TV Presenter McClain "Fake" Say TV Bosses
by our ace reporter Simon Hunt
 

ITV bosses were stunned yesterday when police revealed that popular GMTV weather presenter Andrea McClean had been held prisoner in her home by armed assailants for the last three years.

The GMTV regular, who viewers have seen present the weather forecast from a variety of exotic foreign locations since 2000, has now been revealed as a fake. Stunned co-presenter Eamonn Holmes said in a statement yesterday, "I am absolutely gobsmacked. "Andrea" has traveled all over the world with GMTV, and now we're told she isn't who we all thought she was."

McClean won the £85,000-a-year dream presenting role after earning her stripes as a junior researcher for Thames Television. However, police say that McClean, then 34, was attacked and detained in her home shortly afterwards, and replaced by an as yet unnamed female con-woman. In the ordeal she has suffered since she has been kept prisoner in her Notting Hill home and fed only bread and water. McClean is said be police to be in "a severely traumatised state" and has not yet commented. However, officers report that "her ordeal included being deprived of her liberty, and being forced to watch her replacement on television on a daily basis."

McClean's Mother, Shirley, immediately came under suspicion from police officers for not recognising the switch. But she protests she saw "nothing amiss" until last Christmas, when McClean confused the names of her two favourite types of pasta during an early morning feature on Italian cooking.

"It was then that the penny dropped and I alerted police," sobbed Mrs McClean, 57. "People will say I'm stupid for not noticing that my daughter had been kidnapped for three years, but I now ask them if they would really notice when it was all so convincing. If anything, Andrea became a better daughter after the switch, and I guess that lulled me into a sense of denial over the whole business."

Mrs McClean has said she will be "delighted" to see her real daughter again, but may keep in touch with the "other" Andrea.

The imposter is due in court on Tuesday for a hearing, whilst ITV bosses are awaiting the outcome of the judicial process before deciding which presenter to re-instate. Sir John Welley, assistant head of Current Affairs and Director of Morning Broadcasts at Pecan Productions, who make GMTV, commented: "This is a highly unusual situation, and it may be most appropriate to continue to employ the presenter the viewers have come to know and love, whatever the outcome of the trial. After all, we've all gone to extreme lengths to get a job at one time or another."