Good Morning Britain's Susanna Reid says 'Piers Morgan toughened me up - he still watches the show'

Susanna Reid has presented breakfast TV for more than 20 years, so she could be forgiven for wanting a lie-in.

But instead, she’s looking ahead to another 10 years on ITV ’s Good Morning Britain, and her appetite for continuing to grill politicians or joke with a studio guest remains as large as ever.

“I’m a stick of rock with Good Morning Britain running through me,” she says. "I’ll be at GMB until they decide they don’t want me anymore. I love it. Honestly, there is no better job in broadcasting. Every day, you turn up at the same time and finish at the same time. But what happens between 6am and 9am is always different. It’s so dynamic. You feel like you’ve had a workout every morning. You can do anything once you’ve presented Good Morning Britain.”

The show marked its 10th anniversary yesterday, but it was the arrival of Piers Morgan as Susanna’s co-host in 2015 which made it begin to hit the headlines. Piers quit in March 2021 in a row over his comments about Meghan Markle, but his impact was huge – on the show, and on Susanna.

“I am still friends with Piers,” says Susanna. “We were doing a story about potholes last week. I got a text from Piers saying: ‘You are currently filming in the car park next to my home in Sussex. I can tell you personally what the potholes are like.’ So he still watches and tells me what he thinks. And, look, we are personally still very connected. He played a massive part in our show’s success. I’ve got a huge amount to thank him for. He made me a better broadcaster. He toughened me up. I didn’t just go on air and spar with the guests, I sparred with Piers.”

Susanna started on the BBC Breakfast sofa alongside the late, great Bill Turnbull in 2001, moving to ITV in 2014 after appearing on Strictly Come Dancing the year before.

She says: “Strictly brought me together with Good Morning Britain because I think, people do Strictly, and they get on people’s radars, don’t they? So I think I must have popped up on ITV’s radar. It was getting to the point at the BBC where, how much longer was I going to be able to keep going to Salford? I’d really enjoyed it. BBC Breakfast was firing on all cylinders. We’d successfully relaunched the show up there.

“And it just felt like: ‘OK, I could be back in London. I can actually launch a new show, Good Morning Britain, and have a new experience.’ When someone comes with a new opportunity, that felt like a good opportunity to make a change. And so that’s what I did.”

Her other co-hosts have included Ben Shephard and finance guru Martin Lewis, while she currently shares the sofa with TV legend Richard Madeley and former MP Ed Balls.

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She said: “Honestly, I love them both,” she says. “I love going to work every day because it’s never the same. And Richard and Ed bring such brilliant qualities to the program. Ed knows everything about how the political system works, so he can explain the mechanisms, the intricacies of a world we just can see from the outside. And then, Richard has boundless enthusiasm. He’s just so interested in everything, just has such energy. And is a unique broadcaster, I think we would acknowledge. Viewers just love him. He’s a legend. I love how it’s working at the moment. Nobody gets bored with each other.”

One of Susanna’s keenest memories is the morning after the Brexit referendum, when she got Nigel Farage to admit the NHS would not be getting the extra £350million which had been promised. She found the Grenfell tragedy particularly tough and close to home – she could see the towers from her mother’s house.

The show held the Government to account during Covid and beyond, to the point that the Conservatives seemed scared of the programme at one point. Susanna recalls: “We were absolutely rigorous in holding the Government to account, to the point where we then got boycotted by the Government for 100 days.”

Her upcoming aim is to interview PM Rishi Sunak in the run-up to the next election, having earned a BAFTA nomination for her Boris Johnson interview in May 2022. Away from the cameras, her family has also evolved alongside the programme. Her sons Sam, 22, Finn 20 and Jack 18, are now in the final stages of education. Susanna split from their dad, former BBC sports journalist Dominic Cotton, in 2014 after a 16-year relationship.

She says: “My youngest is about to finish school, so at every stage, there’s going to be the last time I take him to school. There’s going to be the last time I pick him up from school and that is quite an emotional feeling. I know lots of mums and dads feel like that. But my middle son still lives at home, and he’s at university. So they don’t seem eager to leave the nest.”

The harmony at home is such that Susanna doesn’t even need early nights. She says: “I always sleep well. My tip is, once you’re in bed, you’re in bed. Even if you can’t sleep, if you lie there, relax and rest, then that’s going to help. I’m not religious about going to bed early because I like to stay up and sit and chat to the boys. And that’s really important to me.”

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV1 and ITVX