The night Storm Huntley was born, an electrical storm raged across Glasgow.
Given that her mother had just finished reading a novel in which the protagonist was called Storm, her name seemed set in stone.
Not everyone in the family was thrilled, however. ‘It was very unusual back then, and I don’t think anyone else was that impressed with it,’ she said once.
‘My gran refused to call me Storm for the first six months.
She’d just refer to me as “the baby”.’ It might not be long, however, until Ms Huntley has a new moniker: This Morning presenter.
Ms Huntley, 36, who co-hosts Channel 5 show Jeremy Vine, is being hotly tipped to replace Holly Willoughby on the daytime show sofa, one of the top jobs in British television.
The presenter quickly became a hit with viewers on the Jeremy Vine show
According to bookmaker William Hill, Ms Huntley is 2-1 to get the role, with This Morning stalwart Alison Hammond at evens, Josie Gibson 4-1 and Rochelle Hume 7-1.
Ms Willoughby quit the show earlier this month ‘for me and my family’ after she learned that there was plot to kidnap her, an exit which came five months after Philip Schofield was ousted after the revelation that he had conducted a relationship with a younger colleague.
And while the rumour mill abounds with speculation – it is believed that Ben Shephard may join the show in January as a full-time replacement for Schofield, while other names in the mix include Davina McCall, Kate Garraway, and even celebrity couples such as Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty and Emma and Matt Willis – it is Ms Huntley’s name that keeps doing the rounds.
Even Vine appears to be taking the rumours seriously, writing on social media last weekend: ‘Note to self: first thing Monday morning, beg @StormHuntley to stay.’
Make no mistake, Ms Huntley, a former STV Glasgow weather presenter who has worked in television for less than a decade, might just be the next big thing on our screens.
An effective operator with a bubbly, girl-next-door persona, she runs live phone-ins on the two-hour Vine morning show with cheery aplomb, and afterwards hosts her own 90-minute programme entitled, appropriately, Storm Huntley.
Indeed, she has done much to establish herself in the same corner of the market as Ms Willoughby herself – approachable, clean cut and with a young family (Ms Huntley’s son Otis with her pop star husband Kerr Okan, lead singer of Scots band The LaFontaines, turned one in July) – and with both the Vine and Huntley shows on five days a week on Channel Five, has racked up an impressive amount of live TV in her short, but propulsive career.
All this assuming, of course, that a permanent replacement for Ms Willoughby is hired.
When Angus Deayton left the BBC’s Have I Got News For You under something of a cloud back in 2002, it was assumed it would be the death of the show.
Almost 21 years later they have never replaced him, instead employing a revolving cast of guest presenters that has helped a show that started in 1990 stay fresh and relevant.
Ms Huntley, left, with Jeremy Vine, is tipped to host the TV slot vacated by Holly Willoughby
Ms Huntley herself has remained uncharacteristically quiet on the topic, breaking her silence briefly last week only to remark that the speculation was ‘very flattering, but I think there may be a scheduling issue there’.
Intriguingly, TV was not where Ms Huntley, who grew up in Bishopbriggs, north of Glasgow, with brief stints at school in London when her father’s job took the family south, thought she would end up, despite the fact that she watched rather a lot of it.
‘I went from one extreme to the other [when I was young],’ she said once. ‘I thought “Oh, I’ll be a doctor” if I watched ER, “I’ll be a lawyer” if I watched Ally McBeal and then, “I think I’ll be an architect”.’
She studied economics at the University of Glasgow, because, she says, it ‘was what my dad did’, and while she was a student got involved in the university’s volunteer radio station Subcity Radio, and decided she fancied a media career.
Things, however could have been very different. When she was 18 months old, Ms Huntley suffered a horrific accident when she poured a boiling kettle over herself.
‘I’ve got some fairly big scars on my arm and torso,’ she said.
‘It was all over my face, too, but that has healed differently from the rest of the scars on my neck, my shoulder, my tummy, and my arm.
‘It was pretty bad but luckily I didn’t need to get any skin grafts.’
Nowadays she is fully recovered, but says she chooses her wardrobe carefully.
‘I love fashion, and I like to be smart, so wearing long sleeves that cover my scars isn’t difficult.’
After graduating Ms Huntley did a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism in London, then spent a year doing unpaid work experience before landing a job as a researcher on the travel desk at BBC Scotland.
‘The travel and weather departments were merging at the time, so I decided to study weather,’ she said. ‘Science and geography were my favourite subjects at school, so it came quite naturally to me, and I did an Open University course in weather.’
