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TRAITOR OR FAITHFUL?
ITV plot six-figure deal to poach Traitors & Strictly star Claudia Winkleman from BBC to front major Saturday night show
ITV's current Saturday night schedule is devoid of women hosts
ITV is ready to offer The Traitors host Claudia Winkleman a six-figure deal to host its shows.
Bosses have sounded out the star for a Saturday evening show — but she would still host Strictly and The Traitors on BBC One.
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Claudia will be offered at least £500,000 to host shows on ITV as the channel tries to boost its number of female presenters.
It would see Claudia — who has co-hosted the Beeb’s Strictly Come Dancing with Tess Daly for the past ten years — land her biggest solo presenting gig to date.
A TV insider said: “ITV very much see Claudia as the presenter of the moment. She’s smart, fun, witty, hard-working and is so sharp she’s considered a safe pair of hands when it comes to live TV.
“That means she could pretty much tackle any project bosses could throw at her, and it might offer her the next step up in her stellar career.
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“There’s no suggestion that Claudia is about to quit Strictly, or that the BBC are concerned about her quitting the corporation entirely.
“But she has been exploring more avenues recently, guest hosting on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV and The Piano for Channel 4.
“And since The Traitors became such a huge hit, everyone has been after a piece of Claudia. It’s just that an ITV show is seen as a natural move for her.
“But they’ll need to offer her a deal that will make it attractive enough as she is believed to earn at least £150,000 to front Strictly with Tess and is likely to get more for doing the solo presenting job on The Traitors.
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“Together with The Piano, much of her year is already taken up with filming big shows.”
Although Claudia is now closely associated with the BBC, her first big TV jobs were on ITV co-hosting the game show Talking Telephone Numbers with Phillip Schofield in 1997 as well as fronting late-night dating show God’s Gift in 1998.
Her big shows on the Beeb began with Strictly spin-off It Takes Two on BBC2 in 2004. She moved to the results show in 2010, then the main show in 2014.
She has been hugely popular on Strictly, but The Traitors has seen her career really take off since the series began in 2022.
The format of the back-stabbing game of whodunnit has been a breath of fresh air, but many believe the show’s success is down to Claudia fronting it.
She won a string of awards for presenting the show alongside gongs for the programme itself from the National Television Awards, Bafta and the Royal Television Society.
The final of the second series, which aired last week, got almost seven million viewers but the final figure is set to be far higher once catch-up numbers are added.
A third series is being filmed soon and is likely to air later this year or early next year.
It is understood that ITV bosses viewed The Traitors with envious eyes, wishing they had managed to attract as innovative a programme with such a fitting host.
They also want more women hosting their prime-time shows, particularly at the weekends when, at present, the biggest female host is Holly Willoughby fronting Dancing on Ice on a Sunday teatime.
Last Saturday from 4pm until midnight, eight shows aired on ITV with a total of 11 men fronting them.
They were Ben Shephard on Tipping Point, Bradley Walsh on The Chase, Graham Norton on Wheel of Fortune, The Masked Singer with Joel Dommett, Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win, Gordon, Gino and Fred’s Viva Espana!, Big Zuu’s 12 Dishes in 12 Hours, and The Playboy Bunny Murders, hosted by Marcel Theroux.
It is a stark contrast to the 1980s and 1990s when the likes of Cilla Black on Blind Date and Ulrika Jonsson on Gladiators dominated the schedules.
Claudia became part of the first female presenting duo on a Saturday night TV show when she signed up for Strictly.
She has talked of viewers being more open-minded than ever when it came to who presents their shows.
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She said: “The public are now happy to watch men and women in their 50s, up to their 80s and 90s, on TV. That’s got to be good news.”
Claudia and Tess’s Strictly deal is expected to be up in a year’s time.
They are thought to be paid around £150,000 each. It is believed the BBC offered them a lucrative deal last time partly to avoid them being poached by rival stations.
Claudia insists she is grateful for the job and would do it for as long as bosses wanted her to, joking: “They’d have to prise my cold, dead hands off that shiny Glitterball.”
It is likely she is paid as much, if not more, to host The Traitors.
Meanwhile, next month she quits her Saturday morning BBC Radio 2 show, bringing to an end 16 years with the station.
She said she wanted to spend more time with her only daughter, Matilda, who is now 17.
Claudia said: “Time is going too fast, my daughter is getting ready to leave home and she was three about five minutes ago.
“I still have a little one who wants to be with me, don’t know how long that will last.”
Claudia has three children with her husband of 24 years, film producer Kris Thykier.
The eldest, Jake, 20, lives away from home while studying at university, while their youngest is 12-year-old Arthur.
Filming The Traitors takes her away from home for weeks at a time as the programme is made in Ardross Castle near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands — 500 miles from her London home.
As well as the third series being commissioned, a celebrity spin-off is also in the works.
A spokesman for Claudia declined to comment. ITV was approached for comment.
MIND GENDER GAP
CLAUDIA Winkleman’s arrival at ITV could not come at a better time for the channel as almost its entire Saturday night schedule is devoid of women hosts.
Last Saturday eight shows aired on ITV with a total of 11 men fronting them from 4pm until midnight.
Although ITV does have some female stars fronting big shows on other nights, they are often co-hosts with men.
The BBC was the first to have two women co-hosting a popular entertainment programme — Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins on the Great British Bake Off from 2010 until 2016.
Claudia and Tess became the first female duo on a Saturday night show when they joined forces for Strictly Come Dancing in 2014 following the departure of Bruce Forsyth.
They remain the only female duo fronting a major TV show.
ITV said: “We have a broad roster of female on-screen talent across our entire daytime and prime-time schedules.”
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