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Weather presenters are cool.

Not cool as in they are incredibly stylish, achingly fashion conscious and desperate to set themselves apart from the crowd. Cool as in they’re the ‘cool kids’, if we can all agree for the purposes of this blog post that the broadcasting world is temporarily analogous with school.

As it happens, weather presenters do have to appear smart on screen. I learnt this myself to my intense disappointment when after an interview with Peter Gibbs earlier this week, I got a chance to step into the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Weather studio up on the mezzanine floor adjacent to theÌý newsroom in New Broadcasting House.

As I stepped into shot (nothing was being broadcast, by the way) and saw the familiar map of the UK in the backgroundÌýon the monitor in front of me, I discovered to my horror that my favourite jumper strobed horribly on-screen. Worse, the Paxman-inspired beard I’ve proudly defended in the face of staunched criticism from some, does in fact make me look a little seedy.

Weather presenters can’t look seedy on screen. They also need to come across as confident, perky and personable individuals. More importantly, none of that personability must be at the expense of the skills, knowledge and experience they have as meteorologists. They need to be able to ad-lib live on-air for any given period of time too. And they mustn’t wear anything that strobes on TV. That’s a schoolboy error. Big time.

That in part goes some way to explain why I think weather presenters are cool. A comprehensive explanation must also draw on the inherent tragedy of their role too.

Pause for a moment and consider this. When you watch the weather forecast do you listen intently to every word the weather presenter says? What is the first thing you focus on? Isobars, warm fronts or the animations for rain, snow or thunderstorms? Can you name in full all 19 of the national weather presenters? (You can have Carol Kirkwood, Louise Lear, Peter Gibbs and Tomasz Schafernaker for starters – they’re easy names to remember – and no going and searching the internet – that’s not cricket.) When you get to the end of the weather forecast, what do you remember the most? The presenter, what they said, the graphics or what the weather is supposed to be doing tomorrow?

Having spent some days thinking about nothing but Ö÷²¥´óÐã Weather (because of the 60th anniversary news and history output being produced ahead of this weekend), I wager that if there was one memorable thing we’d be guaranteed to take away it would be what the weather will do. Nothing else. The weather presenter, it seems to me, is forgotten about.Ìý

And yet, even that seems like a sad thing given their immense skill set, the fact we don’t remember them first and foremost shows their reliable professionalism. Knowledgeable and skilled in live broadcasting. Infectiously enthusiastic about their subject material. Positive, upbeat, confident and unflappable. They can string a perfectly-sized sentence together in an interview long before you’ve even finished asking a ham-fisted question of them in an interview situation (sic. my interview with Peter). They carry off a look of casual professionalism effortlessly, it seems. And there is never any danger that they’ll ever run out of things to talk about: there will never not be any weather. Perfect jobs, perfect personalities, perfect outfits. I bet they’re great at parties.

But what makes them cool is the fact that in real life weather presenters don’t – as far as I can make out - make a big thing about the fact that they are there in our lives every single day, guiding us through the most universal and elemental experience. As viewers, we never feel we are watching Carol Kirkwood’s report on what the weather will be. Instead, we are watching the weather forecast which today happens to be delivered by Carol. Weather presenters are vital to proceedings but they’re not central to them. There’s an inherent style in that. They are ‘cool’. Sure of themselves and what they talk about. Innate ability backed up by a good grasp of their subject area. It is the difference between the elegant beauty of a subject left-hand justified in a photograph, as opposed to the brutal immediacy of a contributor slap bang in the middle of the shot.

Journalists make sense of what has happened or what is happening. Weather presenters are the individuals that help us as human beings to keep on looking forward in our lives. The intonation in their voices underpinned by the message they need to convey (‘it’s going to be bad’ or ‘getting the buckets and spades out, it’s going to be sunny!’) is what helps us escape from the present and dream (or fear) our immediate future. To my mind, that makes them a marginally more potent part of our day to day experience than say a newsreader (save, for a moment in time when a grave news story is breaking), especially given how many more newsreaders there are on TV now than say 60 years ago.

That sense of style I mention is, I think, rooted in a weather presenter’s status. What makes them endearing is that they appear genuine, authentic or real. As an audience member I feel as though they are on my side of the pitch, rooting for me, giving me tips, encouragement, pointers. They’re not so aspirational as human beings as to be completely unreachable. Weather presenters present themselves a bit like you or I. We could be them. The only thing which marks them out is that they’ve got a slightly better idea of what might happen in the future.

But there’s more. Notwithstanding the fact that former weather presenter John Kettley had a song written about him in the mid-80s by teenage band Tribe of Toffs, ’s or ’s appearance on Radio 1’s Innuendo Bingo remains one of the most dangerously funny pieces of video content ever published on the Radio 1 YouTube account in my opinion. Perhaps the most important reason why I think they’re cool is that weather presenters get to own one of the most exciting shots on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television.Ìý

The ‘Trundle Cam’ is a remotely operated camera sat on a dolly which happily glides up and down the side of the Broadcasting House newsroom throughout the working day. In the final few seconds before the top of the hour, the camera will glide to the right and zoom in on the Studio E. Reasonably satisfying to watch but nowhere near as earth-shatteringly exciting as when the camera moves gently to the left panning from Studio E to Ö÷²¥´óÐã Weather in the link before a live TV forecast.

What would I do to have an opportunity to experience the sense of power that is implied by the sight of that moving shot of screen? I’d be prepared to shave off my beard, ditch the jumper and go to work in a flatteringly tailored suit, that’s what. (Although I also acknowledge that at the very least, I’d need to study to be a meteorologist too.)

is Editor, About the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Website and Blog (not a meteorologist)

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• Read Ìý'Ö÷²¥´óÐã Weather at 60'.
• Nick Higham's story on provides a detailed history of weather forecasting at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.Ìý
• More information about Ö÷²¥´óÐã Weather's celebrations can be found in aÌýpress releaseÌýon the .
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