Katy Hill has revealed how landing her dream job as a presenter on the BBC’s flagship children’s programme Blue Peter left her battling insecurities over her body – after a producer told her she was fat before filming her first episode.
The former presenter, 54, became a household name when she joined the show in 1995 as the fearless girl next door, hurling herself out of planes and flying with the Red Arrows.
However, off-camera she was reeling from a remark that made her question how she looked on screen.
Speaking on the Shall I Delete That? podcast, the Dorset-born star said: ‘When I landed the job, somebody – and he’s a really lovely guy, so I won’t name him – but he was high up on the show, and he said to me, “Now, you need to think about it because you’re a bigger girl and you don’t carry yourself very well on camera”.
‘I was a size 12-14. So imagine you’re going on telly in front of 15 million people – you’re already out-of-body terrified, and then someone’s told you you don’t move very well.’
The average dress size in the UK is 16.
Former Blue Peter presenter Katy Hill has revealed how a BBC producer said she was fat before even hosting her first episode of the children’s show
The former presenter, 54, became a household name when she joined the show in 1995 as the fearless girl next door, hurling herself out of planes and flying with the Red Arrows
Katy added: ‘It’s amazing that I don’t and have never had an eating disorder of any kind because I know most of the TV girls that I was with at the time definitely suffered from bulimia and anorexia. That was rife. A lot of people did drugs because that was a way for them to stay skinny.’
The presenter now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband, television presenter-turned-producer Trey Farley, and their two children, Kaya, 19, and Akira, 15.
Katy also recalled being mortified when producers styled her as a character from the 1920s to mark her status as the 22nd presenter, dressing her in vintage clothes and barrel curls.
‘I looked awful,’ she said. ‘They went, “And here she is, presenter number 22!” I remember standing there going, I don’t even know what my name is. Kids must have thought, who the hell is this?’
The comment about her weight stuck with her throughout her career. On screen she began standing at an angle to make her shoulders appear smaller – a habit that continued years later.
‘All those early episodes of Blue Peter, I’m standing slightly side-on to camera because I sussed quite early on I’ve got quite Amazonian shoulders,’ she explained.
‘If you were slightly side-on, it’s more flattering, and it made you look smaller. So my whole life on TV, I was always at an angle. And by the time I was on Live & Kicking in the Noughties, it was all angles. Like, if you look at me there, it’s all, like, legs out here, arms over here.’
Katy added that she often found herself the target of cruel whispers from women behind the scenes, telling: ‘We used to have communal changing rooms. There’d be like 12 people in one room.’
Katy also recalled being mortified when producers styled her as a character from the 1920s to mark her status as the 22nd presenter, dressing her in vintage clothes and barrel curls
Katy left Blue Peter in 2001, after which she moved on to present BBC Saturday morning children’s show, Live & Kicking, for a year
‘I’d strip down to my underwear and was suddenly very aware that nobody was getting changed anymore. And you’d feel 12 eyes on you and you’d hear whispering of, “oh, she’s got a bit of cellulite” or “my boyfriend really fancies her, but wait till I tell him this”. Like, looking for the negative. And it was so hard because I’m so supportive of women, and I always want to big women up.
‘That was a strange time to live through because of feeling like you were under that scrutiny. But thank god there was no social media because I would never see messages where people would go, oh…
‘The thing I found hardest is the belief that just because somebody’s on TV, they’re fair game, and they think highly of themselves, and I never did. I wanted to do a particular show. I didn’t want to be on TV per se. That was just kind of where I got to do all the amazing stuff that I got to do, but I never thought highly of myself.
‘And to this day, even in school playgrounds, there are women who approach you to bring you down because they think that you think highly of yourself. It’s a very strange thing.’
Katy left Blue Peter in 2001, after which she presented the BBC Saturday morning children’s show, Live & Kicking, for a year. But even when she left TV, the pressure remained.
After her exit, she revealed how her agent insisted they make her ‘a bit more sexy’ and suggested Katy do a magazine shoot for a lads mag.
She explained: ‘I’d shunned the lads mags forever because everybody did those, and it’s like, that’s not who I am. I’m not about to stand there in my underwear. So I was like, absolutely not doing underwear. So she managed to agree that we would do swimsuits in Barcelona.’
After Katy left Blue Peter, she revealed how her agent insisted they make her ‘a bit more sexy’ and suggested Katy do a magazine shoot for a lads mag
Despite throwing herself into the gym and overhauling her image, Katy was left devastated when the magazine came out.
She said: ‘They’d chiseled my chin, elongated my legs, shrunk me. They even made my green eyes brown. She looks a little bit like she should be in Avatar. It doesn’t look like me at all.’
Katy moved into radio after TV, fronting Heart Breakfast and Capital FM.
However, by 2017 she realised she was ‘living a life by default, not design’ and walked away from broadcasting before retaining as a life coach, helping women build the confidence she enjoyed promoting on TV.
‘Back in the day, I was inspiring girls to play bigger by demonstrating it and jumping out of planes,’ she said. ‘Now I support many of those same girls as women. I love watching people step into a level that’s even bigger than they thought possible, because there is so much noise now, and so much to bring women down still.’
She added: ‘I think we are, in many ways, living in an amazing time to be a woman. There’s obviously challenges, but I think if we can focus on the good bits, and everything that’s available. Own who you are. Ditch the comparisonitis. There’s a you-shaped hole in the world. And if you don’t step up and have your impact on the world, that impact is lost.’
Katy’s revelations come after former Blue Peter host Yvette Fielding shared how she was molested by predatory paedophile Rolf Harris while she was a fresh-faced teenage new-start on the BBC programme.
Katy’s revelations come after former Blue Peter host Yvette Fielding shared how she was molested by predatory paedophile Rolf Harris
The Most Haunted star joined the show in 1987 at the tender age of 18 but was was assaulted by the pervert in a TV studio within two years of starting.
She said: ‘It was very confusing and shocking — just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking, “I don’t know what to do.”
‘Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and (they) left me alone in the studio with him. That shouldn’t have happened. I must have been 18 or 19. I think a lot of them did know.’
In an interview with The Sun, Yvette said she also had a ‘grotesque’ encounter with Jimmy Savile in which he took her hand and started stroking it as he said: ‘Look into my eyes and tell me what you’re thinking’.
She added: ‘From what I heard, certain things were brushed under the carpet — and that should never, ever have happened.’
