Alison Hammond has revealed she initially said a flat “no” when she was asked to take over as co-host of Fridays on This Morning.
The presenter began hosting one episode of the ITV daytime show a week alongside Dermot O’Leary in January, after years as a contributor on the programme.
However, the promotion was not something Alison was keen on when ITV bosses first put it to her.
Speaking to Fabulous magazine, she recalled: “I was like: ‘No, I’m not doing that. It’s massive.’ I’d done Fridays before with Rylan [Clark-Neal], but this was committing to every week. I kept thinking: ‘What if I don’t want to do that Friday?’
“The whole time at This Morning I could say yes or no and I could get out of it, but now it’s ‘Fridays are your day’. It was daunting.”
Alison and Dermot replaced long-standing Friday hosts Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes, who now only present during the school holidays.
Despite the success of their new partnership, Alison admitted she has no desire to take over from the show’s main hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.
“No, no, no! Five days a week? Absolutely not,” she said. “It would be too much.
“I don’t live in London and you have to read all the briefs the night before. Just Friday is fine for me.”
During the interview, Alison also gave fans an update about her own chat show she was rumoured to be in talks for back in 2019.
“There was supposed to be a pilot for a chat show, but it never happened because of Covid,” she said.
“Trisha [Goddard] used to have a chat show. It’s gonna happen. We need The Alison Hammond Show. I’d love that. I needed that NTA, that would have made it happen,” she joked of losing out on the Best Presenter gong at the National Television Awards to Ant and Dec.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
