Christine Bleakley: Global Brand

Christine Bleakley rose to celebrity superstardom as the bubbly co-presenter of the BBC's 'One Show'. She left the programme last June, concerned over its intellectual integrity, but was fortunate in subsequently signing to ITV for a million pounds a year.

To the delight of fans, the deal reunited her with engaging former colleague Adrian Chiles; the two were given ITV's prime early morning slot. Their programme, hookily christened Daybreak, launched in September.

Yesterday's edition of the show - which replaced GMTV - drew around 700,000 viewers, while BBC's Breakfast had 1.8 million. Audience figures show that at around 8am the BBC show had almost three times as many viewers with 2.6 million, compared with Daybreak's 900,000.

Last night, a friend close to the Nothern Irish brunette said: ‘Christine is extremely frustrated that Daybreak’s ratings aren’t improving. The biggest problem is that if she did drop Daybreak, ITV can’t just conjure a hit prime-time show for her out of thin air."

Indeed, a grave difficulty. Such talent deeply deserves an appropriate platform. Giggling, gurning, face-painting: is Christine fabulous, or just supremely irritating and greedy? The rumour is, she'll soon be leaving Daybreak to 'work with' X-Factor. Don't ask me how she's qualified for that move, apart from X-Factor being an idiotic programme, or why she's on television at all.