A biography for Steph McGovernhasn’t been written yet.
“We concentrate too much on ethnic diversity and not enough on class. It's dead important to represent loads of different cultures. But what the BBC doesn't do enough of is thinking about getting people from more working-class backgrounds.”
“I have had people come up to me in the street - one woman actually told me she hated my accent, she can't believe I'm on the telly and my accent is so annoying. I ended up laughing because I thought, 'this person doesn't know me but she felt she could come up and slate my accent.'”
“Growing up in Middlesbrough I was taught to be resilient and competitive. My teachers made us believe that just because kids were at private school up the road, it didn't mean they were better than us.”
“There's a common problem: if a kid is not good at exams, they often think they are not skilled. Yet many of them do have the skills employers are looking for - but often we don't show them that, or teach them how to develop them, or celebrate them.”
“The most rewarding, insightful and challenging year of my life was my 'Year in Industry' working as a trainee engineer at Black & Decker, which involved studying part time at college.”
“Even my own auntie asked me once if I was pregnant after seeing me on the telly - that's just life on camera.”
“If someone chooses a vocational route, why do they not get the same respect in society as someone who just does a pure academic route?”
“I'm always on the go, which means my health has often been the thing that suffers.”
“You'll never see me on anything like 'MasterChef.' I'm just not interested.”
“When I come to schools like Norton Primary Academy and meet children who have their lives and careers before them, I hope in some small way that I can inspire them to do better by sharing my own story with them and telling them never to give up on their dreams.”
“I just like to think of everyone as a happy family but in football that just doesn't exist.”
“I had people who said I was a brilliant producer but I wouldn't get on the news because I was too northern. But there was no way I was changing my accent - it is the key to my identity.”
“You don't have to be the most amazing writer, you don't have to get top marks in your English GCSE, you just have to be someone who can tell a good story, and tell it right, and tell it well.”
“Despite being a business journalist at the BBC for ten years, working behind the scenes on our high-profile news programmes, I was viewed by some in the organisation to be 'too common for telly.'”
“I get up at 3:30 A. M. We're on air from 6 A. M., so if I'm in the studio, I'll have eggs at around 7 A. M. from the canteen - scrambled or poached, occasionally with a slice of brown toast.”
“The problem in business isn't that women are overlooked because they are women, it's that most people subconsciously look to employ a mini-me. It's not a gender issue, it's about diversification full stop. It's hard to change that mindset and it hits women particularly hard because men historically have always been the recruiters.”
“Since becoming a BBC breakfast presenter I have been paid four-figure sums for doing hour-long speeches for associations and at awards dinners. That has been an eye-opener. I am surprised by how much people are willing to pay TV celebrities to do that kind of stuff.”
“I am not frugal - I'm quite a big spender - but not on credit.”
“From a young age I had a real sense of the world of work. This is what vocational education gives you.”
“I remember early in my career people telling me I needed to change my accent, that I needed to sound more professional, more BBC perhaps, but I think if I wasn't from Middlesbrough I wouldn't have done as well as I have.”