There is a specific phone call dreaded by anyone with an ageing parent who has started getting ‘a wee bit confused’.For Lorraine Kelly, it came on a Saturday morning in January. Her mother’s voice was on the line, but the words weren’t coming.‘She couldn’t speak. I was saying, “Are you all right? What’s happened?”, and eventually she said, “I’ll pass you on to the police,”’ Lorraine recalls. ‘The officer asked if I had someone with me, if I could sit down for a minute, then said, “I’m terribly sorry but a body has been found and we’ve identified it as your dad.”’This was how Lorraine, 66, discovered that her beloved father John – ‘the man who gave me my curiosity about life. Some might call it nosiness, I prefer curiosity’ – had died.The detail was particularly distressing. John Kelly, who met Lorraine’s mother Anne when they were 17, was 84 and had a heart condition, had got up in the middle of the night and, inexplicably, decided to go to the shops in icy conditions. He was found in the morning by staff arriving for work at Tesco in East Kilbride.‘He’d been getting a wee bit confused,’ Lorraine explains. ‘Not badly, but just a bit, and we think he was looking for his inhaler, which was there all the time. But he got confused about time. They reckon he had a heart attack, which caused him to fall.’Initial reports suggested that he’d been lying, injured, for hours, but these were wrong. ‘That’s what my brother and I were worried about because it’s the worst thing you could think of, but no, thank God. It was sudden, over like that. Poor wee soul.’Five months on, she says she can ‘finally talk about it without dissolving into tears’, although the waves of grief can still overwhelm. Lorraine Kelly with her parents Anne and John in 2002... lately ‘he’d been getting a wee bit confused,’ she explains Lorraine says her dad was ‘the man who gave me my curiosity about life. Some might call it nosiness, I prefer curiosity’‘He’d been in poor health for a few years so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was such a shock. You know it’s going to happen, but you think, “I’ve not had enough time with him.” He could have been 125 and I’d still be saying, “I’m not ready.” There were things I needed to say, things I needed to do.’Several times in our interview she comments about what a big ‘blether’ she is, and mostly she misses just blethering to her dad. ‘Something will happen and I’ll think, “I’ll just tell Dad.”’The big one was the Artemis mission to the Moon. ‘My dad and I were space geeks. I’d watched the original Moon landings with him, and I’ve never seen a happier man than when I took him to Nasa. When Artemis was happening, I reached for the phone thinking, “I have to be speaking to Dad.” Then I thought, “Oh…”’She tells me that by the end of that awful phone conversation with the police, she had been booked on a flight to Scotland. Her husband of more than 30 years, former TV cameraman Steve Smith, leapt into action at their home in Buckinghamshire, ‘as he does, because he’s smashing. That call was 9am, and I was on a 10.45 flight. There was only one seat and it was to Edinburgh not Glasgow, but Steve said, “You just get on it, and I’ll follow up in the car.”’The solo journey was the worst of her life, but getting off the flight Lorraine was approached by a fan and asked for a selfie. It didn’t occur to her to say no. ‘People are always nice to me,’ she explains. ‘This woman was lovely, absolutely lovely. She didn’t know, and it takes two minutes to do a selfie. It was fine, but it was strange, and it did bring it home to me that you never know what’s going on in people’s lives. You just don’t.’We’re meeting today in Lorraine’s publishers’ office in London to talk about her second novel – a warm, Maeve Binchy-esque family saga set in Orkney called The Island Secret, out on Thursday. The book is a sequel to Lorraine’s first novel The Island Swimmer, and again features Evie, who had returned to her island roots and has built a new life. Then, in the best literary tradition, a stranger gets in touch, claiming to be a long lost relative. ‘It’s about family secrets, community, friendships,’ says Lorraine. ‘But all set on lovely Orkney, which is one of my favourite places in the world’. With Lorraine being the ultimate blether we also cover subjects as diverse as Mariah Carey (‘when she came on the show she had a person whose job it was to hold her chewing gum’), why she needs to be more Mary Berry (‘I slouch and she’s so elegant’), her views on influencer culture and Made In Chelsea’s Binky Felstead expecting free cakes (‘I don’t get it’) and why she’s possibly a better grandmother than she was a mother (she has more time to jump in puddles now than she did with her own daughter in the days when she was worrying about Anthea Turner nicking her job).An hour in Lorraine’s presence is a bit like being on one of her shows – when they ran for that full hour. We lurch from her weeping about her dad to laughing hysterically because there are two large doughnuts on the table which remind her of a breast cancer awareness campaign that involved her posing – à la Calendar Girls – with buns strategically covering her assets. The Scottish TV presenter once interviewed Buzz Aldrin, which made her dad proud as the father and daughter were 'space geeks' Lorraine takes a selfie with her parents who moved from their family home to a flat in East Kilbride some years ago. She called them every day, and now she checks in with her mum, who’s 84‘In our case it really was that cliché of needing bigger buns. And they couldn’t get buns big enough,’ she laughs. ‘Our producer ended up coming back with two cottage loaves, which he painted white and stuck a cherry on top.’She’s a hoot, but there’s a lot of heart there too, which presumably explains why she’s one of the great TV survivors, having clocked up 42 years in the industry. What a year 2026 has been for her, though – her very own annus horribilis.As well as losing