TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has said she thought nothing would be “as bad” as covering the Lockerbie bombing until she reported on the Dunblane massacre.
Kelly, 64, was speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to celebrate 40 years in television when she said that as a parent, the Dunblane gun attack, which saw 16 children and one teacher killed and 15 others injured at Dunblane Primary School in 1996, “hit particularly hard”.
She went on to say that when she covered the Lockerbie terror attack in 1988 she told herself that “somehow it wasn’t real” in order to avoid becoming too emotional.
A total of 270 people died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a terrorist bomb in the Scottish borders town on December 21 1988.
Asked about how those incidents had affected her early career, Kelly said: “I think Lockerbie, I was very young and very inexperienced, and the only way I think anybody got through that was thinking that somehow it wasn’t real, and you had to almost close everything off and just be very focused on the story you were trying to tell.
“And the reason that I love doing what I do so much, is we’re allowed to have emotions, we’re allowed to somehow try and tell everyone what it was like to be there on a story like that.
“I thought when I did Lockerbie, ‘nothing will be as bad as that’, the worst terrorist atrocity in Europe that there has ever been, and I thought, ‘nothing will be as bad as that’.
“Then Dunblane happened, and I think because Rosie (her daughter) was about two then, and I think when you’re a parent, it hit everybody hard, but when you’re a parent it hit particularly (hard).”
The Scottish presenter went on to speak about growing up in “poverty” and how it had shaped her career.
She said: “When you grow up like that, that’s your reality, isn’t it?
“And I had amazing parents, I mean, they were so young (18), I thought I was five months premature for ages, but mum and dad had to get married.
“But our house, there was always books in our house, they taught me to read and write before I went to primary school.
“I went to an amazing primary school, the teachers were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and really encouraged us, but yeah, there was real poverty.”
Kelly added: “(My parents) got married, moved into a one-room in the Gorbals with an outside loo and managed somehow, they just were grafters, I’ve learned so much from them.
“I’ve learned that work ethic, that you work hard, you’re decent to people, you treat everybody the same, and as I say taught me a love of reading, which has allowed me to do this job.”
Kelly began her journalism career on the East Kilbride News, turning down a university place to study English and Russian to join the newspaper, before joining BBC Scotland as a researcher in 1983.
In 1984, she joined TV-am as an on-screen reporter covering Scottish news, and in 1990 she began her presenting career on Good Morning Britain, before getting her own show, Lorraine, in 2010.
A special documentary on her career, Lorraine Kelly: 40 Unforgettable Years, will air on ITV1 at 9pm today, while this morning’s episode of Lorraine will also celebrate her career from 9am.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel