Laura Tobin: Piers doesn’t care if people like him, as long as they talk about him…
Laura Tobin talks about why her family are ‘pros’ at staying home, Piers Morgan’s popularity and the results of mixing work and home life…
Laura Tobin has been the cheerful, smiling face of GoodMorningBritain’s weather bulletins since 2014. The chatty 38-year-old has been married to hubby Dean for 10 years and is proud mum to Charlotte, three. But having Charlotte prematurely left the star spending almost a year at home, so lockdown didn’t seem quite so alien to her…
How have you survived the past few months?
Being home together has been a lovely novelty. We’ve been painting the living room, but it’s taking ages. Now restrictions are lifting, and we can see people, I want the DIY done already! When you have a toddler, you get nothing done. Funnily, lockdown is the life we lived for a year, after Charlotte was born prematurely. She was born in July and in hospital until October, and advice from premature baby charities is not to have too many guests and make sure everyone washes their hands. They also advise that you don’t go to supermarkets as people will want to look at your child, and end up breathing on them…
So, in a sense, did you feel more prepared for all of this? Yes – we didn’t have that initial panic. I remember telling Piers that Covid-19 will go on for a long time. It won’t end on a set day. A premature baby doesn’t go from unwell to suddenly well again. They get stronger, and you do exactly what’s happening in the UK now – relax your restrictions.
What about GMB – you were doing the weather from home until recently, weren’t you?
Yes, from my kitchen. In a world where getting up at 4am isn’t ideal, getting up at 5am was amazing – an extra hours’ sleep! Charlotte gatecrashed my weather at home the other day. It was the first time my husband had to go out to work, while I’ve been on-air from home. I had Play-Doh and colouring at the ready, so I tried to record an online weather report during a break and Charlotte walked over to chat to me – three times! GMB thought it was so funny, they showed it on-air. Luckily, Charlotte didn’t interrupt my live weather report!
How’s doing all your own hair and make-up been? Actually, Susanna Reid sent me a message the other day, saying my hair looked amazing on-air, which was great – because, like most people, I can’t wait to visit my hairdresser! I told her all about pin-curling – to save time in the morning, I curl my hair, stick it to my head with kirby grips, blast it with hot air and sleep on it. In the morning, I take it out, it’s all curly and we’re good to go.
Did you miss your GMB colleagues?
Yes, I did. Everyone’s lives were a little more distant. So it’s great to be getting back to the studio after 98 days! Though there are positives to the slower pace of life – it has been less stressful.
Controversy-loving Piers (recently Laura got caught out in a thunderstorm, and he called her ‘the world’s greatest weather forecaster’!) is enjoying a surge in popularity.
Oh, Piers doesn’t care if people don’t like him – he just likes to be talked about. But now that people who didn’t like him are changing their mind… well, he likes that! He does have this soft side, which he doesn’t like to show often. Piers has become the voice of the people. Right now, he’s got his journalist’s hat on – he’s asking the questions of politicians that few others will!
You must be worried about Kate Garraway (whose hubby, Derek, was hospitalised with Covid-19)...
I say my prayers for Kate and her family every night. It’s very difficult when somebody is in hospital for so long. My girl was premature and in hospital for three months. It’s a different situation, but that’s hard. You’re consumed by it. I’m mindful that she knows I’m here, thinking of her, as we all are, sending our love.
You must be glad Kate’s returned to work...
Oh, I love Garraway, she’s brilliant. She’s a calamity and so funny. She came to work once with a bird’s nest in her handbag. Kate’s dressing room’s always a mess, and somebody said, ‘Kate, there’s being a bit messy and there’s having an actual bird’s nest in your dressing room?!’ She said, ‘Oh, yes, it’s Billy’s art project, I’d better not leave it here, he’ll kill me!’
What are you looking forward to, as lockdown restrictions lift?
A holiday?! We were meant to be taking Charlotte on her first-ever plane this summer. Not happening. Our little girl, splashing about in a pool with a big slide, somewhere in Spain. That’s all we’d need. Our £40 paddling pool in the back garden will do for now!
TV presenter Fiona Phillips revealed last week that Covid-19 – which she previously told best had hit her ‘like a freighttrain’ and sent her to bed for three weeks in March, hasn’t entirely gone away.
Moreover, she’s worried she is not the person she was once because of it. ‘It’s still taunting me – a me that is not the same as the me I was before it came,’ confessed the 59-year-old.
She added, ‘The “Real Me” was fearless – not enough to gladly jump out of a plane for the hell of it and end up in the I’m a Celebrity jungle… but brave enough to present “live” TV and take on most work challenges without a heart flutter. I have lost that me, the me who was always eager to take on the day, and its challenges, with relish.’
Fiona was formerly the kind of person, she explained, who would wake up full of beans, loving every minute of her day, which very often she would finish off with a cosy date night with her husband, This Morning producer Martin Frizell, in a local wine bar.
But that woman seems to be gone – replaced by ‘a person I’m not familiar with’.
This unsure Fiona – who had to cancel two work events as she couldn’t bear the feelings of panic they brought on – is ‘jittery’, ‘over-the-top anxious’ and ‘panicky’.
Mum to sons Nate, 20, and Mackenzie, 17, Fiona also described her new self as a ‘tearful, insecure mum, whose personality change has prompted frequent knowing looks between her two sons’.
But she admitted that, compared to Derek Draper, Kate Garraway’s husband – still desperately ill from Covid – she’s ‘got off lightly’.
And, as she confessed, ‘I am far from alone in experiencing this horrible Covid hangover. I’m just one of an army of people still battling this ghastly thing.’
‘I have lost the me who was always eager to take on the day and its challenges with relish’
‘I’ve been conducting a wholly unscientific survey. In it, I ask people, “What did you miss most while in lockdown?” London media friends all said “my cleaner”. Other popular ones were nail bars, restaurants, and shops selling things we don’t need, which through the lockdown, turned out to be almost everything – apart from food and medicine.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the pub for me. It was humans, and the sight and sound of planes flying over, signs of life.
I also missed freedom – to make choices or decisions, and take risks.
But top of my missed list was common sense. Unfortunately, the government seem to have abandoned it forever, and it still hasn’t quite returned for at least half the population. Will it ever?