On television on a Saturday and Sunday night, they were always rather an odd couple.
Claudia Winkleman – quicksilver, effortlessly funny, gifted at reading people and situations – and former model Tess Daly, her Strictly co-presenter who, despite her undisputed beauty was none of those things.
Daly was hired from the first series of Strictly Come Dancing in 2004 as the ‘straight woman’ to Bruce Forsyth, seemingly to bring glamour, in the way that Bruce’s female sidekicks had done decades before in his family show The Generation Game.
But even devoted Strictly viewers found her manner stiff and her mini-interviews with contestants repetitive. On fan sites she was routinely known as ‘the Tess-bot’ – woundingly, this went on for more than two decades.
While Claudia made the role her own, the ringmaster of hilarity, tinged with hysteria in the upstairs holding pen which became known as the Clauditorium, unfortunate Tess was left looking decorative but deadly dull.
Claudia even came to outshine Tess in the style stakes. While Claudia liked to joke that she was naturally scruffy and with her iconic heavy fringe and eyeliner looked: ‘like a mature physics student who has been caught in the rain and slept in a skip’, with the help of stylist Sinead McKeefry she became a style icon for her trouser suits on Strictly and goth-tweed ensembles in The Traitors.
Tess’s look never evolved beyond a big bouncy blonde blow dry, good teeth and a tan.
And while Claudia’s career has never been in stronger shape since she left Strictly last October, Tess has been suffering from reverses and crises on all fronts.
Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly on Strictly… Tess joined on the first series in 2004, while Claudia began her stint in 2010
Tess started as the ‘straight woman’ to Strictly’s first presenter Bruce Forsyth
Claudia waltzed from Strictly straight into presenting Crufts on Channel 4, her own chat show on BBC1 and more iterations of the smash hit The Traitors; Tess is apparently weighing an offer of a show on Magic Radio and contemplating losses at her bikini firm, Naia Beach.
Even the news yesterday that Claudia is walking away from the option of a second series of The Claudia Winkleman Show on BBC1 simply confirms that she is at the peak of her professional powers.
As a source explained to me, she only does the shows she wants to do, and she didn’t enjoy this high-profile plum of a project, so that was that.
Claudia herself explained: ‘Sometimes you have to try something to see how it fits, and I realised I was just too nervous to enjoy it.’
Jeff Foulser, chair of the production and media company Sunset and Vine, who hired Claudia to present Crufts on Channel 4, said that her achievement in launching and fronting her own chat show remains considerable.
‘It takes journalistic understanding to be able to get the best out of people like the doyen Michael Parkinson. The whole of Crufts was in awe of her and she was fantastic… but you can never legislate for how people feel in front of a live audience,’ he said.
David Sumnall, who made the Channel 5 documentary Claudia Winkleman: Behind the Fringe, said: ‘If Claudia feels that she can’t make it work, then who can?’ He added: ‘The reason people like her is because she is so human: admitting she wasn’t enjoying it is something few would do, and is so refreshing.’
It’s also a move which can be made only by someone who has nothing to prove: saying that you are leaving the highest profile job of your career because it doesn’t suit you.
Claudia’s first job on TV was as a reporter for the BBC1’s long-running travel series Holiday in the 1990s
Claudia outside Windsor Castle with her MBE last year, alongside her father Barry, mother Eve Pollard and husband Kris Thykier
Claudia’s agent, Holly Bott, is one of the best in the business and has (along with Claudia) left the agency YMU and set up on her own, running a new talent business alongside Claudia’s film producer husband Kris Thykier.
Poor Tess, whose marriage to DJ and fellow TV presenter Vernon Kay ended this year, remains with YMU who don’t seem to have been able to pull off any magic strokes for her.
She and Vernon announced their split in May ‘with a deep sense of care and respect for one another’ and say that they have stayed friends. They have opted to settle their divorce cleanly and cheaply via online lawyers.
However, it’s notable that while Vernon always posts likes and loving comments on his wife’s Instagram, Tess does not return the favour.
