<\/p>\n
Two months later, when Hammond thought her TV career was over, a This Morning producer who had been charmed by her eviction interview (with, coincidentally, a young Dermot O\u2019Leary) offered her a segment called \u201cDiet Camp\u201d, in which she documented her weight loss over a six-month period.<\/p>\n
She was later promoted to showbiz reporter on the red carpet, where she accidentally hit George Clooney in the face with a microphone. But This Morning producers found her disarming approach to the increasingly stale nature of celebrity interviews made for brilliant entertainment.<\/p>\n
In 2017 she went viral for what is now considered to be one of the most unhinged celebrity interviews on TV. Greeting Blade Runner 2049 stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford with two tumblers of whisky despite the morning hour, she began with the frank admission that she\u2019d never watched the original film.<\/p>\n
Stunned, but won over by Hammond\u2019s distinctive wheezing cackle, Gosling and Ford spent the remainder of the interview drinking whisky, singing harmonies and convulsing with laughter. Afterwards, the notoriously grumpy Ford was so delighted he kissed Hammond on the cheek and contributed to her 50th birthday video tribute a few years later. \u201cAt the time I thought the interview was terrible,\u201d Hammond says. \u201cI said to ITV, let\u2019s bin it; I\u2019ve got nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video has since been watched 23 million times \u2013 This Morning\u2019s most popular YouTube video ever \u2013 and Hammond now occupies the unique position of being personally requested by the A-list. \u201cOh yeah, they do ask for The Hammond, I don\u2019t know why,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n
Raised by her single mother, Maria, Alison grew up in Kingstanding, north Birmingham, in a council flat that Hammond happily recalls as a \u201cpalace\u201d. She was named after Muhammad Ali by her father Clifford, who sometimes worked as Ali\u2019s bodyguard. Clifford was mostly absent from home \u2013 Maria discovered he was already married with children after she became pregnant \u2013 and so Maria was \u201ca hustler and a grafter\u201d who had multiple jobs, from casino cashier and nurse to usherette and Tupperware manager.<\/p>\n
Hammond\u2019s voice noticeably softens when discussing her mother, her \u201chero\u201d with whom she spoke on the phone every day until her death from liver cancer in 2020.<\/p>\n
Encouraging Alison\u2019s ambitions of becoming an actress, Maria \u2013 who occasionally worked as a TV extra \u2013 enrolled her, aged 11, in the prestigious performing arts club, The Television Workshop. Then at 18, Hammond, who had been a conscientious and sporty student who loved rounders, ballet and tap dancing, auditioned for Wigan\u2019s now-closed Academy of Live and Recorded Arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my audition, they said: \u2018You do realise you\u2019ll have to modify your voice, because you\u2019ve got a Brummie accent,\u2019 which meant they wanted me to get some RP lessons,\u201d says Hammond. \u201cI just thought, I don\u2019t want to do that; I like my accent. In the end I couldn\u2019t get a sponsor, so I couldn\u2019t afford to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of not quite belonging wasn\u2019t unfamiliar to Hammond, whose neighbourhood was mostly white, with a strong National Front presence. Her first experience of racism was a classmate telling her that \u201cI didn\u2019t realise elephants were black\u201d, which she has said left her with PTSD and panic attacks. Her mother\u2019s popularity, however, always made her feel \u201csafe\u201d, since she was often hosting Tupperware parties in National Front members\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n
I ask Hammond \u2013 who now lives on the outskirts of Solihull with her partner of three years and 21-year-old son \u2013 what she thinks of the increase in race-motivated hate crimes reported by campaign group Brummies United Against Racism. City Council leader John Cotton has also said he is witnessing racism reminiscent of the 1970s, when the National Front was active. Is Britain becoming a less tolerant nation?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think racism will ever leave our system. It is what it is, and I\u2019m cool with it,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t call it out, but I know in myself when I sense it. It\u2019s just something that you have to deal with as somebody of colour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hammond has said she has \u201cgrown numb\u201d to the amount of racist comments she has received on social media or headlines referring to her as \u201ca black presenter\u201d rather than by her name. Yet following the death of George Floyd in 2020, This Morning viewers saw a different side to the TV star, who was in tears discussing his killing by a police officer. She said it left her \u201cdisgusted to my core\u201d and that while watching the footage, she \u201csaw my brothers and I saw my son\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two months later, when Hammond thought her TV career was over, a This Morning producer who had been charmed by her eviction interview (with, coincidentally, a young Dermot O\u2019Leary) offered her a segment called \u201cDiet Camp\u201d, in which she documented her weight loss over a six-month period. She was later promoted to showbiz reporter on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2358262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[306423,304629,22221,377261,27065,358987,344742,22205,305455],"class_list":["post-2358261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-big-brother","tag-channel-4","tag-culture","tag-great-british-bake-off","tag-itv","tag-ozempic","tag-standard","tag-television","tag-weight-loss"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/\u2018People-say-Im-skinny-now-\u2013-but-Im-still-a.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2358261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2358263,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358261\/revisions\/2358263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2358262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}