If you’ve been following my blog and social media accounts, you’ll remember that I went to the press launch of This Morning Live at the ITV Studios in London last month. With home, garden and lifestyle stands, we were excited to go to the show in Birmingham. There were just two things standing in our way…a teething baby and a 150 mile journey in torrential rain!
Autumn has been getting her first two teeth through at the bottom over the last couple of weeks. This has caused her to be very grouchy and clingy. She really hasn’t been her usual smiley self, poor thing. However, this meant I had a problem on my hands last Thursday! Dave was working from home, so it was up to me to get everything ready and pack our bags. Autumn didn’t play ball and therefore everything ended up being a rush when Dave finished work. As such, we left home much later than intended.
Once we’d packed our bags and got onto the road, there was torrential rain and lots of traffic due to accidents. It was 11pm by the time we actually got to Birmingham, almost 5 hours after leaving our home in Kent. The next morning, we woke up bright and early ready to go to This Morning Live with our complimentary tickets.
After a short drive to the NEC arena, we were raring to go!
Dave couldn’t wait to get to theĀ Food & Drink section, but we visited Home, Garden & Pets first. The floor was helpfully coloured differently for each zone, making it much easier to look around. We started with the adorable guide dogs! It’s amazing how long the waiting lists are for people who need guide dogs, but when they do get them it’s absolutely life changing. Something I didn’t know was that around 25% of dogs that they begin to train end up not being suitable to be guide dogs.
There were lots of segments from the presenters of This Morning during the day. We saw Alison Hammond on the stage at Home, Garden & Pets.
However, we didn’t stay to watch her as we’d only just really arrived and I was excited to look at the stands. There were some beautiful things that I’d love to have in my garden!
There were some quite quirky stands. I loved these neon lights!
One brilliant discovery I made at the show was Temerity Jones. Selling things like cactus shaped vases, knitted mermaid tail blankets and inflatable unicorns, they were right up my street!
Next, we went to the Fashion & Style section. I didn’t spend very long in this section, because as a 25 year old, I felt like a lot of the stands were too mature for me. However, there were a few stands that appealed to me!
It was then time for Rylan Clark-Neal to interview Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on their decade of working together.
Phillip told us that Holly was the only person he wanted to do This Morning with, he didn’t want to do it if it wasn’t with her. She was very thankful as she doesn’t think her name was even in the hat. However, she was a gibbering wreck on the first day. She used to watch This Morning and loved it, so she was worried that she was going to be responsible for it all going wrong!
Sadly, I didn’t get to watch the whole interview as Autumn was grouchy with tiredness and teething, so I had to go and do a few laps to get her to sleep!
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of the Beauty, Health & Wellbeing section for some reason. I think I was too busy looking at the beautiful skincare and makeup stalls! I think after looking at eyebrow powders and liquid lipsticks with me for ages, Dave was relieved to finally get to the Food & Drink section!
There were tasty food and samples galore, it was brilliant. We tried beautiful oils from Yorkshire Drizzle and sampled cheese from the Snowdonia Cheese Company. Of course, some purchases had to be made!
There were also the most amazing brownies at The Brownie Bar.
This Morning Live was fantastic and it seemed to be a huge success. I hope that they decide to make it an annual event, as it would be great to go again!
However, I was lucky to get out after meeting Henry VIII…