Natasha Kaplinsky

Natasha Kaplinsky gained fame as the ‘face of Five’, anchoring the channel’s main evening news programme.

She joined Five from the BBC, where as co-host of the 6 O’clock News, again she was one of the corporation’s best-known faces. She had joined the BBC in November 2002 as co-host of Breakfast. With Dermot Murnaghan, she co-presented a daily three-hour live show combining news, current affairs, developing a reputation for incisive interviewing. She then moved on to co-present the Six O’clock News for two years, with George Alagiah.

Natasha was the subject of one of the programmes in the popular BBC1 television series, Who Do You Think You Are? In September 2007, she traced the moving wartime story of her father’s Jewish family in Belarus, and her father’s turbulent background as an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. In 2000 she joined Sky News and was a leading member of the presenting team when the channel won a Bafta award for Best News Channel.

Today she is a patron of the medical relief agency Merlin and The Willow Foundation, which organises special days for seriously ill young adults. Since 2010 she has been an Ambassador for Save The Children, visiting projects in India and South Africa, as part of the No Child Born To Die campaign. She was the natural choice for her latest role, as host of ITV’s new entertainment show, Born to Shine, which will be produced in partnership with Save the Children.