stunned viewers when they announced on Wednesday that was being axed from the morning show she co-hosted with , with Ellie Costello promoted to a five day working week instead.
The move is a huge promotion for the 31-year-old as she joins a long list of Eamonn’s breakfast TV “wives”. But who is the glamorous blonde.
Prior to this anouncement she was already familiar to viewers as the host of the Thursday and Friday breakfast shows alongside Stephen Dixon. She has also worked with Eamonn before covering for Isable when she was on holidays. Ellie is also well known to users for her channel @ellieexplains where she breaks down the big news stories in simple terms.
Ellie’s family have Irish heritage. She was born and raised in Essex and is fiercly proud of the county. “I love being from Essex, I may be biased but I think some of the most down to earth, warm and genuinely lovely people are from my county,” she has said.
Both her parents are teachers and she has two siblings. After doing an English Literature degree at Southampton followed by a Masters in Broadcast Journalism at City University in London the Essex native began her TV career at the World Service, and later moved to the Victoria Derbyshire Programme.
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Ellie Costello is Eamonn Holmes new co-host on GB News (Image: Getty)
While at the she was recognised as a Rising Star in 2020. Her investigations into influencers being solicited for sex online and bullying in the British beauty industry while at the Victoria Derbyshire Programme became some of the most watched films in the show’s history. She joined GB News in May 2021, prior to the its launch, as South-East reporter.
In her time at the channel she has covered some huge stories including the Kings’ Coronation in 2023 and the General Election in last year. She also covered the murder of the MP Sir David Amess, Just Stop Oil protests and the case brought by Virginia Giuffre.
Away from screen she is busy planning her wedding after announcing her engagement last year in a social media post.
“There’s so little good news in the world right now… I hope you don’t mind me sharing some of my own. I said YES,” she revealed.
However she keeps her fiance private and doesn’t post his name or face on social media.
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Ellie Costello will be taking over from Isabel Webster as Eamonn Holmes GB News co-host (Image: Getty)
Her life hasn’t been completely charmed though. In 2022 she opened up about the 16 months of hell she suffered at the hands of a stalker. The man in question, Leo Jones, was someone she had interviewed over Zoom as part of her work.
Explaining how her job made her vulnerable she wrote: “I felt like a sitting duck. After doing my first ‘live’ of the day, I knew that I had exposed myself, and I would spend the rest of my shift looking over my shoulder, waiting for my perpetrator to show up.
“Then the fear would kick in, and that fear is a strange one to try and explain. It comes from an uneasiness about what that person wants with you. Do they want to say hello, do they want a photo? A hug? Or do they want to do you some harm?
“I spend a lot of time by myself as part of my job, I often start work at 4am, and I walk to location in the dark. I have never felt so quite so vulnerable and alone as I have in the past 16 months. I realised how exposed I was.”
While he wasn’t sentenced to jail he was ordered not to contact Ellie for five years allowing her to “breathe again” and “take time to heal.”