She has apparently struggled to overcome lingering memories of the scandal in 2010 when he was caught out sending saucy texts to lingerie model Rhian Sugden, but they have also grown apart, as people can in 23 years. Their daughters Phoebe and Amber are 21 and 16.
Friend Vanessa Feltz said: ‘Not a soul in showbusiness is anything but gutted at the news Tess Daly and Vernon Kay are calling time on their marriage. They are likeable, cheerful and generous.’
Claudia, by contrast, remains happily married to film producer Thykier.
They tied the knot in a beautiful wedding in the South of France in 2000. They have three children: Jake, Matilda and Arthur, a dog Skip on whom Claudia dotes, and a starry group of friends on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to Kris’s contacts.
Tess was left looking decorative but deadly dull on Strictly, and she was routinely known as ‘the Tess-bot’ on fan sites
Tess’s marriage to DJ and fellow TV presenter Vernon Kay ended earlier this year
Home is a town house in central London and there is a country pad in the Cotswolds for weekends. Kris goes shooting with film producer Guy Ritchie (he and Claudia attended Ritchie’s wedding to Madonna) and Kris and Claudia are apparently red-hot bridge players.
There were few signs that Claudia would make it so big in her early years in television.
I used to bump into her a lot on the party circuit in the late 1990s. At the time Claudia was working on shows like the barely watched Liquid News and the truly awful gameshow Talking Telephone Numbers with Phillip Schofield.
In 1999 she fronted Trading Up, a car-based game show for Channel 4. She said: ‘If I tell you that while I was actually filming it, I had a small nap, does that give you an idea of how interesting it was? I don’t even like cars, I can’t even drive a car, I can’t spell car.’
She was always exactly the person you see on screen now – sharp, hilarious and entirely herself.
Winkleman is the daughter of Eve Pollard, the trailblazing journalist and newspaper editor, and Barry Winkleman, the book publisher. Her stepfather Sir Nicholas Lloyd was also a newspaper editor.
She once said that the family motto was: ‘Don’t worry about being interesting. Be interested.’
Claudia read art history at New Hall, Cambridge, and got her first job in an art gallery but left after four days, complaining of boredom.
Her first job on TV was a cushy one – reporting for Holiday, the long-running BBC travel series, in the early 1990s.
She also appeared on This Morning on ITV, once being sawn in half by a magician. She even appeared as a ‘dating expert’ on Good Morning with Anne and Nick in 1996. Her stint on the BBC’s Film show previously presented by Barry Norman and Jonathan Ross was not considered a great success.
Claudia waltzed from Strictly straight into presenting Crufts on Channel 4…
… and her own chat show on BBC1, for which she recently turned down a second series
It seemed she would do anything to try to establish herself.
And yet, after a good two decades of toil, she was made into a huge star by Strictly, the crown jewel of the BBC’s entertainment output.
She started out on the companion show It Takes Two, in 2004, and after six years became the co-presenter of the Sunday results show. Then, when Bruce Forsyth decided to move on in 2010, she stepped lightly into his loafers.
It helped that she was already friends with all the dancers, and knew the show inside out but she became a powerful factor in the continued popularity of the programme because she helped to make it fun to watch.
Danny Cohen was the BBC’s director of television at the time and says that the decision to promote her was easy.
He said: ‘She’s brilliantly talented but she doesn’t show off about it. She has that quality which the very, very best presenters have, which is you like being in their company, and you want to spend time with them.’
From 2022 she added another massive hit show, The Traitors, to her resume. Initially she was hesitant.
‘When the BBC asked me to go to Scotland for three weeks I was like, “Oh, thanks for asking…” I said, “No. I don’t want to do that.” They sent me the Dutch version and I was told to take a risk. I watched it and after three episodes I said I would get on the train and I am in.’
There were still doubts. Claudia said: ‘I remember phoning my husband and I said, “I think it is over. I have had a good run but I am standing in a field holding a ceremonial pouch with red pleather gloves which I got from Amazon. Put the kettle on. I will be back and we will not mention it.”’
Winkleman jokes that the reason for her success is simple.
‘I don’t think I’d have a career if I didn’t have a fringe. When producers can’t remember the names of potential presenters, they say: ‘Get the orange one with the fringe!’’
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