Jan Leeming

Jan Leeming
Jan Leeming with a three year old Cheetah in Oudtshoorn, Western Cape, South Africa
Born	(1942-01-05) 5 January 1942 Kent, England
Occupation(s)	TV presenter and newsreader.

Jan Leeming (born 5 January, 1942) is a British TV presenter and newsreader.

Career

Born in Kent, England, and educated at the St. Joseph's Convent Grammar School, she worked as an actress and presenter in Australia and New Zealand before becoming a well-known face on British television in regional and children's programmes. After a stint presenting the BBC One afternoon show Pebble Mill at One between 1974 and 1979, she became one of the UK's best known newsreaders in the 1980s on the same channel for most of the decade, and also hosted the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest.

Shortly after she stopped presenting BBC News she revealed that she was a supporter of the Conservative Party, and made a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the party, which compromised the BBC's non-partisan political bias.

She has kept a relatively low profile since after leaving the newsroom in 1987, with bit parts and one-off specials including as a stand-in newsreader for the Channel 4's breakfast show The Big Breakfast during the 1990's. Her most recent appearances include making an appearance as herself in the film Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?, starring Tom Courtenay, in 1999; and latterly on The Harry Hill Show; So Graham Norton; Lowri; Good Morning Australia; Esther and Through the Keyhole. At the Barbican she presented the RAF Concert to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Since 2000 much of her time has been spent involved in corporate work and her long time passion working with a Cheetah conservation charity in South Africa. She appeared in Safari School, a reality television series, which was first broadcast on BBC2 during January and February 2007.

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

In November 2006, Jan was a contestant on the new series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! on ITV. Jan has done a record number of six 'Bush Tucker' trials. For one of the trials Jan volunteered and for the other five she was voted to do them by the British public. Some of Jan’s trials have included being lowered into a dark tunnel with various unpleasant creatures, shut in a box amongst snakes, jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet to catch falling stars and perhaps one of the most disgusting trials: having to eat various insects and Australian delicacies in order to win food for camp. During that trial Jan ate a vomit fruit and a witchety grub smoothie. However she refused to eat a kangaroo's eye, tongue, anus and reproductive organs. Jan was evicted on the 19th day of the series where she came 6th.

In November 2006, during I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, Leeming was given a fan base when Declan Donnelly started the fad by having mug saying 'Fan of Jan' and a badge saying 'Jan Fan'. This was after Jan had done a record number of bushtucker trials.

Personal life

Leeming has been married five times:

1. BBC sound engineer John Staple, in 1961 when she was 19 and he was 33
2. Estate agent Jeremy Gilchrist (1972–1973). It lasted just eight months
3. BBC Radio 2 announcer and news reader Patrick Lunt (1980–1986). Leeming and Lunt had one child Jonathan in 1981. They were good friends with RAF Red Arrows pilot Eric Steenson and his wife Robin. Four years later, Lunt married Robin and they are still together
4. RAF Red Arrows pilot Eric Steenson (1988–1995). Leeming became step-mother to Steenson's two children.
5. Kent headmaster Chris Russell in 1997. This was short lived.

On 22 August 2007 Leeming was a special guest in an episode of the live television programme Doctor, Doctor broadcast on channel Five, in which she talked with the presenter and GP, Mark Porter, about the clinical depression that she used to suffer from. She reported that she recovered with medical help, counselling and by taking the antidepressant medicine Prozac approximately 10 years previously, and that she had been free of the illness since.

External links

• Jan Leeming at IMDb