It’s only lunchtime and Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard have already put in a full day’s shift. But here they are, box-fresh, having been limo-biked straight from sofa to shoot, bantering away and diving into the coffee (black for Ben, splash of milk for Cat).
An hour earlier they were on the This Morning set interviewing a woman addicted to chewing bricks, discussing sugar tax with former shadow chancellor Alan Johnson and containing the toilet humour of comedy legend Joe Pasquale.
While Ben looks like he usually does – white T-shirt, dark trousers and flawless skin (‘I wear tinted moisturiser, even at weekends’) – Cat has changed from her TV outfit of cream Asda shorts and jacket into her off-duty, rather more upmarket uniform of vintage tan Celine biker jacket (‘it was half price’), Anine Bing silk top and wide-leg jeans.
Cat wears dress, Sea. Jewellery, Alighieri. Boots, LK Bennett Ben wears jacket and T-shirt, Reiss. Jeans, Scotch & Soda. Watch, Bremont. Boots, Untamed Street
More flirtatious in the flesh than on-screen, it’s immediately apparent that these sidekicks were destined to be together. I could be watching two people in the throes of first love. Our interview is in a vast hotel bedroom with more seating options than a Bridgerton banquet, yet the pair choose to wedge themselves next to each other on a floral two-seater, where much knee-touching and laughter ensues.
Is it really only five months since they were catapulted on to the still-warm This Morning sofa alarmingly vacated by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, following the well-documented annus horribilis of Britain’s best-loved morning show?
Cat with her SM:TV Live co-hosts Ant and Dec, 2001
‘It feels like longer!’ Ben jokes, as he elbows Cat and they cackle. But he immediately launches into a verbal love letter to his new work wife, so ardent you’d suggest they get a room, if they weren’t already in one. ‘We are so similar; the same things make us laugh. She’s quick, witty and smart and loves a bit of slapstick. I can’t get my head around how easy she is. She’s the first to laugh and take the mickey out of herself, which is a hugely important quality.’
She adds: ‘We talk about this all the time. I can’t believe how well we get on.’
Ben hasn’t finished: ‘She looks glamorous and she’s so stylish and insists on wearing ridiculously high shoes and she’s got all this hair. She’ll say to me after we’ve been eating on air, “Just check my teeth!”’ (Cat chips in: ‘He’ll say, “Clear!”’) ‘No airs and graces and you get the sense of this extraordinary, elegant, gorgeous, sophisticated, beautiful young woman. Honestly, she’s just like your mate down the pub. It’s brilliant.’
Blimey. To find chemistry this magnetic you’d presume that their This Morning appointment involved months of secret meetings and screen tests with ITV’s top brass. You’d be wrong.
The couple met for the first time ever on Sunday 10 March, the day before their first live transmission. She’d flown through the night from the States, where she’d been filming the TV show So You Think You Can Dance, and their meeting at the studio lasted just 45 minutes.
‘I couldn’t stay long as I had to take my boys [Milo, eight, and James, six] to football,’ Cat says. ‘There was no chemistry test, which flummoxes my American management. They said, “A US network would have spent millions on this”. Maybe they just worked their way down the list and said, “Cat? She’s around. Ben? Maybe. Let’s just stick ’em together!”’
Ben wears top and trousers, Orlebar Brown. Watch, Bremont. Boots, Grenson Cat wears shirt, The Frankie Shop. Jeans, Zimmermann. Earrings and rings, Missoma. Necklace and bracelets, Tilly Sveaas. Shoes, The Attico
They hadn’t even had a chat on the phone before meeting, despite Ben trying to track her down via his football buddy and her husband of 12 years, comedian and host of Ireland’s The Late Late Show Patrick Kielty.
‘I left a voice message for Paddy,’ he tells me. ‘I said, “I wouldn’t normally ask a mate for his wife’s number!”’ But somehow the message wasn’t passed on.
So they were basically strangers. A bold move, given that the entire nation had an opinion on who deserved the new permanent host slot, with Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary favourites alongside contenders Josie Gibson and Rylan Clark.
