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Hour for hour Kielty is still the bigger TV earner
LATE Late Show host Patrick Kielty’s wife Cat Deeley may be set to become the family’s main breadwinner in her new job fronting This Morning in the UK… but she’ll work a lot harder for her paycheck than her husband does for his.
The Birmingham-born presenter is reportedly set to pocket €643,000 (£500,000) a year when she takes her place on the popular chat show alongside former Good Morning Britain presenter Ben Shepherd.
That’s over two-and-a-half times the €250,000 Mr Kielty gets paid for each season he presents of The Late Late Show.
But the Co. Down man may feel he has the sweeter deal, given the TV hours involved in each job.
This Morning’s last permanent presenters, Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, had around 12 weeks off a year.
If Ms Deeley’s contract contains similar holiday arrangements, she’ll be on screen for 10 hours a week – two and a half hours every Monday to Thursday – for around 40 weeks in the year. That works out at around €1,600 per TV hour.
Chances of a double act? ‘Slim to nothing’
Mr Kielty, by comparison, is contracted for 30 shows of around an hour and 40 minutes. That comes to about 50 hours per season, equating to approximately €5,000 per hour on screen.
Ms Deeley can at least boast the shorter commute to work. The family home is near St John’s Wood in London, just a few kilometres from where This Morning is filmed.
And given the very early starts involved with presenting a live morning TV show, it will now fall on Mr Kielty to get their two sons ready for school.
Ms Deeley and Mr Shepherd will hand off the presenting duties to Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond on Fridays – the day Mr Kielty flies to Dublin to host the Late Late, before heading to Belfast on Saturday mornings to present his BBC Radio 5 Live show.
Producers of both This Morning and The Late Late Show were at one stage rumoured to be attempting to lure the couple as a double act. ITV was keen to bring back a Richard-and-Judy feel to its longrunning morning talk show by signing the married couple up as a duo when they were in the process of replacing previous co-hosts Ms Willoughby and Mr Schofield.
But with Mr Kielty keen to become just the fourth permanent presenter of RTÉ’s 62-year-old chat show, producers had to look elsewhere for Mr Deeley’s co-host.
And the Late Late host was previously moved to scotch suggestions that his wife might join him in presenting duties in Ireland, saying the chances of Ms Deeley sharing the role at some stage were ‘kind of slim to nothing’. ‘There’s a saying, “Don’t get your money where you get your honey,”’ he told reporters. Ms Deeley presented a handful of episodes of This Morning last November in the company of Rylan Clark – reportedly her preferred candidate to co-host with before Mr Shepherd was signed up.
‘Don’t get money where you get your honey’
But commitments to the US ballroom dancing show So You Think You Can Dance, which she has fronted since 2006, meant that ITV had to wait patiently to tie down their top candidate. Mr Kielty previously guest presented on This Morning himself, standing in for four episodes in 2012.