Christine Talbot: ‘Here's the real reason I left ITV Calendar News’
Despite being born in Lancashire, Christine Talbot has earned the title of being a Yorkshire lass after presenting the regional news programme Calendar and other programmes for ITV Yorkshire for thirty years. Following her departure from the daily news programme in 2021, Christine shares the main reason for leaving.
Christine joined the then-Yorkshire Television in 1994 and became the main co-presenter of Calendar in 2001.
She has since worked as a freelance presenter on a series of new projects, a columnist, event host, podcaster, and supports several local charities.
While her exit has been a chance for Christine to explore other work opportunities, there was another pressing reason for her to leave the job she loved.
=
Here, Christine speaks to Sophie Mei Lan for the Mrs Yorkshire podcast, sponsored by Whitby Seafoods - the home of scampi.
“I needed more flexibility for my family,” said Christine.
For several years, the mother-of-one had been juggling the pressure of the newsroom with also being there for her elderly mother Beryl, who was coping with serious mobility issues.
Christine’s mum lived in Standish near Wigan, where Christine grew up before her move to Yorkshire.
Although her mum has now moved close to Christine in Wetherby, she spent many years travelling in her spare time to care for her mother when she wasn’t working four days a week at the ITV offices on Kirkstall Road in Leeds.
However, giving up the job she loved was extremely difficult.
Christine said: “My Calendar friends and colleagues were like my other family.”
She said: “My mum was becoming more frail and I was trying to juggle travelling over to see her and her medical appointments.”
In 2021, Christine decided the time had come to leave Calendar to focus on her family and care for her mother while exploring other professional opportunities.
It was a difficult decision, and the pandemic hit before Christine had finally decided.
She said: “What I did as a presenter during COVID felt like such an important moment in my career because there were so many elderly people, people living on their own during that period, for whom the Calendar programme and the presenters were their only familiar faces every day. It was what regional news was about.
“We were there for them at six o'clock every night telling them what was happening in the outside world when they couldn't leave their homes. That felt like a real privilege.”
Christine said the newsroom and viewers all felt like a family, and she is still close to friends at Calendar, but she felt her family needed her.
Christine said she was in a position that many people, particularly women, find themselves in midlife, needed by both her older and younger generations.
She also wanted to honour a promise she had made to her late dad.
She said: “When my dad died nearly 30 years ago, he asked me to make sure mum would always be okay.
“Dad was only 62 when he died, and I've always felt that great responsibility to make sure she is okay.
“Mum is getting older now, more and more frail, and it was becoming quite hard to juggle life.
“Calendar had always been good if I had an urgent appointment, but I did feel I was putting on the programme a bit.
“Sometimes they would have to get cover for me at the last minute if something was going wrong, and I thought, no, ‘I've got to give to my family as much as I've given to work.’”
In the end, Christine went with her gut. The only time she'd had a break from work before was to recover from breast cancer and a brief period of maternity leave.
She said: “The team was amazing. They didn't want me to go, and I’m grateful that they really made me feel valued, but you have to go with your gut.”
Christine had spent two decades on screen, covering some of the region’s major stories and interviewing everyone from Prime Ministers to celebrities. In 2017, she investigated whether serial killer Peter Sutcliffe had killed men before he murdered women, and as a result, " scrolling="no" src=""> received the last known correspondence from him in prison.