Christine Lampard has landed a new job on This Morning after ITV axed Loose Women and Lorraine for the summer.
On Friday, the programme announced that the 47 year old presenter will host the show alongside Craig Doyle while Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard take their summer break.
The next few weeks will also see Josie Gibson, Paddy McGuinness, Sian Welby, Angela Scanlon and Rylan Clark front This Morning.
Christine has regularly appeared as a stand-in presenter on the show since 2013, but this marks her prominent return to the sofa for the summer period. She has been an anchor on Loose Women since 2016 and has also stepped in to host Lorraine when its regular presenter was on holiday.
Last year, ITV announced that Lorraine and Loose Women would air for only 30 weeks a year rather than 52, a change that resulted in more than 220 of 440 staff involved losing their jobs. Lorraine's running time was also cut by 30 minutes.
ITV wrote: "Get your passports ready! From sofa to sun lounger, brighten up your mornings with our all-star lineup. This summer only on This Morning."
Fans reacted with enthusiasm to the news that Christine would front the show with Craig. One wrote: "Christine & Craig will be a blast along with the others." Another wrote: "Christine and Craig Our very own Irish duo." A third wrote: "Look forward to Christine and Craig."
Wider cuts to daytime schedule
The budget cuts to ITV's daytime schedule include halving Lorraine to 30 minutes and airing it only during school term times, along with cutting Loose Women's output to 30 weeks a year. Under the plans, production of Good Morning Britain will be handled by a dedicated team at ITV News, which is made by ITN, the company that also holds the contracts to produce the news for Channel 4 and Channel 5.
ITV Studios will continue to produce Lorraine, Loose Women and This Morning but is consulting on a plan to reduce the three separate teams to one, with This Morning being prioritised in terms of its celebrity bookings.
Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha previously expressed sadness over the show scrapping its live studio audience, which resulted in her close friend and colleague, warm-up artist Lee Peart, losing his job. She said she was totally devastated by this and could not get over it, both because the audience is so important for the show and because of her friend Lee, who she worked with every day.
Nadia also described the cuts to Loose Women as "brutal," explaining how tough the May announcement had been for staff. She said the show had been highly successful for 25 years, more actually now, and was such a clear brand.
The brutality of the world... what a lot of people don't realise is that we're self-employed, every contract is a new contract, I could be let go tomorrow or in five years, we're not employees.
She said what had been absolutely brutal over the last week, and that she felt tearful about it, was that hundreds of people were being made redundant out of the blue, including people behind the scenes who support the presenters in every way. She said it was the way of the world, that inflation is insane and cuts have to be made, and that many of her friends and colleagues at the show and at ITV had been there for decades, adding that it was upsetting to see people walking around numb with shock and fear about what they were going to do.
