Jackie Brambles

Jackie Brambles (born 1 March 1967), formerly known as Jakki Brambles, is a British journalist, radio DJ and television presenter.

Brambles was born in Essex, England but grew up in Ayr and on the Isle of Arran in Scotland, and began her radio career on local Scottish radio station West Sound in Ayr whose personality was noticed and put on the air. She currently lives in Scotland.

She then joined Capital Radio as its youngest ever DJ, and after a year on the evening show joined the BBC in 1988 as the first female presenter to get her own primetime show on the national pop network BBC Radio 1. She took on the Radio 1 early show, initially at weekends, before graduating to the weekday equivalent. She also joined her colleagues on the Top Of The Pops presentation roster. When Sybil Ruscoe left her role as Simon Mayo's weather and travel reporter, Brambles took over that slot, thereby keeping her on air each day over two separate programmes. On her own shows, she sometimes worked standing up in order to maintain a more 'live' feel, claiming she found it difficult to keep her demeanour lively enough if she was seated. The combination with Mayo worked well but a minor revamp in 1990 saw Brambles progress to a 90-minute drivetime show and then, when Gary Davies went to weekends, promotion to the important lunchtime slot.

She married a Scotsman named Jim Sherry and ultimately left Radio 1 in 1993 to move to the United States. They divorced five years later. There was a plan to make her an American showbiz reporter for the BBC but this never transpired. Instead she re-branded herself as the more maturely-spelt Jackie Brambles, and entered the American broadcasting scene in San Francisco, as a news radio morning anchor and occasional tv news anchor. She also worked as a media consultant to several high profile companies in Silicon Valley including Intel, Oracle and Sony. Following a move to Los Angeles in 1999, she took on the role of foreign correspondent for GMTV, interviewing almost every major name in Hollywood as well as covering major news events including presidential elections and 9/11.

Six months after returning to the UK in 2005, Brambles married David Tod, who works in Financial Services and had her first child, Stanley in March 2006. After leaving GMTV, she guested several times on the show in 2005. During Kaye Adams' pregnancy in 2006, Jackie hosted the show in Kaye's place, which led to her becoming the new leading host of the show. She has since had a daughter, Florence. It was announced on May 5th 2009 that Brambles will leave Loose Women in the summer of 2009.

Brambles married David Tod on 5 August 2005 in the Caribbean. The couple have a son called Stanley (born 23 March 2006) born on David's birth date at the Portland Hospital; and a daughter Florence (born 7 March 2007); as a result of which Brambles left GMTV to concentrate on motherhood.[2] In December 2008, Nuts magazine held their annual 'Woman I Secretly Adore' poll, in which Jackie came second with 18% of the vote. She was beaten only by GMTV presenter Kate Garraway, who received 21%.