Lorraine Kelly reportedly left members of her ITV daytime team taken aback after changing up her usual Christmas tradition.
The TV presenter, 66, is thought to have swapped her usual festive gift of £25 vouchers for charity penguin adoptions.
The move, which saw penguins adopted through the Falklands Conservation charity at £29 a time, was introduced as a feel-good alternative to the annual vouchers crew members had come to expect.Â
However, the decision is said to have landed awkwardly with some staff, particularly amid ongoing budget cuts and redundancies at the broadcaster.
The presenter, who is estimated to be worth around £5million, has never hidden her fondness for penguins and has often spoken about her fascination with the species.
Her devotion runs deep and she famously keeps a life-sized Emperor penguin replica in her garden and even has a real-life namesake penguin at London Zoo.Â
Lorraine Kelly reportedly left members of her ITV daytime team taken aback after swapping her usual festive gift of £25 vouchers for charity penguin adoptions
Lorraine has also travelled to Antarctica and South Georgia, where she was photographed alongside the birds during a past expedition.
While the charity gesture was intended to spread festive cheer and support conservation efforts, its reception behind the scenes appears to have been mixed, with some questioning whether it was the right call at a time of uncertainty for ITV staff.
One source told The Sun: ‘People were pretty peeved, given that most of them were being made redundant anyway.
‘It felt like rubbing salt in the wound.’
Whilst another confirmed: ‘Many have said what a wonderful Christmas present it is to get.’
The Daily Mail has contacted Lorraine’s representatives for comment.Â
It comes after Lorraine shared how she hopes her audiences will ‘stay with her’ after ITV’s decision to brutally slash and overhaul her show.
She faced the brunt of the broadcaster’s huge cost cutting measures, with GMB now taking her 9-10am slot for 22 weeks of the year.
The move, which saw penguins adopted through the Falklands Conservation charity at £29 a time, was introduced as a feel-good alternative to the annual vouchers crew members had come to expect
However, the decision is said to have landed awkwardly with some staff, particularly amid ongoing budget cuts and redundancies at the broadcaster
For the remaining 30 weeks of the year, she will present five days a week, meaning her Friday stand-in presenters Ranvir Singh and Christine Lampard are no longer needed for the show.
Lorraine, who previously branded the changes as ‘heartbreaking’ but still refused to quit, said she ‘never takes her viewers for granted’ and hope they will weather the storm with her.
‘Hopefully the audience will still stay with us, because that’s the most important thing to me, is you know, that the audience are still enjoying what I do and the fact that people are so kind and they still watch after all these years,’.
She went on to reveal how her decades on TV has resulted in fans considering her a friend: ‘It’s something that I never, ever take for granted and I never take any, any of this for granted. I really don’t, because it’s, it’s an honour’.
Before going on to tell The Standard: ‘The show continues and obviously it’s only going to be the half hour… but you know what, we’re still here. We’re still here.’
Loose Women was also be axed for half the year, as ITV Daytime bosses announced huge cuts earlier this year with job losses in excess of 220.
ITV sources told Daily Mail that they have decided to cut resources on their daytime schedule so that the network can invest in more drama programmes.
