LIVE24SEVEN // Interviews
Kay is a strong advocate of women’s health issues and since her mother’s death has been tested for the BRCA gene which determines whether one is susceptible to breast cancer. She has regular mammograms and ultrasounds and only last Christmas she endured a big cancer scare herself after one of her regular screenings, which resulted in her having a biopsy. The period in waiting for her results was completely awful and she says, “Time just stood still – I couldn’t wish the feeling on my worst enemy. But my medical team were fantastic and I had complete faith in them and I knew if I had cancer, I would have been looked after by the best people.”
Kay has also spoken out about the problems women face in the work place whilst going through the menopause. “I am lucky as the men I work with are very understanding. I don’t play the menopause card and I get a lot of respect from them. I have my moments on air when I get a hot flush or a ‘power-surge’ as I call it when it looks like I’ve walked through the shower! I take lots of supplements to try and deal with it but it’s just one of those things one has to get through.”
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At 16 Kay did a job creation scheme on the local paper and left school a year later. She wrote to 80 newspapers asking for a position and was eventually interviewed by an Editor whose wife had suffered a miscarriage and was placed on a ward with women who had had abortions. She was asked her view on this and she argued her side as a journalist would do and he took her on; training her and paying for her to learn shorthand and law and there Kay worked for 5 years before moving onto Red Rose Radio in Preston.
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KB
Kay’s position entailed covering the newspaper review in what she says was her very strong Lancashire accent. One day she was mortified after some of the presenters mimicked the way she spoke, so much so, she cried all the way home. Not being able to afford elocution lessons, she got hold of her big ‘ghetto blaster’ and read the pages of Ceefax into the blaster to play it back to try and flatten out her vowels.
Her foray into television was as a researcher for Richard & Judy on Granada Report in Manchester before heading to Tyne Tees TV in Newcastle as a News Editor on the news desk. With a yearning for presenting and reporting, she front lined a programme called ‘Where The Jobs Are’, a 3 minute read every week whereby she was so nervous her boss told her, it sounded like she was ‘running for a bus’. Another hard lesson; people were very brutal but it was just what she needed to perfect the style she shows today.
She applied for an ‘overnight writers’ job at TV-AM in 1985 and on walking up the central stairwell at her interview, the Chief Executive was walking the other way. He asked Kay if she had thought about being on the screen. “I’d clean the floor of the canteen for the opportunity!” She exclaimed - she was subsequently offered a job as a reporter.
In 1988 Kay moved to Sky TV before it even went on air. Though there have been plenty of high profile female news broadcasters before Kay, she has succeeded all of them in the longevity stakes and there is a firm camaraderie amongst the current girls. Contrary to newspaper reports that they may like to ‘rip each others eyes out’, Kay says that is utter nonsense and only recently Sian Williams from Channel 5, Sophie Raworth from the BBC and Susanna Reid all enjoyed a drink together at a function in London. Thankfully, the powers that be in the TV world realise its now about being a good journalist that will keep these talented women on our screens not about them having to maintain youthful looks; though at 55 years old, I wouldn’t have put Kay Burley over 40 – she’s definitely inherited good northern genes on that front!
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