Shropshire Star

Still not worth getting up for Daybreak

I feel a bit of a fraud filing this Daybreak Watch update because frankly I haven't had the stomach to watch it this week, writes Tracey O'Sullivan.

Published

I feel a bit of a fraud filing this Daybreak Watch update because frankly I haven't had the stomach to watch it this week,

writes Tracey O'Sullivan.

I've dipped in for a few minutes at a time – all in the line of duty of course as determined as I was to see if they could make it work.

But I very much doubt it, at least not with Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley fronting the show. No three weeks in and they still haven't worked out what it takes to make it worth getting up in the morning.

I then began to wonder if I could keep up with the content without having to tune in. I mean most of the time you could keep an eye on GMTV thanks to headlines it created.

And that was afterall what Daybreak aimed to do – set the news agenda.

But this week any stir it has caused has just proved it is lurching from calamity to chaos. First there was Kate Garraway's wardrobe malfunction. A change of dress during the show amid claims the first frock was cut too low and exposed too much cleavage.

Now I wonder if Christine had any part to play in that quick costume change. She surely won't have wanted a fellow female presenter hogging that kind of limelight – especially when no-one has seemed to take much notice of her insistence on flashing her thigh as often as possible.

Then it was that "expensive view" taking centre stage again but for all the wrong reasons. From that very first fateful day audiences could see having the London skyline as a backdrop for a morning programme that is cloaked in darkness most of the year around was never going to work.

Depressing, dull and dismal are just a few words that spring to mind for how the studio and set look from 6am until almost 7.30am and that's only going to extend as winter progresses.

Why couldn't the producers see the folly in their floor to ceiling windows? Probably too busy drafting the Chiles/Bleakley formula for flirting. And what a complete waste of time that was. So now they are following it up by throwing good money after bad.

Now it has finally dawned for them – because the view certainly isn't doing that - they have dished out even more cash for St Paul's Cathedral to be lit from 6am when the show starts. Yes a light bulb going on moment but a little too late I fear.

And if we thought all that was bad enough the worst is yet to come. John Prescott has now joined the team as a roving reporter for the Labour conference next week although mercifully we will be spared yet another grumpy face – Chiles really is enough to contend with - when the Tory gathering comes around. Reports today suggest he was refused a press pass to join David Cameron and Co.

If only it were as easy to banish the rest of Daybreak.

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