Janet Ellis

Shows

Celebrity Masterchef (participant, 2009)

The Great Garden Challenge

Jigsaw

Just the Two of Us (participant)

Knock Knock

Let's Dance for Comic Relief (participant)

Biography

Another presenter who started out as an actress. Janet had bit-parts in The Sweeney, Doctor Who and "Jackanory Playhouse" before getting the Jigsaw gig. She did three years presenting Blue Peter as well, then seemed to vanish for a while, occasionally popping up as an advert voiceover, or in those YMCA fitness videos she did when they couldn't afford Anthea Turner anymore. Anyway, she's back on proper telly now.

Trivia

She is the mother of erstwhile pop warbler, Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Apparently she did some of the voices for bizarre Mexican-themed cartoon series El Nombre.

During her time on Blue Peter, she did two parachute jumps - impressively so, given that she suffered from a fear of heights. She broke her pelvis in the first jump, but was persuaded by the programme's editor, Biddy Baxter, to get back into parachuting once she had recovered. Apparently, when Ellis told Baxter that she did not feel too confident about it, Baxter told her to, "Think of your confidence as in ketchup in a bottle - if there's just a tiny bit of confidence in the bottom, turn the bottle upside down and shake it out!" No pressure, then - but hey, it clearly worked! A shame, then, that Ellis later fell foul of Baxter by falling pregnant (with her son, not with Sophie) while unmarried. Baxter was apparently not happy about having an unmarried mother presenting the programme, so Ellis was forced to quit.