Gaby Roslin: 'No Photoshoots Or Red Carpets For Me' - Just Working Hard 25 Years On

Gaby Roslin: 'I've Read You Don't Do Botox'

You won’t see Gaby Roslin on a red carpet any time soon, nor showing off her home and family on the pages of a magazine - "in 25 years, I've never done any," she says.

It's hard to believe she's been in our homes for so long, particularly with her fresh face belying her early starts (5am every day for breakfast radio and two daughters under ten). But if the presenter feels like the eternal girl next door, she can find some people taking her familiarity a bit too far:

"Everyone's very nice, but people can be very personal. They come up to you in the street and say,'Oh my god, aren't you thin in real life?' or 'Your jaw's so wide'. I've had someone come up to me saying 'I've read that you don't do botox' and she started pulling my forehead around like this' (she demonstrates on me, and it is indeed intrusive, let alone if it happened on the street).

So why put up with all that? "I love my job," is something she will repeat throughout our conversation. "I'm a working TV presenter and broadcaster, that's my job. I knew what I wanted to do from the age of three. I don't get paid much, because it's the BBC, but it's more than I was being paid in the paper shop when I was 15.

"I used to go to Broadcasting House with my dad (a newsreader) as a child, and dream of the day I would be able to work there, and the first day I got a key to a dressing room, I went in there and burst into tears, it just blew my mind."

Roslin, whose CV runs the length of presenter-led TV, from the jinks of Big Breakfast and Motormouth, to the ambitious City Hospital and even her own short-lived chat show, has taken on first-time home buyers for her latest project:

"I'm not a domestic goddess," she's quick to point out, of her role in First Homes.

"I'm just very nosey, and love knowing about people, and having a look round properties. In another life, I'd be a psychologist, so this is the perfect mix.

"I did Celebrity Fantasy Homes before, and it ended up being the psychiatrist's chair, as they all ended up talking about their problems. This is about first-time buyers, and we actually have some success, and some people do go on to buy their properties. Anywhere between £80,000 and £300,000 and we go in and look, and then I go back later and see if they've bought them.

"I'm there to get some stories out of people. It's all very real, they have their mortgages in place, they've saved the money, you feel like saying, 'have you really thought about this?'

When you get your first property, you have a fixed idea, and the fantasy isn't necessarily reality. You realise you bang your nose when you turn your head."

Roslin is convinced TV has changed for the better in her long tenure - "The viewers are more particular about what they watch."

More particular about which reality show - TOWIE or Chelsea, does she mean?

"At least there's choice for everybody," she defends her beloved telly. "And the most important thing is with that TV, you can turn it off or turn it over. You can't please everyone, even if, at the beginning, you want everybody to like what you're doing. As for me, I don't read reviews, or I'd never be able to work."

Has she ever felt part of the fight waged by Miriam O’Reilly, the Countryfile presenter staged a successful battle against the BBC for discrimination against older female presenters?

"Good for her for going and doing that and being exonerated," says Roslin discreetly, "but it's not something I've had to deal with because, thank god, I'm still working.

"I'd love to carry on my breakfast radio show with Paul Ross, I'd love to do a show about pets and animals, Saturday night TV if they asked, daily live telly. TV is my hobby, my first love, it's my drug of choice, and live broadcasting is my drug of choice. I'm always hungry."

First Homes is new and exclusive to Home channel, weeknights at 10pm from Monday 12th March (Sky 246, Virgin 265)

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