Louise Minchin reveals her first job at BBC was waking presenters up

Louise Minchin has revealed what her first job at the BBC was, and the unglamorous position might come as a surprise.

The TV presenter and former BBC Breakfast anchor, 54, was employed to make sure that the stars of Radio 4’s Today programme got out of bed on time.

“The presenters couldn’t wake up themselves – really – so I used to have to phone them in the morning and go: ‘Hello, Peter [Hobday], it’s Louise here. You need to wake up and come to work,” she recalled to the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff.

“Can you believe that was a real job!”

“And I had to get John Humphrys his Alpen – with skinny milk. It’s funny the things that you remember,” she added to the publication.

One job she doesn’t remember quite so fondly is her stint years later on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Minchin, who is married to investor David Minchin and mum to daughters Mia, 21, and Scarlett, 18, claimed that shortly after the birth of her eldest child, she tried to ask the broadcaster to cut her hours but was told that would not be possible.

Speaking on the Dirty Mother Pukka podcast, she said: “I was working on 5 Live, I was doing an evening shift, I was working on something called Sport on 5, I think I did it five days a week.

“I had to be in at 2pm or 4pm and I was working until midnight.

“My husband didn’t have a job at the time because he was setting up a company, I was the only person that was going to bring money.

“I went back, I may have still been breastfeeding ... I was just getting through, I was feeling very anxious and overwhelmed.

“I asked: ‘Could you maybe take my hours down a bit? Or could I maybe just do one day a week less?’

“They said: ‘No, you have to do that or you have to find another job.’”