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MARTEL MAXWELL: Catching up with Eamonn Holmes – and misleading headlines

The TV legend is the best of the best I've met in media.

Martel Maxwell and Eamonn Holmes at The Television and Radio Industries Club Awards.
Martel Maxwell and Eamonn Holmes at The Television and Radio Industries Club Awards.

I guessed Eamonn Holmes might fancy talking about something other than his headline-grabbing life when I bumped into him at a glitzy do.

It had been 11 years since I saw him last – not in person but on screen, with a live link from my Perth Road flat to his London studio, holding my first born Monty.

I’d spent a decade as a regular guest talking showbiz on his Sky News show before moving home when heavily pregnant.

As the screen split between London and Dundee, we discussed how Princess Kate might be feeling also as a first time mum, to George and also having moved closer to home. In retrospect, it may have been a slow news day.

And there he was all that time on, as charismatic and charming as ever at the TRIC (The Television and Radio Industries Club) Awards at London’s Grosvenor Hotel.

Everyone wanted to say hello and ask how he was holding up.

Martel attending the TRIC Awards. Image: Ian West/PA Wire

As a man who presents GB News Breakfast (he won best news team with his crew at the bash) and tells stories for a living, asking the questions we want answers to, it must be odd to be the main event.

Whether for his mobility issues and pain after a back operation or breaking up with his wife and fellow presenter Ruth Langsford, fever pitch has been reached for updates and titbits about almost anything he does.

It must be draining; it must be surreal and so, when he asked me to take a seat, I thought he’d rather talk about anything else than himself.

And so I did a very British thing and talked about, no not quite the weather, but football, lamenting England and Scotland’s performances.

Tales grow arms and legs

I’ve said it here before but Eamonn’s is the best of the best I’ve met in the media.

His talent is a given and he makes it look easy because he’s such a brilliant broadcaster and journalist.

It’s rare for someone to be as giving – to compliment another presenter on their work on screen out of the blue or offer to help in whatever we they can.

By the by, everyone I’ve met who knows Ruth says she’s a lovely egg too.

I can’t imagine how it feels to be the news, day in and out.

Eamonn Holmes. Image: Ian West/PA Wire

Like anyone who’s experienced a Chinese whisper however, where tales grow arms and legs before they’re done, you must wish they could hear it from the horse’s mouth.

In fact, scrub that. Even when from the source themselves, the stable doors can burst open and spill out nonsense.

In a very small way, I can draw on my experiences to imagine.

Like the time I posted a clip on Instagram explaining how I’d felt dizzy and odd one morning on the road for work – only to discover it was down to caffeine withdrawal after missing breakfast – and cured by a stiff Americano.

Those were my words.

And yet a headline in a national newspaper read Hammer Martel’s Terrifying Health Scare.

I had friends asking if I was ok.

‘TV Favourite Trashes Hotel’

Another time, my TV pal Martin Roberts posted online, while laughing a lot, to explain how I’d been staying in the hotel room above him only to leave my tap on.

In my defence there was a power and water cut…then it came back on while I was at reception.

The result was some water that seeped through his ceiling.

The headline was TV Favourite Trashes Hotel, making me sound like the Keith Richards of daytime telly.

Martin Roberts. Image:  David Fisher/Shutterstock

These stories are minor, but imagine reading details of your marriage or health, perhaps containing a seed of truth but many fantastical and often hurtful branches of conjecture or downright fantasy attached.

But it’s all white noise, I realised as I applauded TRIC’s winners.

On this note, Homes Under The Hammer lost out in the daytime category but to the mighty and much-loved Ken Bruce who achieved a hat-trick of awards so specially voted for by viewers and we were delighted to be on the shortlist.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office changed lives

It dawned on me how special and powerful television and radio (and of course newspapers and print which have their own awards) can be – from Ken playing the soundtrack in voice and music to our lives – to his fellow hat trick winner, the crew and people behind TV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

That production changed lives and told a truth that had to be told.

Former postmistress Jo Hamilton (second left) poses with cast members from Mr Bates vs The Post Office and a special award for the TV drama. Image: Ian West /PA Wire

As was another moment – a gong for The Camilla Tominey Show (a Sunday morning politics programme on GB News) which landed Interview of the Year after Alastair Stewart revealed his heart-breaking dementia diagnosis last year.

I don’t mean to sound worthy – I love a bit of the white noise of celebrity gossip as much as the next.

But it’s the people who tell and make ground-breaking stories who make up the rich orchestra we can all enjoy – from Eamonn to Ken and the many partition walls in between.

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