been part of our lives for so long’.
Not strictly true in her case, since she’s been living and working in America for 15 years, but let’s not get picky.
Cat and Ben’s first show kicked off with an overly long and rather dull chat about the manipulated royal photo, followed by a competition to win a holiday home.
‘We’re having fun, aren’t we?’ trilled Cat.
Not yet, but that was because everyone was on the edge of their seat waiting for the much-trailed ‘my bum-lift nightmare’ segment.
Poor Bonnie-Louise Cooper nipped out for a lunchtime ‘tweakment’ to enhance her backside and ended up in hospital with sepsis. Cat and Ben listened intently as she described having half a litre of filler ‘put directly into my bum cheeks’.
Strangely neither of them asked Bonnie-Louise why she didn’t just walk away when she clocked that the place offering the lift was an unhygienic beauty salon not a proper aesthetic clinic.
Ben and Cat listen intently to guest Bonnie-Louise Cooper (second right, next to This Morning’s Dr Zoe Williams) who had a Brazilian Butt Lift – but ended up in hospital with sepsis
But confrontation is not something This Morning does. It’s friendly, cosy and unthreatening.
Throughout the two-and-a-half-hour show, Ben did the majority of the talking while Cat nodded, smiled and made a lot of encouraging ‘uh huh’ noises.
It’s likely, after a long absence from UK TV, she just wanted to feel her way and not go in all guns blazing.
It wasn’t until the final segment – a chaotic Easter egg tasting with a bunch of kids – that we got a true sense of her humour and personality.
Mostly, she was friendly and professional. During touchy-feely segments her sympathetic head tilt was on point, but she kept her emotions in check – never looking glassy-eyed and on the verge of tears at any moment as her predecessor was prone to.
There was no immediate sizzling on-screen chemistry with Ben, but that would hardly be a reasonable expectation on day one. It was, however, a huge relief that Cat and Ben didn’t try to create some faux ‘TV hubby-wife’ vibe. We’ve all seen how badly that can end.
They got along just fine, but I doubt we’ll be seeing pictures of them on holiday together in Portugal any time soon, as we used to with Holly and her former co-presenter Phillip Schofield.
After so much anticipation, it has to be said that Miss Deeley was one cool cat, who did an admirable job of steering the scandal-hit This Morning ship back on course.
