Lorraine Kelly has said breast checks are part of staying healthy so she can be a granny, as she plans to watch her two-year-old granddaughter Billie grow up. The 66-year-old chat show host, who launched the Change + Check campaign for breast cancer awareness, has changed her lifestyle to get as fit and healthy as possible.
Glasgow-born Lorraine said: "I want to be around for her as long as I can. Being a granny has given me a new lease of life. It's a whole different world." She added: "I've really changed my lifestyle since Billie was born. I very rarely drink. Not that I was battering it but I'd have a drink at the weekends I don't now. I babysit. It's my real job."
Staying Fit for Billie
Lorraine attends weekly strength classes and goes swimming to stay fit enough to keep up with the tot, who is her daughter Rosie's little girl. The presenter and husband Steve are also regular gym goers and enjoy walking their dog in Buckinghamshire, where they live after moving from Dundee.
She added: "I love taking Billie to the park or soft play but toddlers are super fast. You've got to be alert and aware and be able to follow them."
The Scots star knows about immobility. In 2012 she was thrown from a horse and trampled during training for a charity event. The horse stamped on her right thigh, missing her femoral artery by millimetres. She had a four-hour emergency operation and spent months in recovery.
Lorraine said: "I was very, very lucky. If that horse had smashed my pelvis or been an inch to the left or right I might not be talking to you now. It makes you realise no one is invulnerable."
Campaign for Awareness
Lorraine, who grew up in East Kilbride, revealed that her accident has left her terrified her granddaughter could take up horse riding. She said: "It's not my responsibility, it would be her mother's, but I'm really, really worried. That would be a tough one."
Lorraine's drive to promote long and healthy lives for women also prompted her to launch the second annual National Check Your Boobs Day last week. It's part of the annual Change + Check campaign, now in its seventh year, which Lorraine and her close friend Helen Addis, who beat breast cancer, created to raise awareness of the disease.
Lorraine said: "It's the most important campaign I've been involved in. It's so close to home as it happened to Helen."
This year the NHS will make the Change + Check poster available to all GP Surgeries, while 100 Asda stores around the UK will encourage shoppers to pledge to check themselves with a Check-O-Meter. Women who can't get to a store can pledge via ITV's Lorraine website.
Impact and Statistics
More than 250 women, including Davina McCall – who revealed she saw the sticker in 2024 while on Masked Singer and caught her breast cancer early – and one man have approached the show to say the sticker made them check and discover they had cancer.
In Scotland the chance of dying from breast cancer has dropped by 11 per cent in the last decade but last year breast cancer was the most common cancer in women in Scotland, with 1000 women dying a year. A survey for Asda found a third of the UK still don't do checks, with Scotland the third worst area at 37 per cent.
Last year, then prime minister Keir Starmer endorsed the Change + Check campaign and Lorraine says First Minister John Swinney will follow suit. She said: "I'm hoping the Change + Check stickers will be all over the Scottish Government. If they aren't I'll go up there with a load and stick them in all the toilets and changing rooms."
She added: "I don't want Scotland to be lagging behind so the more elected representatives can do for us the better whatever party they are in, I don't care, when it comes to cancer it's cross-party."
The star is also very aware of cancer. While she hasn't had a scare her mum's mum, Granny Mac, had breast cancer. Lorraine said: "I always, without fail, go to the mammogram check and check myself in the shower every couple of weeks. It always makes you more determined to look after yourself."
Since Change + Check began in 2019 the Lorraine show on STV has promoted the campaign by performing at the Palace, climbing the O2 and closing the Royal Variety Show with Marti Pellow. Last year Lorraine went topless, inspired by the Calendar Girls, to show off her "big buns".
She said: "A producer had gone out and got us these wee buns and they weren't doing the job. He had to go out and buy two cottage loaves and had to paint them white because there wasn't enough icing. We were howling with laughter. If anybody had a giggle at me looking silly that's grand if it gets the message across. It wasn't bare boobs though. No one wants to see that, let's be honest."
It's been a great year for Lorraine after daughter Rosie married Steve White at Andy Murray's Cromlix hotel, near Dunblane, in July. She also released her second book The Island Secret and is back on our morning screens after an incredible career of over 40 years.
The Change + Check campaign continues this month on Lorraine, weekdays from 9.30am on STV, STV Player, ITV1 and ITVX.