Ben was first to be poached from the next-door studio, where he had slickly co-presented ITV’s breakfast show Good Morning Britain for ten years alongside Susanna Reid and Kate Garraway. And while he was the more familiar morning face, as well as the host of popular quiz show Tipping Point, Cat, 47, is arguably the bigger star, having cracked America as the long-running presenter of So You Think You Can Dance and earning five Primetime Emmy nominations along the way.
After 15 years in the States, she moved back to the UK in 2020 and her name was first mentioned to Ben after she co-hosted some well-received stand-in shows with Clark. ‘I said, “Amazing, I think she’s incredible.” They thought I must know her and I said, “Nope!’’’ recalls Ben.
Ben and his wife Annie earlier this year
He admits he quietly checked her out with ‘the boys’, their mutual friends Ant and Dec, who presented the hit Saturday morning children’s show SM:TV Live with Cat in the late 90s. ‘Along with everyone else, they said we’d get on great.’ They weren’t wrong. Just a few days in, their new partnership literally gelled.
‘I’m ravenous by about 11.15am and Ben asked if I wanted a gum, which he then dropped on the floor,’ says Cat. ‘I picked it up, said, “Three-second rule!” then put it in my mouth. He said, “You’re the female version of me.”’
It’s hard to imagine this playful yet wholesome duo bringing anything murkier than dirty chewing gum to the doors of their ITV bosses. Which must be a relief after the soap opera that led to the fall of once golden couple Schofield and Willoughby. Accusations of queue-jumping the late Queen’s lying-in-state, which saw them reduced from national treasures to villains overnight, were just the start.
Schofield left This Morning ‘with immediate effect’ in May last year, following a rumoured falling-out with his co-star, a relationship once so close that their families holidayed together.
Then came the revelation of an affair between Schofield and a much younger male colleague, which he described as ‘unwise but not illegal’.
Five months after his exit, Willoughby announced she, too, was quitting the show after 14 years ‘for me and my family’ after being alerted to a plan to kidnap, rape and murder her. Security guard Gavin Plumb was jailed for life last month for the depraved plot that had a ‘life-changing impact’ on the star.
This Morning’s new golden couple last month
Ben and Cat are cagey when I ask them about their predecessors. She says she only knows them ‘a little bit’ and Ben, sensing her reluctance, dives to her rescue: ‘I know Holly very well and I’ve been in touch with her. She sent us both flowers when we started, and I got a message from Phil as well. They said it’s a special, precious show and you’re going to love it, just make the most of it.’ Cat adds, ‘It was the most beautiful surprise to get a gorgeous bunch of flowers and a handwritten note in my dressing room from Holly. So we’ve been texting, and we’re a bit like, “When the dust settles we’ll have a glass of champagne”.’
Did Holly’s experience, which put women’s safety at work back into the spotlight, make Cat nervous about picking up the mantle? ‘No, no, no. I don’t have to do this,’ she says firmly. ‘I could happily spend time with my boys. The reason I do it is because I love working with the team and with him,’ she says pointing to Ben. ‘The minute anything gets too much, I’d be out. It’s that simple. I’ve never lived my life being frightened of anything.’
There isn’t a whiff of diva about them and it’s impossible to imagine Brummie girl-next-door Cat or Ben, once described as ‘likeable with zero drama’, being embroiled in a scandal. Yet the scrutiny that daytime TV hosts are subject to must surely be a poisoned chalice. The tiniest detail, even Cat having an on-air coughing fit, will prompt a social media debate.
Cat with husband Patrick Kielty
‘I can’t tell you how unaffected Cat is by the scrutiny,’ says Ben. ‘She doesn’t look at any of it. I’ll send her the headlines of the day, the ones about me telling her to shut up or fleeing out of the studio.’
‘Or you scolding me and me being argumentative,’ she adds.
Nor have they been pressurised by viewing figures, which are up or down, depending on what you read and who’s saying it. ‘We’ve never talked about it. And the way This Morning is consumed is across a massive platform,’ says Ben, while Cat adds, ‘How many eyeballs are on your social media, for example? It’s something like four million people.’
