Upbeat and girlish, One Show presenter Christine Bleakley is happy to chat about friends, family and her forthcoming Sport Relief challenge to water-ski across the Channel. But she comes over all coy when Jane Gordon asks her how it’s going with footballer Frank Lampard. And just don't call her a Wag

There is probably only one thing you can say to Christine Bleakley that is guaranteed to stop her smiling. The relentlessly cheerful presenter of The One Show is renowned for her ability to keep grinning whatever adversity – her upcoming Sport Relief challenge to water-ski across the English Channel, for example – comes her way. But just whisper the word ‘Wag’, and the expression on her lovely face becomes as glum as that of her curmudgeonly co-host Adrian Chiles.

‘I am so not a Wag,’ Bleakley (pronounced Blakely) squeals defensively when I mention the publicity surrounding her new relationship with Premier League footballer Frank Lampard. ‘No! Look at me,’ she says in appalled tones, as she runs a hand through her untamed, naturally curly hair.

It’s true that 31-year-old Christine doesn’t look anything like a Wag on the morning we meet – no hair extensions, a pale complexion and very short (possibly even bitten) fingernails. But it is also true that on paper her credentials – a degree in politics from prestigious Queen’s University Belfast and a demanding professional career – don’t match the usual ‘wives and girlfriends’ CV (and particularly not that of Lampard’s ex-fiancée, sometime lingerie model Elen Rives).

But then it was never Christine’s dream to become a TV presenter, let alone a – well, a Wag. The eldest of two daughters of a musician father and an accountant mother, she grew up in Newtownards, a few miles outside Belfast, and her ambition was to work behind – not in front of – the TV cameras. Bright and popular, she joined the BBC after university with the aim of a career in production. But her sunny personality and striking looks attracted attention, and she was plucked from her job as a floor manager and reluctantly persuaded to become a presenter.

'The other day I read a scathing article that said I was “overambitious” and wanted to be the next Cheryl Cole and practically take over the world. Every word was the opposite of what I am'

Her success in Northern Ireland led – two and a half years ago – to her being brought in as a last-minute replacement for a very pregnant Myleene Klass on the new current affairs programme The One Show alongside Chiles. The popularity of the early evening show – which regularly brings in as many as six million viewers – has turned its two presenters into media stars and prompted endless speculation about their relationship. The couple’s on-screen chemistry resulted in press rumours that their friendship had been a factor in the breakdown of 42-year-old Chiles’s marriage to radio presenter Jane Garvey – something Christine vehemently denied.

Chiles responded with: ‘It would be like West Brom being linked with Ronaldo. Look at her and look at me. West Brom might quite like to sign Ronaldo, but it is simply not going to happen.’

It is, she confirms, something of a relief that the affair-that-never-was has been consigned to history (Chiles was recently pictured with a ‘mystery blonde’ at a football match). ‘Adrian and I get along better now than we have ever done, I think. He has always had his own life, as have I. It’s just that a lot of people preferred to think of us as a couple.’

Asked about the beard that has caused such controversy among One Show viewers, she declares herself in favour, and of Adrian’s matchday photo she says, ‘I knew he was going to the football with Ana Muhar. She is Croatian and he is half-Croatian, and I have met her a couple of times, although I think you will find that they are just friends. When the papers ran that story I thought, “Oh goodness, you’re going to have to deal with that now, off you go…”’ she says with a laugh.

Christine met Lampard at the Pride of Britain Awards last October, and they are reported to have become increasingly close, although she remains tight-lipped about their romance. They are, though, much more of a match than they first seem. If Christine is overqualified as a Wag, so is Frank as a footballer (he achieved nine GCSEs including an A-star in Latin, and if he hadn’t become a professional sportsman he might have gone on to be a lawyer).

‘He is known for being a very intelligent bloke, and obviously I see that as well. That contents me very much. You need someone to be able to have a conversation with you and be on the same wavelength, and he is like that. He is very, very smart. It’s going well but it’s still early days.’

‘Frank is known for being an intelligent bloke. He is very, very smart. It’s going well but it’s still early days’

Christine would, of course, much rather talk about The One Show, or politics, or even shoes (she says that if there is one thing that might push her into debt, it’s shoes), but Frank Lampard is a much more intriguing subject and I find myself commenting that it can’t be that early in their relationship if – as reported in the papers – she has already introduced him to her parents. ‘He hasn’t met my parents. He was in Belfast, he met my sister Nicola, but he had met her already anyway. But all the papers said I was taking him back to meet my parents. Nonsense! I have just got so used to reading nonsense…’ she says in plaintive tones.

Dealing with fabricated – and sometimes very hurtful – stories is, Christine confesses, the only downside of her life. She loves her job and has no intention of leaving The One Show (as was reported in January this year), but she does sometimes resent the way in which she is falsely represented in the media. ‘The other day I read a scathing article that said I was “overambitious” and wanted to be the next Cheryl Cole and practically take over the world. Every word was the opposite of what I am. It was a complete lie, a fabrication. I was upset when I read it,’ she says.