her dad, she lost much of her work family (tellingly, she talks about them as ‘my clan’) in January. Her show bore the brunt of brutal ITV cuts that saw job losses in the production team, air time slashed to half an hour, and its ‘run’ during the year reduced to the point where it now broadcasts for only 30 weeks annually.There’s no denying that she was devastated. ‘It was a tough start to the year,’ she admits. ‘I was so sad that I wouldn’t be working with these amazing people any more. Then my dad died.’Was there anger mixed with the sadness when it came to the axe falling at work? Did she shout, swear (she’s surprisingly sweary off air), throw a Mariah-level strop? ‘No,’ she says vehemently. ‘I’ve never done that, and I never would. It never gets you anywhere. I’m a realist. I know what the world’s like. I was at the BAFTAs recently and everyone was talking about the cuts in the TV industry being across the board. Even the big period dramas are having budget cuts.’She talks about the time when she was replaced by Anthea Turner. Her daughter Rosie was a baby, and she thought her career was over. ‘I basically had a VHS of my greatest hits and a baby under my arm and I went round every bloody TV station in England and Scotland saying, “I’m available.” But that’s how it is. If you are freelance in TV you live from year-to-year contracts. Lorraine has presented on breakfast TV for over four decades and claims she has done every 'daytime slot there is. I’ve started at 3am, 5am, 9.30am'There are an awful lot of advantages to the job, but there is no job security whatsoever. TV execs change things. It’s just what they do. They change the cushions on the sofa, they change the presenters, they change the pictures on the wall.’There is a sense that she feels fortunate the show was preserved at all, but also an acknowledgement that there could be battles to come in daytime telly. ‘Personally, I think that what we have to do now – and I don’t know if everybody in Tellyland agrees with me – is hang on to those loyal viewers who have stuck with us, and not go chasing young ones, because they aren’t there.’ She lifts her phone. ‘They are on these, they are on their devices.‘Of course you want to make shows that appeal to young people, but not at the expense of those who have been loyal to us. Our core audience is women over 40. Talking generally about TV – with a show like mine, but also with drama – recognise that the core audience is the 40-plus and 50-plus bracket, and hang on to them.’That said, it’s been an eye-opener for Lorraine to have suddenly found herself with a lot of free time. She wouldn’t have chosen it, but it’s been nice to be able to breathe, she says. ‘Oh my God, what a revelation. It’s been incredible to have two months on, then two months off. It’s been like emerging blinking into the sunshine.‘I’ve had time to do more writing, which I love. I’ve done some travel shows for Channel 4. And having time to spend with Billie [her granddaughter, who turns two in August] has been incredible. With Rosie I was always rushing about, trying to get to the nativity plays and parents’ evenings. There were a few years where I spent half the week in London and they were in Scotland, and Steve was like a single parent for half the week.’Things are different now, and Lorraine knows she has options. Her contract with ITV is up next year, and the latest reports suggest she hasn’t signed a new one yet. Is she thinking beyond the channel? Possibly. She chats away about all the shows she has fronted, those she has ‘counted in and counted out’. That clock has been relentless too. ‘I think I’ve done every daytime slot there is. I’ve started at 3am, 5am, 9.30am.’She hasn’t done an evening show of her own, though… She sits bolt upright. ‘Ooooh, no, I haven’t. Lorraine Unleashed. Can you imagine?’ she asks (answer: yes). ‘I would love that. Something live – I prefer live telly. When you pre-record they say, “Can we try that again?” which makes me want to say, “Must we?” I’d love to do a show where I can just let rip, but in a funny way.’ Not in a shocking, risqué, late-night way? More peals of laughter as she thinks of her poor mum. ‘Oh God, no. My mum would be so upset. That’s why I don’t have sex scenes in my books.’With Lorraine, all roads come back to her parents. Her dad was ever so disappointed when she rejected the chance to study English and Russian at university because she got offered a job on the local newspaper.She would have been the first of the family to go to uni. ‘He wanted the graduate picture in the gown on the wall, but luckily my brother Graham got all the degrees.’ She redeemed herself, though, by interviewing Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon.Her parents moved from the family home to a flat in East Kilbride some years ago. She called them every day, and now she checks in with her mum, who’s 84 and offers critiques on everything from her TV outfits to her interviewing technique.‘She’ll say, “What on earth were you wearing, hen?” or, “You had Joan Collins on and you never asked her…” With parents like mine, you’d never have smoke blown up your bottom.’How’s her mum coping with widowhood? ‘She’s doing OK. There’s a spare room in my house with an ensuite which has her name on it. She won’t hear of it, but Steve said to her – and I’m glad it was Steve – “Anne, we can pack up the car now and you can come and live with us.”But she’s happy in her flat and she’s got wonderful neighbours. There are quite a few women in the block who have lost their husbands and there’s a great sense of community there.’Lorraine thinks for a bit. Her parents were together for 67 years, but women are wired differently, perhaps. ‘I think it’s a blessing that my dad went first. I don’t think he’d have been able to cope if my mum had gone first. I think he would have died of a broken heart. I really do.’The Island Secret by Lorraine Kelly is published in hardback, eBook and audiobook on June 18 (£20)