Claudia Winkleman's unstoppable rise: ‘My parents told me not to worry about being interesting'

Telegraph

01-03-2025

She used to joke that she only got work because she was known as 'that weird one with a fringe' and that she was regularly mistaken for Noel Fielding. But these days, no one is at risk of forgetting Claudia Winkleman.
The 53-year-old has become the undisputed queen of primetime, fronting some of TV's biggest shows from Strictly to The Traitors, via The Piano. Most recently, her Channel 4 game show One Question returned to our screens, and as of last night she's keeping Graham Norton's swivel chair warm on his Friday night chat show while he goes on an Australian tour. So how has Winkleman become one of the BBC's highest-paid and most popular female stars?
Although few people – probably herself included – could have predicted her stratospheric rise to National Treasure status, Winkleman is something of a media 'nepo baby', with royal connections to boot.
The daughter of trailblazing journalist Eve Pollard and publisher Barry Winkleman, she grew up in Hampstead in a house without mirrors – a tradition she continues in her own home.
'Claudia grew up with an understanding of the media, particularly with my job as editor of a national newspaper. But more than anything, I wanted to give her a grounding in the real world,' says Pollard. 'Rather than gazing in the mirror, I encouraged her to look inwards to the qualities that matter in the long term – intelligence, wit and character.'
She was three when her parents separated, and her mother remarried fellow newspaper editor Nicholas Lloyd. She became part of a large blended family, with a younger half-brother called Oliver, and a half-sister through her father's second marriage – the Peep Show actress Sophie Winkleman. In 2009, Sophie, now known as Lady Frederick Windsor, married Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.
Royalty are now part of Winkleman's family, but famous names were always a regular feature around the family table when she was growing up. 'In our family, it was crucial to be able to hold your own in conversation around the dinner table, and age was no excuse,' recalls Pollard.
When she was 12, Winkleman's family moved to New York – Lloyd to edit the New York Post and Pollard to launch Elle. Winkleman refers to the disruption as 'a wobble'.
'I remember sort of kicking off: 'I don't want to leave Dad. I don't want to leave Melanie.' Melanie was my very best friend at school. And Mum said, 'I'll bring you back, and Dad will come over, and I love you, but I can't go without you.' So we went. And then it was an adventure. It was a proper adventure.'
After nine months they were back in London, and Winkleman attended the City of London School for Girls. 'I wore fishnets and I liked smoking fags and flirting with boys,' she says of her school days.
'There were no early signs of Claudia's stardom,' says Pollard. 'She had a very straightforward career at school. She was clever and popular and passed the right exams to get into Cambridge. But she was never into amateur dramatics, either then or later. She had absolutely no interest in being an actress. She was, however, a brilliant swimmer and for a while I was hoping that she would become a marine biologist. I thought it would be reliable work and rather more secure than the life of a journalist.'
Winkleman studied History of Art at Cambridge, and once said she slept on her floor for four months because the sunbed she had rented took up all the space in her room. It was around this time that her signature 'uniform' of black clothing, a deep tan and a heavy fringe came together.
'I was born with six extra teeth like a little dinosaur. When people saw me smile they screamed,' she once said. 'But when I was 21 and a virgin, I got my fringe and everything started happening.'
After graduating she worked in an art gallery but it was too 'pristine' and 'slow', so she interned at a glossy fashion magazine instead, lugging suitcases of clothes to shoots.
Then in 1992, after a call from a Cambridge friend, she did a screen test for a production company looking for new talent. She started working as a reporter for the BBC travel series Holiday and hosted various late-night shows on cable TV. Her terrestrial TV break came in 1997 with the game show Talking Telephone Numbers with Philip Schofield.
'My parents were shocked,' she says, of her pivot into TV. 'My parents told me basically, 'You just have to work incredibly hard and don't be a turd'. Their main rule was, 'Don't worry about being interesting. Be interested.''
That advice stood her in good stead when she started interviewing reality TV contestants on the spin-off to the BBC's talent show Fame Academy in 2003. From there it was a small quickstep to the Strictly spin-off It Takes Two.
Winkleman was so good at bonding with contestants that she became a fan favourite and in 2009, when Bruce Forsyth was taken ill, she stepped into the main presenter role alongside Tess Daly. In 2014, she waltzed into the primetime gig permanently, and recently completed her 11th series of the show.
