Loose Women: Charlene White is introduced as new anchor

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Charlene features on Celebrity Catchphrase tonight at 7:30pm on ITV. The broadcaster will take part in the celebrity special of the classic game show which asks contestants to identify the right catchphrase from a range of animated clues. Stephen Mulhern hosts the special which also features Russell Kane and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

If the celebrities are able to “say what they see” they could get the chance to win a £50,000 jackpot for their charity of choice.

Charlene is best known for presenting ITV News, but she has also been an anchor on Loose Women since earlier this year.

However the broadcaster carved out her early career at the BBC where she was a presenter and senior broadcaster for shows such as BBC Look East, BBC Three, 60 Seconds and BBC News.

Charlene joined ITN in 2008, where she went on to become the first black woman to present ITV News, while she has been lead presenter of ITV News London’s 6pm programme in 2019.

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In an interview with the Guardian published in February this year, Charlene hit out at the BBC’s commitment to diversity.

Charlene said: “Well, I think, when the BBC has looked at how many black staff have moved on elsewhere, it is a high percentage.

“I don’t work there anymore so I’m not really au fait with their protocols. 

“But I will always maintain, and I don’t mind saying, that I became the first black woman to present ITV News at 10 in 2014, and I don’t think that would have happened had I stayed at the BBC.”

In the same interview Charlene claimed that her steadfast commitment to impartiality has occasionally caused her to run into trouble with viewers.

Like her Channel 4 counterpart Jon Snow and the BBC’s John Simpson, the broadcaster does not wear a Remembrance Day poppy on air.

White is a dedicated supporter of the Poppy Appeal, however she said: “I am uncomfortable with one charity having extra prominence compared with others.”

She added she comes from a “forces family”, with her dad having served in the RAF and her uncle in the army, and that her insistence on remaining impartial does not mean she doesn’t support the British armed forces.

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Yet each November the broadcaster is subjected to a torrent of racist and sexist abuse from online trolls. 

Speaking of the first time she experienced the abuse in 2013, Charlene said: “It hurt.

“By that point, I’d grown up with a lot of racist stuff that sort of bubbles under the surface. 

“Overt racism I hadn’t had in a really long time.

“What surprises me ‒ I’m still getting upset about it now ‒ what surprised me is that it upset me. 

“I didn’t think that stuff could affect me any more, but the kinds of things that were being said, and the magnitude ‒ we’re talking like, thousands of messages. 

“And I just didn’t understand where it came from.”

This year the Loose Woman anchor took to Twitter to explain why she would not wear a poppy on-screen in the lead up to November 11.

She said: “It’s a subject that provokes a lot of debate and anger ‒ but it is one that I feel strongly about. 

“I support and am patron of a number of charities and due to impartiality rules, I am not allowed to visually support them whilst presenting news programmes.

“That includes things like a red ribbon for World Aids Day or a purple band for Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.”

Watch Celebrity Catchphrase tonight at 7:30pm on ITV.

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