Ben Shephard says a Channel 4 executive told him, in his early twenties, that he was not very good at television and would be let go from The Bigger Breakfast. The 51-year-old now fronts This Morning with Cat Deeley and says the setback still fits the realities of TV hiring.
Channel 4 in 1998
Shephard said, “An exec at Channel 4 basically turned around and said, ‘I don’t think you’re very good at this’.” He added: “‘I don’t think you’ll ever be very good at this. I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go’.” That dismissal came in 1998, after he began hosting The Bigger Breakfast alongside Melanie Sykes and Dermot O’Leary.
The Bigger Breakfast ran on Channel 4 during school holidays from 1997 to 2000, so the job sat in a short, fast-moving slot rather than a long-form presenting run. Shephard’s exit from that environment shows how quickly a television role can turn on a single executive judgment, even when a presenter is already on air and building experience.
From The Bigger Breakfast to ITV
Shephard said he was “probably in my early twenties” when he was sacked. He later went on to work on The Xtra Factor and Goals on Sunday, then spent a decade on Good Morning Britain before moving to This Morning. The path is the point: one early dismissal did not end the career, but it did set up a long stretch of proving himself in a business where contracts can vanish fast.
He also said, “[Television] can still be really, really tough.” That line lands because it cuts against the smoother version of his present-day profile. Shephard now has multiple jobs, including Tipping Point and The Summit, yet he is describing a field where a presenter can be judged harshly before they have time to settle.
This Morning on 7 September
Shephard said, “I hope to remain on This Morning for many more years to come.” He and Cat Deeley are due back on Monday, 7 September, after a lengthy summer break, with Christine Lampard and Andi Peters among the presenters who fronted the programme in the meantime. The return gives the story a current edge: a presenter once told he was not up to the job is back in a flagship slot and still speaking like someone aware the ground can shift under him.
What comes next is simple enough. Shephard and Deeley resume the weekday 10am slot on ITV and ITVX, and the sharper question is not whether he has recovered from that 1998 dismissal — he plainly has — but how long TV keeps rewarding presenters who can absorb that kind of blow and keep moving.