Holly Willoughby, right, with disgraced Philip Schofield, quit This Morning earlier this month
Her savviness led to a job presenting the weather on STV Glasgow, before she was spotted by CBeebies, the BBC children’s channel, and landed her first network show, Down on the Farm, with JLS star JB Gill in 2015.
Shortly afterwards, she auditioned for a presenting role on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, the forerunner to Jeremy Vine, presented by Matthew Wright, and got the job.
‘The Wright Stuff was kind of my big break and it was actually the first audition I went for in London,’ she said earlier this year.
‘I genuinely did not think I would still be here eight years later, but I now have my own daytime show on Channel 5.
‘It’s been an amazing experience to watch the show develop over the years from Matthew to when Jeremy Vine took over in 2018, and to be able to sort of grow with it.
‘When I started, I was still fresh to the industry, was single and in my 20s and now I’m a married mum. It kind of feels like I’ve grown up on screen.’
Ms Huntley met singer Okan in 2019, and the couple were engaged in 2020. TheLaFontaines, who released an unofficial national anthem for the Scotland football team when they reached the 2021 Euros entitled Scotland, Bonnie Scotland, have been together since 2008 and have made appearances at festivals including T in the Park, Reading and Leeds. Their 2019 album Junior made the top 40.
The couple married in 2021 on the banks of Loch Lomond and, in true Scottish celeb style, the marriage was officiated by TV presenter turned celebrant Carol Smillie. ‘She’s a friend of a friend of ours and we didn’t know that she did humanist ceremonies, so it was kind of perchance,’ Ms Huntley revealed. ‘So Carol came along and married us.’
Sadly Ms Huntley’s other celebrity chum, Hollywood A-lister Robert Pattinson, who she met while at school in London, was not in attendance, although the two remain close.
‘Rob and I were good friends all through high school, we got on really well and started school at the same time – he was the year above me – in London,’ she said once.
‘Rob’s dad said that on our first day I was apparently walking around the carpark balancing on a kerb stone. As I had no friends to talk to, he pulled up and said to Rob, “Oh, there’s a friend for you”.’
Ms Huntley suffered a tough pregnancy with Otis – she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and then later caught Covid – but although she took maternity leave from Jeremy Vine, she was back in the studio 12 weeks later.
‘I don’t think having a baby changed me in any way,’ she said. ‘Yes, you’ve got more things to think about, but you also stress less on the small stuff.
‘It definitely put things into perspective for me, but I don’t think it has changed my drive or my focus or my ambition. I just try to be very time efficient these days. And grabbing a rest when I can, like on the Tube home, just closing my eyes for 30 seconds and trying not to miss my stop.’
Indeed, she’d like another child. ‘I was an only child and I don’t want Otis to be an only child,’ she said. ‘I think it’s really important to have a sibling. So we are discussing at the moment when we will start trying for the next one.’
And she’s also started her own podcast on motherhood, Mums in the Making, with her friend Rachael Fulton.
‘When my friend Rachael, who I also worked with at STV Glasgow, told me she was having a baby I thought it would be a good opportunity to document someone’s pregnancy, warts and all. When I was pregnant there were a lot of podcasts that were fact based and had lots of experts on it.
‘I wanted to do one that was just chatting about the pregnancy and parenting, more conversational than factual. So we record a 45-minute podcast and then have a midwife from the NHS to fact check everything.’
Meanwhile, Ms Huntley has settled into the pressures involved in carrying a show that bears her name on Channel 5.
‘When I was given my own show I figured, “All I can give is the best of me and if that doesn’t work, then what else can I do?”
‘I sort of expected there to be extra pressure having my own show, but I’ve been working with the same people for years now.
Ms Huntley presented the weather for STV
‘It’s a very comfortable place for me, so I didn’t really feel like there was any more pressure.
‘I was probably more anxious when I started covering for Jeremy when he was off a few years ago.’
As her star has risen, Ms Huntley has been forced to deal with the odd bit of abuse online. In February she posted a picture of herself in a smart yellow dress on Instagram, only for one troll to respond: ‘Pregnant again?’
She responded saying: ‘Since when did this become acceptable? I am not pregnant but it’s fabulous to know I look it. This is not OK.’
As for the name? ‘It’s all fine now, and I love having an unusual name. But when I was younger I got teased incessantly.
‘I’ve heard all the lines possible, “she’s under the weather” or “there’s a storm brewing”, anything with a pun.
‘Now I just challenge people to come up with something original.’
This Morning presenter certainly has a nice ring to it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12681573/meteoric-rise-fame-tipped-replacement-Holly-Willoughby-former-Scottish-weather-girl-taking-daytime-TV-storm-huntley-glasgow-stv.html
