Johnny Vaughan, Emma Crosby, Natasha Kaplinksy, Sian Williams and Dan Lobb could all be considered for the breakfast TV job. But which would you choose?
There's little to dwell upon about the departure of Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley from Daybreak. At very most, Chiles might grow a scruffy protest beard like he did when The One Show made him unhappy, but that's about it. In a few weeks they'll be gone.
Which means it's time to start speculating wildly about who will replace them. This, largely, depends on what sort of show Daybreak wants to be. Bleakley was seen in some circles as too lightweight when it came to handling big news stories, from which we can assume that Daybreak wants to beef up its current affairs in order to compete with BBC Breakfast. That's why the likes of Natasha Kaplinsky and Sian Williams have been put in the frame.
But there's a difference between competing with BBC Breakfast and simply hiring its cast-offs in the hope that nobody will notice. In any case, Daybreak is a different animal from Breakfast: you can hire all the hard-nosed journalists you want, but they'll have to be comfortable linking to an insultingly easy competition package where Keith Chegwin goons around next to a swimming pool every half an hour. And, given the way that Daybreak quickly became a bad GMTV clone when viewers started registering their disgruntlement, these flinty newshounds should probably get used to the idea of broadcasting nothing but stories about fat dogs and funny-shaped vegetables after a couple of weeks.
So who else is there to choose from? One of the few positives to come from Daybreak's calamitous first year is the stand-in hosts. Kate Garraway is, of course, an old hand at the breakfast stint, while Dan Lobb is steadily building a fanbase of his own. Could they be suitable replacements?
Another option being flung around is something called "the Anne and Nick effect", whereby a couple of unknowns – Anne Diamond and Nick Owen, for example – get flung together without much fuss so that viewers can watch their chemistry blossom. It's worth remembering that this is largely how Chiles and Bleakley rose to fame on The One Show, before footballer boyfriends and bearded grouchiness got in the way.
But there are plenty of other options. If Daybreak wants to be more irreverent, Johnny Vaughan is leaving his radio show soon. If it wants approachable glamour, former GMTV host Emma Crosby would probably jump at the chance. And then there's dear old Eammon Holmes.
Holmes had emerged as something of a lead contender to replace Adrian Chiles on Daybreak, largely because he kept parping on about how much he'd like the job all the time. And, to be fair, he would have been a steady hand. But this morning Holmes ruled himself out of the race.
So who's left? There's one name that hasn't been mentioned once since the Daybreak seats became vacant, and this seems like a tremendous oversight. Why not have Lorraine Kelly present the whole show for three-and-a-half hours every day? She's been the most popular part of ITV mornings for years, so it makes perfect sense to just let her sit there and say how lovely everything is again and again for 17-and-a-half hours a week.
Who would you like to see replacing Chiles and Bleakley as Daybreak hosts? Your comments below, please.
