So business sense said why would I go and work for them exclusively in this niche market?"That niche market has proved very useful to Holmes over the years, enabling his profile to grow to the point that even those who have never watched GMTV are well aware of who he is I ask him who he thinks of as his audience. "The next thing," he says, "it weed and pooed all the way down my coat."After moving into sports reporting, Holmes then joined the BBC in Manchester, where he presented a Friday night sports programme "It was brilliant," he says. "But then a new controller came to Manchester, and he wiped the board clean. From that I spent two years really scraping for work."Holmes built up a collection of presenting roles, including Pot Black, tennis and snooker tournaments, and The Holiday Programme. "None of them paid particularly good money," he says, "but collectively...
And then GMTV came along."He was the only presenter to refuse to sign an exclusive contract "I said absolutely not I was not going to put my eggs in the one basket again. But I love that idea of kicking the heel in and just going."When he was 20, Holmes got his first job at Ulster Television as a farming reporter "I knew nothing about it," he recalls. "On my first day I had to go a hill farm during lambing season." To illustrate the story, Holmes was told to lift up a lamb. And then you had to pick your point and say 'byee', and just go for it You might even throw up when you crossed the line. "The reason you stay in broadcasting," he says, "is that although there are many people in the field, very few are really very good And that comes back to school sport.
You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but I used to be a middle-distance runner. I've got the medals."You would get to the point when you wanted to be sick, and you could feel the breath of the person next to you. Started at The Observer in 1968, went to BBC, Independent and The Guardian.OBSESSIONS Low pay, social injustice.SHE SAYS "The underlying reason for remorseless social disadvantage remains a silent subject in Blair politics."Simon Jenkins, AGE 62WHERE HE CAME FROM Knighted in 2004. "He was a carpet fitter and a perfectionist at what he did," says Holmes. "When you see sweat breaking on a man's brow like that for little or no financial gain at the end, that hardens you up. Believe me, getting up at 3.30am is nothing to what my father had to do.