It has been a difficult week for Lorraine Kelly as her longstanding morning ITV show is halved in size, but the resilient TV legend still has a lot to look ahead to with the arrival of her first journey presenting job on our screens next week. In Lorraine Kelly’s Norwegian Odyssey, she sails north through the nation’s fjords to uncover its gorgeous landscapes, wildlife, food and tradition.

Lorraine seems animated when she talks about her project in which she noticed whales and eagles, and ended her journey with a Northern Lights spectacle.

“It’s the kind of thing people like Michael Palin do,” she beams. “I adore him – he has got this great thing by which he takes you by the hand and says, ‘Come with me and I’ll show you’. I wanted my travel show to be like that. It’s a beautiful part of the world and I love Scandinavia anyway. When we saw the Northern Lights, even the expert – he’s called an aurora hunter, that’s his job – said, ‘Wow, this is very special tonight’.”

She hopes the sequence is a success.

“Because I’d love to do more travel – I would love to go to Greenland before Donald Trump annexes it!” she laughs. “That’s top of my list. That would be the dream.”

In the three-part sequence on Channel 4, Lorraine meets locals who are maintaining Norway’s wealthy historical past alive through people
traditions and Nordic tales. She also immerses herself in the crafts and culinary delicacies of the area. Viewers are taken on a spectacular journey which uncovers how the Viking period has left its imprint on the best way of life and panorama of Norway, but also in Lorraine’s home nation of Scotland, which was once sieged under Norse rule.

The brand-funded documentary was made in partnership with Hurtigruten, a famend Norwegian coastal cruise operator, with scenes filmed in the Arctic Circle.

“I did cod fishing with a line and I saw sea eagles close up,” Lorraine recollects. “I love them, so I got really emotional watching them. It’s like when you see whales in their natural environment.

“Norway is so clean and pristine. The sky is dazzling. The water is crystal clear. And of course, we did the sauna and jumped into the freezing cold water and all of that. I like wild water swimming but that was very cold. I have no idea what the temperature was. It was as cold as when I went to Antarctica – and just as spectacular.”

The broadcaster and journalist met some of the indigenous Sami people and went dog sledging, but on wheels due to a lack of snow. “I just love finding out about the way people live,” she says.

“It is interesting that the more you travel, the more you realise how much you’ve got in common with everybody else.”

Lorraine sounds equally positive about the recent upheaval to her eponymous breakfast show, which she has presented since 2010. Following ITV’s recent cost-saving measures to its daytime schedules, she now only has a 30-minute slot airing
30 weeks of the year. “Look, it’s a fresh page for 2026, which is no bad thing,” shrugs Lorraine, who won a BAFTA Special Award in 2024 for her services to broadcasting.

“Change is a part of life. It wasn’t my decision but I’m a realist.

“I’ve been through a lot of changes in my career and this is just another one. At least I’m keeping some of my team. I’ve made the decision to stay and we’ll make the best of it. Yes it’s shorter but it will be fine.”

The show has also moved home to former private members’ club The H Club Studio, along with Loose Women and This Morning, resulting in 200 job losses.

“We’re kind of resilient in our industry,” she explains. “You just crack on with things. You’ve just got to help each other as much as you can. Nobody’s got a job for life and the whole industry is changing.

“It’s all change, it’s all different, it’s all new. So you have to go with it or get left behind. So it’s in Covent Garden which is very, very dangerous, because you come out of work and you’ve got all these amazing shops, clubs and bars. I feel very grateful I’m still doing it. And we have the same crew – Ross King and Dr Hilary are both staying. The band is
not splitting up.”

Lorraine’s other recent big change was making her BBC Radio 2 debut in December, covering for Jeremy Vine’s slot during the festive period.

She talked about trail hunting, the perimenopause, non-paying customers and housing a homeless person over Christmas.

She says: “I’ve always wanted to do more radio, of course, and I’d love to do more now,” she says. “I’d like to parachute in, as and when. It’s an intimate relationship you’ve got with the listener. When I listen to the radio, it’s like they’re just talking to me, and that’s how it should be. You should feel you’re part of the conversation.”

