Cover story
"Age-Gap Romance, What's the Problem?"
Good Morning Britain’s Ranvir Singh talks burnout, coping with negative comments and finding unexpected love
At the end of 2021, after a decade in breakfast television and five years as Good Morning Britain’s political editor, Ranvir Singh had hit a wall.
‘It was such an intense time in politics. I was at the White House, in Brussels every week for Brexit, there was the Jeremy Corbyn thing with Momentum [the left-wing organisation that supported the former labour leader]. Trump was tweeting every single day, I was in Helsinki one day, I’d be in Austria the next day. There was so much happening and I had a bit of a burnout,’ admits Ranvir.
‘I loved every second of it, but I thought, “I don’t think I can do another winter of it.” It was quite an intense experience. It gave me an enormous platform and I loved it, but I had come to the end of my daily joy of covering that level of politics in that much detail.’
Feeling ‘very lucky’ that her ITV bosses were ‘willing to listen’ to her hunger for professional change, Ranvir, 45 – who left her radio and TV presenting job at the BBC before joining ITV’s Daybreak, which became Good Morning Britain, in September 2012 – subsequently moved on from her political duties. She is now a regular host on GMB as well as Lorraine, often covering for presenter Lorraine Kelly when she’s away on holiday. Then in October last year, Ranvir became the host of ITV’s new daytime quiz show Riddiculous, which returns for a second series in early 2024.
There’s been a personal quantum leap too. In September 2020, Ranvir found love with boyfriend Louis Church, 28, a production secretary on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing. They met when she was competing in the 18th series alongside her Italian pro dancer partner Giovanni Pernice, and the relationship is, she confirms, her first in ‘a very long time’.
True love – and carving out more harmony between her work and private lives – has noticeably loosened up previously married Ranvir.
‘Life is definitely more fun now and I’m a slightly more fun person to be around outside of work,’ she smiles between forkfuls of feta salad – essential replenishment after her woman&home cover shoot. We’re chatting on the mezzanine in a plant-filled warehouse in east London before Ranvir rushes off to retrieve her 10-year-old son Tushaan from school, which she does twice a week now her work schedule has eased.
Ranvir, who started in breakfast television just five weeks after giving birth and has previously spoken of the mum guilt she suffered over never doing the school run, tells us, ’Two school runs a week might not sound very much, but when you’ve done none a week, that really matters. It’s really nice. We have our 20 minutes in the car to chat or he reads or he just as
