Cat Deeley opened This Morning with a joke about the power being restored as she and Ben Shephard returned to ITV following a day of disruption. The programme was back on Thursday (November 5), after a power cut in the area around ITV's Covent Garden studio forced the broadcaster to replace Wednesday's live edition with a pre-recorded best bits show.
Hosts joke about power restoration
Welcoming viewers, Cat said: "Hello there and welcome to your Thursday's This Morning. Back up and running, someone's stuck 50p in the meter, we are all good to go."
Ben explained: "There was a power cut across the whole of Covent Garden apparently, which meant that we weren't on air. But despite that, your hair is looking rather lovely this week."
Behind the scenes during the outage
Cat then revealed that she had still managed to get her hair done during the outage, reports the Mirror. She said: "There was one lamp working, so we did it by lamp light; the water was still working at that point, and then I put my highlights in."
Ben also thanked the crew for restoring the broadcast: "Thank you to the team that managed to get everything back up and running again, because it was a lot of hard work. But fingers crossed we are fully charged, and we are ready to go."
Disruption to ITV's daytime schedule
Cat added: "We are, and we've got a lot coming up for you over the next two hours."
The outage had disrupted ITV's daytime schedule on Wednesday (November 4), preventing Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women from broadcasting live. Good Morning Britain presenters Susanna Reid and Ed Balls first told viewers that Lorraine could not go ahead. GMB stayed on air until 10am to cover the gap.
This Morning's live programme was then replaced by a best bits edition, while Loose Women was also unable to broadcast live. ITV issued a statement on social media explaining the disruption: "Following a power cut overnight in the wider area where our Covent Garden studio is based, we are unable to broadcast Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women live today. We will return to our normal schedule as soon as possible."
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
