Lorraine Kelly has admitted that there was one person to whom she did have to divulge her secret identity from The Masked Singer.
The 64-year-old broadcaster stunned fans when she was revealed to be Owl on the popular reality show hosted by Joel Dommett in January, having sung the likes of S Club 7’s Don’t Stop Movin’ and Kylie Minogue hit Padam Padam.
Many had not connected the dots as to who she was, but Lorraine has now explained that she did tell her husband, Steve Smith, ahead of time because of logistics meaning she would be away filming.
Due to this, she did not want her cameraman spouse to get the wrong end of the stick.
Appearing on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, host Graham joked: ‘We always think of you as an open book, lovely Lorraine, she’d never lie to you, [but] you didn’t tell anyone you were the Owl on Masked Singer?’
‘I’m so sorry about that!’ chuckled Lorraine before sharing that she had told Steve – and why.
‘So, I had to tell my husband because I was away doing it and he would have wondered where I was and thought that maybe I was having a fling with somebody! So I did have to tell him,’ the ITV star said.
Steve and Lorraine, who have been married since 1992 and share daughter Rosie, 29, live in a riverside property in Buckinghamshire, while Glasgow-born Lorraine also frequently travels ‘home’ to spend time with her mum Anne who resides in East Kilbride in Scotland.
Graham also said that Lorriane ‘didn’t need to tell anyone’ as, despite thinking he was ‘hopeless at this show’, he claimed he ‘immediately’ knew it was Lorraine, as soon as she opened her mouth to sing.
After revealing that her eye holes were hidden under Owl’s little beak – not that she could see anything anyway – Lorraine called the experience ‘madness’ and ‘like a stress dream’.
However, she was thrilled she had decided to do it.
‘It was such good fun, I just thought, “Do you know what? This year I’m 65, and I’m going to do silly things” and that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever done – and that’s saying something!’
Rosie didn’t give anything away when filming her reaction to her mum’s big unmasking, as the writer and podcaster shared a clip of herself with her feet up watching the moment on her Instagram page, but remained silent.
Stars who take part in The Masked Singer are encouraged to keep it secret from everyone, including close family and friends, to avoid any spoilers leaking ahead of the pre-recorded shows airing.
Lorraine, who was promoting her new book The Island Swimmer on Graham’s sofa alongside Jodie Foster, Olivia Colman, Wand Sykes and Austin Butler and Josh Brolin from Dune: Part Two, recently responded to the infamous X account that was set-up to track how often she presents her own morning show.
The broadcaster has hosted her own programme on weekdays at 9am since 2010, but in recent months fans on social media have been taking note of the fact that Lorraine often has half-term off (despite her daughter Rosie being a grown-up) and that on Fridays, Christine Lampard and Ranvir Singh frequently step in.
The most recent update shared that Lorraine had hosted 24 episodes out of 34 (70.5%) this year so far, with Ranvir was on six and Christine Lampard on four.
This week ‘Bonus Lorraine’ appearances were noted as being made on other ITV programmes, including This Morning, which airs directly after Lorraine and is filmed in the same building.
The presenter had been absent from her own show but was starring as a guest on the likes of This Morning, The One Show (and now The Graham Norton Show) to promote her new novel.
Lorraine has now reacted to the infamous account, saying on Woman’s Hour: ‘The amount of space I occupy in people’s heads is quite bizarre.’
‘It’s fine, I don’t mind, I don’t care,’ she added.
She went on: ‘You should never comment on things like that if you don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives, but I am having to take quite a few Fridays off because my mum is really not well.
‘So I can go home now and spend some more time with her and help her more than I’ve been able to.
‘So that’s happening now but that will change. I’ve been doing five days a week for 40 years so I’m just taking a wee bit of time off.’
After her statement, the ‘Where Is Lorraine?’ account also shared: ‘It feels apt to say now that of course we respect that Lorraine may need more time away to look after her mother.
‘There is, and never has been, any malice behind this account. It is all for fun and we are happy that @reallorraine seems to understand that.’
The Graham Norton Show airs Fridays from 10:30pm on BBC One. The Masked Singer: The Final airs at 7:20pm on Saturday on ITV1.
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