She has since become the go-to for hosting chummy reality competitions, including The Great British Sewing Bee, Britain's Best Home Cook and the surprise hit The Piano. But nothing has captured the nation's attention like The Traitors, which has racked up 34 million views and won two Baftas and a National Television Award. Winkleman's distinctive fashion choices also led to a rise in the popularity of tartan, tweed and capes.
Alexander Dragonetti, a contestant on the third season of The Traitors says: 'Claudia's so warm and supportive of the show and the cast. And she really looks out for everybody. And I mean that very sincerely. She focuses on when people need a bit of extra help or some support – she's absolutely there. It's hugely impressive. It's not just a job for her.'
Despite her on-screen success, she says her family is everything. In 2000, she married the Danish film producer Kris Thykier at Marylebone Town Hall. Although she's joked that she 'doesn't really know what he does', Thykier has been involved with movies such as Kick-Ass and The Woman in Gold, and Sky Atlantic's TV drama Riviera.
She is remarkably tight-lipped about their 25-year-marriage, but in her 2020 book Quite she wrote: 'Relationships are strange and what would be an absolute deal-breaker for one person is a sweet quirk to someone else. My husband and I fundamentally disagree about buffets and baby names, yet we have made it work.'
They have three children together, Jake, 21, Matilda, 18, and Arthur, 13. In 2024, she quit her BBC Radio 2 Saturday morning show to spend more time with her family. She also took a break from presenting in 2014, after her daughter, Matilda, who appeared as a bridesmaid in her father's 2013 film I Give It a Year, was badly injured in a Halloween accident when she was eight.
Matilda's costume brushed a candle while she was trick-or-treating, causing severe burns. Winkleman, who later campaigned for changes to legislation on fire safety for fancy dress, said the incident was so traumatic that she could not 'remember life before it'.
It wasn't the first time she's used her platform for charitable causes. She has answered phones for the Disasters Emergency Committee in response to the crisis in Darfur, helped to relaunch The National Missing Persons Campaign and supported a Christmas campaign by Refuge about domestic violence.
She says no one in her house watches any of her shows. 'They have not watched me. They're not allowed,' she says. 'Nobody watches anything I do in my house, under strict instructions. Although, they broke rank and watched The Traitors, and I was appalled.'
Home is a Grade II-listed five-storey townhouse close to Marble Arch, where her neighbours once included former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, and houses sell for around £9 million. Winkleman is regularly seen walking her King Spaniel, Skip, in Hyde Park and says she loves living so centrally. 'I can leave my house at 4am and buy a kebab, rent a movie and get some shampoo. I love my shower, my bread bin and our tortoise, Yoshi.'
To relax she cooks cheese and onion quiche and plays bridge with her longtime best friend Victoria Coren Mitchell – the pair met as teenagers as their parents were friends. Claudia was a bridesmaid at Coren Mitchell's 2012 wedding to David Mitchell. She also counts Kirsty Young and Nick Jones, Michael and Kitty McIntyre, and Courtney Cox and Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid among her close circle of friends who call her 'Clauds'.
Her distinctive heavy fringe is now so iconic that in April 2024, satirical London mayoral candidate Count Binface stated in his manifesto that he would honour Winkleman by declaring her signature fringe Grade I listed. A Comic Relief sketch saw Dawn French spoof Winkleman and open her fringe like a curtain.
When I interviewed Winkleman in 2016, it was easy to see why reality TV contestants open up to her. She was laugh-out-loud funny, extremely self-deprecating and remarkably interested in me. In fact, at times it felt like she was interviewing me. She's clearly very intelligent – and canny at deflecting the conversation when she doesn't want to talk about a subject. When I asked her about her husband, she told me 'if I talk about him everyone will be sick' and she batted off questions about her daughter's accident saying 'if I talk about that I'll cry'.
Celebrity PR Natalie Trice says Winkleman has become the queen of primetime thanks to her combination of natural charm, a sharp wit and her ability to appeal across the generations. 'She has an uncanny way of making herself totally relatable while also being glamorous and sharp,' says Trice. 'She's not quite the girl next door, but there's an undeniable friendliness about her that draws people in and keeps them on side.'
As for what's next, Winkleman claims she has a pact with Tess Daly to leave Strictly together. 'When one of us is done, we go together. So she's not allowed to leave,' she says.
Despite 30 years on our screens, numerous awards and legions of fans, it seems like Winkleman still can't believe her luck. But she's sanguine about the fickle world of TV. 'I try not to revel in successes because it'll go,' she says. 'I'll blink and someone else will have my job. That's fine. It's the way of the world. When the time comes, I'll say: 'Byesy-bye, guys.'' Something tells us that won't be happening for a long while yet.