The One Show’s stellar double-act — Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley — swap teatimes on the Beeb for breakfast on ITV1 as they launch its new early morning show, Daybreak.

What sort of morning people are you both?

Christine Working on The One Show, we’ve only ever known each other from about 1pm…
Adrian And that’s been miserable enough – for her!
Christine At that time of day, Adrian’s woken up and warmed up a bit. So I don’t know what he’s going to be like first thing. But I’m quite a morning person. Okay, maybe not a 3am-in-the-morning person!
Adrian I’ll come in, put my contact lenses in, brush my teeth and then just do it. On The One Show we’d have a five-hour build up to every edition. That’s when we’d find things to argue about or I’d pick faults in the programme.
Christine Now we’ll arrive at the studio and 30 minutes later we’ll be on air for two-and-a-half hours. So there will be no time for angst beforehand.

How will you cope with the change in sleep patterns?
Christine I’ve got a plan. Whether it works or not is another matter, but I believe [former GMTV regular] Penny Smith did this. Because I like my evenings, I don’t want to go to bed at 7pm. It’ll depress me. So I think I’ll stay up till about 10.30pm or 11pm, then get up the next day, do the show, and then come home and kip for a couple of hours.
Adrian It’s a bit like being a jockey. To do that, you’ve got to be able to keep the weight down. To do this you’ve got to be able to manage the sleep pattern. The key to that is being able to sleep any time, anywhere. I know Christine can do it. She’s bloody Bagpuss!
Christine Are you going to say about the bike?
Adrian What? Oh yeah! Often, if we’re in a hurry, Christine rides on the back of my motorbike. One time I was going up the M4, taking her to the airport, and I felt this clunk on the back of my neck. She was asleep! ‘Flippin’ wake-up!’ Do you know what I mean? She just nods off! Nobody nods off on the back of a motorbike!

Adrian, did you always want Christine on the show?
Adrian Well, at its most basic it’s better the devil you know…
Christine It’s as simple as that!
Adrian There’s obviously a lot more to it than that. I know now what we’ll argue about. We’re like a married couple. We have three regular arguments – don’t ask me what they are, nothing salacious – but we’ll have the same three over and over again. So, I can deal with that.
Christine We already had an argument this morning about where to park!
Adrian The basic argument is that everything is always my fault. There is not a question of it ever being anything but my fault. So when I stop fighting that, that’s fine.
Christine That is nonsense!
Adrian The other thing, looking at it from the other angle, if it’s not Christine, then who? Picking somebody else is like pinning the tail on the donkey. It’s absolute guesswork. The best example of that is how we found Christine for The One Show. There were eight people, I think, trying out for the job. Christine was certainly about my fifth or sixth choice, frankly. That’s the fact of the matter.
Christine I didn’t really like him either, to be honest!
Adrian If you could see her audition tape, my complete contempt for her is absolutely plain to see.
Christine Do you know what? I’m going to release that some day.

Was Adrian a bit chippy, then?
Adrian I was having a bad day…
Christine I was really excited and really nervous to be there. I’m going, ‘Hello!’, and he’s like this [slouches, disinterestedly]. He wasn’t even looking at me! This is all on tape. So he’s like this: [Coolly] ‘You get here alright?’
Adrian I didn’t like her shoes. All her toes were sticking out of her shoes. I can’t bear that. So that annoyed me for a start. But the point I’m making is, we ended up with this great relationship. It was sheer luck. She was fifth choice! So, to find someone else, I know what would have happened. There would have been endless bloody meetings about it, and there would have been eight auditions. And then probably we would have made the wrong choice. The kind of relationship we have, they don’t grow on trees in television.

By Graham Kibble-White