In June, she releases her second novel The Island Secret, a follow-up to her hugely successful debut, The Island Swimmer, set in her beloved Orkney.

“There are a lot of milestones this year,” she says. “My book is out around the time the World Cup starts, which is obviously a huge thing with Scotland playing. And my daughter Rosie’s getting married in July. Plus, I’ll need to start working on the third book soon.”

She’s thrilled by her writing success. “I was really pleased that everybody realised I’d written it myself,” she says. “You can get, ‘Oh, there’s that lady off the telly.’ There was a wee bit of people going, ‘Hmm, can she actually do this?’ So the fact it was a blinking Sunday Times bestseller was amazing.”

However, she admits that writing her second book, which features “drama, dark secrets, and romance”, was more difficult than the first.

“It’s like when bands talk about ‘the difficult second album’,” she laughs. “You are more self-critical. Halfway through writing it, I thought, ‘have I used up all my material?’ Has the well run dry? It made me feel a lot better when Marion Keyes told me she’d experienced the same thing years ago. The deal with the publishers is four books in all, so I have another two to write.”

Yet she’ll never take her career success for granted.

“No, never,” she says firmly. “If you do, then you’re on a hiding to nothing. It’s a privilege to be in people’s houses every day and chatting to them. The amount of people who come up to me and say, ‘Oh, it’s like you’re my friend’. That is actually something, isn’t it?

“And they’ll ask me about my grand-daughter Billie and then I’m like, Yeah, do you want to see photos? Ten hours later…” She laughs at herself.

I tell her she must officially be the proudest grandmother in the UK, and she smiles. “Well, all grannies are. It’s the best thing. Billie wakes up smiling and giggling.

“I love going for naps with her and also reading to her. With Rosie I was working so hard, it was rush, rush, rush to get her to eat, read a story and sleep. Now I can take my time and savour every moment with her.

“She’s such a great kid. She just makes me laugh. At the moment she talks gobbledy-gook, she calls me Nana or Banana. Now she can recognise me on the TV, she shouts, ‘Nana’ at the screen. And on the rare occasions she stays with me and [husband] Steve, it’s the best thing in the world.”

Her broadcaster and writer daughter Rosie, 31, who is mum to Billie, is a great source of pride, and she speaks glowingly of her husband of 33 years, former TV cameraman Steve Smith.

They live in a riverside home in Buckinghamshire. “Steve still makes me laugh after all this time,” she grins. “He’s infuriating and I infuriate him, but we always end up laughing.”

At 66, she looks great. What’s her secret? “Maybe it’s the fact I’m pretty contented,” she says. “That helps. Contentment is really underrated.” She breaks into a smile.

“Honestly, I’ve not had anything done. No tweakments. And the more I see it – and you can tell a mile away who has – the more I think, no. People don’t know when to stop. But I really have to exercise a bit more. I mean, I’m all right. I’m okay. But I do have to get into a little bit better shape for the wedding this July. The only exercise I do is when I take the dog out.”

The conversation prompts a recent memory. “When I interviewed George Clooney, he said one thing about age and I told him
I used to be virtually 66 [her birthday was in November] and he said, ‘Well you don’t look it. God bless George. I’ll take that!’

“And I say this every yr. Try and do some facials and take care of myself, and issues like that. But I’ll strive in 2026. I’m going to be in the center of Covent Garden, so I’ve received no excuse.”

Any New Year’s resolutions for 2026?

“Make more time for people you love and don’t go out with people you don’t like – spend more time babysitting,” she laughs. I look at girls like Janet Street Porter and Gloria Hunniford and they’re just getting into their stride in their 70s and 80s. So I believe I’m still going to be there if people need to watch. Why wouldn’t I? It’s an wonderful job.”

Lorraine Kelly’s Norwegian Odyssey begins 8pm on Channel 4 this Thursday