They were, however, chuffed to discover that This Morning is the most-watched show for people working (‘or skiving’, jokes Cat) from home, with Ben’s Tipping Point at number three.
So far, they have slipped up just once, when Cat joked about having a ‘seizure’ as she danced on the show. The incident drew criticism from epilepsy charities and she issued a public apology. ‘I didn’t have to apologise,’ she stresses. ‘My intention was to mock myself, but I don’t want anyone to be upset.’ The pair are at pains to explain how they are ‘trying to navigate’ the landscape of cancel culture and seem mortified at causing any controversy.
It’s easy to see why they are regarded as a safe pair of hands. But is it a compliment or a kind word for boring? ‘Look, one of England’s best-ever goalies, David Seaman, was nicknamed Safe Hands,’ says Ben. ‘There are worse things to have as a moniker. I don’t agree we’re safe in that it means boring.’
Cat wears suit, Sandro. T-shirt, Anine Bing. Jewellery, Tilly Sveaas. Shoes, The Attico Ben wears jumper, Johnstons of Elgin. Jeans, Scotch & Soda. Watch, Bremont. Boots, Untamed Street
Both do agree that their new Monday to Thursday slot and long summer break suit their life stage. Cat’s Fridays and weekends are spent ‘in full-on mum mode’, taking her boys to parties, football and swimming, while on weekdays Paddy and their nanny do breakfast and school-run duties. Their boys are settled into local private schools in Hampstead, and they are renting while renovating their £4.9 million home, complete with granny flat for when Cat’s 75-year-old parents stay. ‘Derelict would be a better description than a do-er upper,’ she grimaces.
While Cat has lived with insomnia for years and averages five hours sleep a night, Ben enjoys a lie-in since leaving Good Morning Britain (‘My alarm used to go off at half three; now it’s 6.45am’). He turns 50 in December and as well as regular weight training to improve his bad back, he’s considering upper eyelid surgery (‘My dad and brother have already had it’).
He met his wife Annie at university 30 years ago, and they have two sons: Sam, 19, who is on a gap year, and Jack, 17, who is learning to drive. ‘I’m doing everything I can to maintain my alpha-male position as they’re both much taller than me.’ The family lives in a multimillion-pound home in Richmond, Southwest London, with a sprawling garden, tended by Annie, an interiors and garden designer. ‘But I’m bad at switching off and look at my phone a lot for work, which drives Annie mad,’ admits Ben. ‘I have ADHD, it runs in my family, so I can navigate several different channels at the same time.’
Living on opposite sides of London means the duo doesn’t see each other out-of-hours, but Cat has become friends with Annie, who has given her advice on everything from raising boys to which taps to put in the kitchen. It’s a world away from the terrifying incident in 2019 in the States that proved the catalyst for Cat and her family to sell their Beverly Hills mansion. Patrick and Milo, then a toddler, were forced to take cover in a restaurant kitchen after a gunman entered the mall they were in. Gun crime also made the couple reluctant to enrol their boys in a US school.
‘When you look round schools in America you have to ask what the protocol is if there is an active shooter. There is a special room, it’s all a bit scary,’ says Cat. ‘But coming home was more about having a safety net of family and friends around me. As a working mum I’m trying to do that juggle and if I drop the ball then they’re ready to help.’
Currently they’re both out of office – Cat and her extended family headed off to a beachside villa in France while Ben’s plans included a break in Devon and a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe to see his boys perform in a male-voice choir. They’re back on screen next week (2 September), no doubt to cheers or complaints, depending on who your favourite sofa combo is. Despite this, you get the feeling that the pair, with 50 TV years’ experience between them, are playing the long game.
Cat says, ‘All I know is it’s a pleasure to work with this chap here.’ And her chap quips back, ‘She struck really lucky. But I’ll grind her down.’ Somehow that seems unlikely.
This Morning is on weekdays from 10am on ITV and ITVX
Picture director: Ester Malloy.
Styling: Anna Hughes-Chamberlain.
Make-up: Caroline Barnes at The Wall Group.
Hair: Chad Maxwell at Stella Creative Artists using Oribe.
Grooming: Samantha Basham.