There are not, though, many tears in Christine’s life, and it is almost impossible to suppress her natural upbeat openness – and that smile – for more than a few moments. The benefits of her job, she is quick to point out, far outweigh the fallout that often comes with sudden fame. Good-natured enough to find Debra Stephenson’s and John Culshaw’s wicked lampoon (on The Impressions Show) of her working partnership with Chiles ‘absolutely hilarious’, she says that one of the highlights of her life was appearing as a guest on the recently revived Shooting Stars alongside comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

‘But do you know what I loved more than anything? The Royle Family Christmas Special. The family were playing the name-on-the-head game – David had Barack Obama written on his forehead, Dad was the Pope, and Sue Johnston and Caroline Aherne were Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley. I have watched that show from day one, and there was Caroline Aherne sitting there with my name on her head. It was absolutely incredible,’ she says.

The One Show has such a solid fan base that when guest Patrick Kielty recently accidentally revealed Christine’s mobile phone number on air, she received hundreds of anxious texts. ‘There were hundreds and hundreds from One Show viewers wanting to warn me and tell me to make sure I changed my number. There wasn’t one bad message. I thought there would be some saying “You silly bitch, we hate you”, but it was just lovely, concerned viewers wishing me well,’ she says.

One of the factors in the show’s continued success is the way it intersperses serious reports and issue-led discussions with celebrity interviews. Over the past two and a half years, Christine has overcome her initial awe at finding herself talking to stars, and now even counts a few among them (Amanda Holden, Davina McCall, Piers Morgan and Sharleen Spiteri) as friends.

‘But my two very best friends are back home in Belfast and have nothing to do with any of this – one is a teacher and one is a doctor and the two of them, with Nicola, are my core base. They know every single thing that happens in my life – they are more important than anything,’ she says.

It’s her family and friends that keep her grounded – she goes home to Belfast once a month and her parents visit her in London every month. There is little time, in her present schedule, for a social life. Preparation for each day’s edition of The One Show begins at noon, and in the run-up to her upcoming Sport Relief challenge, every morning is spent in training (she had never water-skied before and describes herself as a ‘poor’ swimmer).

‘The English Channel is 22 miles, and they think that if I manage to stay up it will take about 90 minutes. It’s pure physical craziness – like completing ten marathons in one. It’s much tougher than Strictly Come Dancing [she made it through to the 11th week of the 2008 show] by a mile. I have lumps and bumps and bruises all over my body from falling into the water at 25mph, which is like hitting a brick wall,’ she says.

It was a visit to Uganda, for last year’s Comic Relief, that prompted Christine to take on the challenge. She found the trip – and particularly her encounter with an HIV-positive 13-year-old girl who was raising her four siblings after the death of their mother – ‘deeply affecting’.

‘I am not a crying person, I don’t do that. But when I walked into this one room in which these children lived I was overwhelmed. There isn’t a day that I don’t think of her, and I have a picture of her and her brothers and sisters on my computer, so that when I come into the office exhausted after hating every second of my water-skiing training, I can remind myself why I am doing it,’ she says with evident emotion.

Politics remains a passion, and she sometimes thinks she might like to become more actively involved, but for now she is totally fulfilled presenting The One Show, and if it ‘all ended tomorrow’ she would be happy to go back ‘behind the cameras’.

Endearingly relaxed about her appearance (she arrives for the interview wearing no make-up apart from ‘yesterday’s false eyelashes’, which she had been too tired to remove the night before), she is not, she says, ‘high maintenance’ on any level. She enjoys doing boring everyday things such as ironing and cleaning her flat, and says that ‘inside me a housewife is trying to get out’.

Does she, then, envisage marriage and children in the next few years? ‘Having children is the most important thing a woman will ever do, and being a good mother is the most important job in the world. And I think if you can’t do a good job you probably shouldn’t do it. If I do it I want to do it right, and if I am at that stage when I can’t do it right then it will not happen,’ she says.

I have tried at regular points to edge the conversation back to Frank Lampard, with little success. I have established that she ‘thinks’ he watches The One Show – ‘but I don’t know actually, I wouldn’t ask about it’ – and that if he did give her a present for her recent birthday she is not telling me (as she says this, she pulls her sleeve down over an expensive designer watch that I suspect was his gift). She has not, as yet, met any of the Chelsea Wags (her eyes roll again at the mention of the word), but she has met Frank’s sisters, who are ‘great’, and she was at last Saturday’s match. Has Frank managed to teach her the offside rule yet?

‘Well, no, I don’t understand the offside rule, but I do understand the passion for football. I don’t want you to feel I am being weird about this but well, you know, it’s just early days. It’s very relaxed and very private and that’s just how I like it.’

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