Jan Leeming
Contents |
Shows
Celebrity Masterchef (participant, 2009)
I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (participant)
Safari School (participant)
Biography
Best known as a BBC newsreader during the early-to-mid-1980's and also as a sometime host of Pebble Mill At One.
Before gaining national attention, she had been a theatrical actress in Australia and became Sydney's first female television newsreader prior to coming home for announcing/presenting stints at Westward, Granada and HTV West.
She largely dropped out of the public eye in the 1990s before re-emerging as a contestant on celeb reality shows.
Trivia
She sang 'Hello, Young Lovers' on 'The Russell Harty Show'.
In a famous BBC incident, a large studio lightbulb exploded while Jan was reading the news. To her credit, she kept much of her composure, before apologising and explaining to the viewers what had happened.
She ended up in hospital following a car crash while travelling to her new announcing role at Westward Television for the first time in 1965 - leading to a flood of cards and presents from viewers who had never seen her before.
Leeming endured another horrific ordeal in February 1987, when she happened upon some intruders in the BBC building shortly before she was due to read the late Sunday news. When she asked the intruders what they were doing, one of them sprayed ammonia in her face and stole her handbag: she was rushed to hospital and Christopher Morris filled in at the last minute to read the news. Thankfully, Leeming made a speedy recovery, but, not surprisingly, she was very shocked by the whole experience and she expressed her concerns about what the world was coming to in an interview soon afterwards. The offenders were sentenced to some years in youth custody.
On a lighter note, Leeming made an amusing appearance in a 1991 edition of The Generation Game. This involved a spoof newsreading sketch, which she and Bruce Forsyth demonstrated (even though she expressed disappointment that the latter, rather than the likes of Martyn Lewis or Peter Sissons, was to be her co-presenter). Naturally, the 'news stories' were all comical ones and the contestants then had to try to be newsreaders themselves, before being marked out of ten by Leeming.
She appeared in a celebrity edition of Eggheads alongside fellow-female journalists and newsreaders Angela Rippon, Jennie Bond, Sue McGregor and Rosie Boycott.
Leeming's most recent TV appearance was as a participant in 'The Real Marigold Hotel', in which she and five other celebrities went out to Jaipur in India to experience the life and culture there and to look into the possibility of moving out there permanently. We do not currently know whether Leeming did move there, but she was certainly looking seriously into it. She also appeared in a later edition of said programme, based this time in Cuba.
