TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has opened up about the moment she was told she had been sacked from GMTV, after she had just given birth to daughter Rosie

Lorraine Kelly said she was ‘stunned’ by the news(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Lorraine Kelly has candidly shared the distressing moment she discovered she’d been dropped from GMTV while on maternity leave with her daughter Rosie.

Reflecting on the instability of being a freelancer, the veteran TV host, 65, spoke about losing her job just before she was scheduled to return to work.

Discussing the precarious nature of her work, she said: “You know what it’s like, I’m freelance, so you work from contract to contract and back then it was only a year’s contract.

“And I had Rosie on June the 8th and I was supposed to go back to work end of August, which didn’t give me much time off, but that was the way it was.”

Describing the no-nonsense atmosphere of her early days in broadcasting, Lorraine mentioned how the industry attitude was essentially ‘if you’re not there, you’re not being paid’, reports the Scottish Daily Express.

Lorraine was sacked while on maternity leave with Rosie, now 31(Image: Getty)

She admitted that finding out about her replacement while away from work brought her to tears.

On the Bedside Manners with Dr Oscar Duke podcast, Lorraine recalled receiving the shocking news: “I think it was about a week before, I got a call from the boss just saying, ‘Well thanks for everything, but we’ve got someone else now, all the best’.”

She revealed her stunned reaction: “I just was so stunned I didn’t even say anything. I just went, ‘Oh, okay then’ and I put the phone down and I just burst into tears because I thought, I’ve got this tiny baby.”

The presenter shared that during that difficult time, her husband Steve, also a freelancer working as a cameraman, faced financial pressures alongside her due to their “massive mortgage”.

In a bid to land a new role quickly, the presenter recounted how she sent out tapes featuring her “best bits” to various firms.

She then revealed: “Then what happened was, I got a call back from them about a month later to say that they wanted to do a mum and baby slot twice a week, because they got all this sponsorship from whatever company it was.”

When asked about her initial response, the presenter confessed: “And of course, the Glaswegian in me that wanted to say, ‘bugger off’.”

The sacking led Lorraine on a desperate job search

However, she held back, admitting: “But I didn’t say bugger off. I said, ‘Thank you very much’ and I went in to do that just twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday for a couple of weeks and it did really well because people were really interested in it.”

Following GMTV’s replacement by ITV’s Daybreak, Lorraine became part of the new show before being offered her self-titled programme.

Reflecting on her journey, she said: “I ended up going from working really, really early hours with someone else [which is] not always easy, to having my own show.”

Lorraine expressed that although being axed from GMTV initially seemed like “the world [had] ended”, she eventually recognised “it was the best possible thing that could have happened”.

Lorraine eventually concluded the sacking was “the best possible thing that could have happened”(Image: Mike Marsland, Mike Marsland/WireImagevia Getty Images)

Since 2010, the presenter has been at the helm of her own show, which currently airs weekly from 9am for one hour.

Yet, last month ITV declared a reshuffle in its timetable, indicating her screen time will be cut starting January 2026.

Lorraine’s programme will be trimmed down to a 30-minute slot, and Loose Women episodes will also see a reduction from airing 52 weeks of the year to just 30.

This shake-up comes in the wake of an anticipated loss of over 220 jobs across the station’s daytime programming.