Presenters

Caroline Feraday

I grew up in Kent and went to Rochester Grammar School and Mid Kent College where I studied journalism and came third in the country in the exam, don'tcha know.

I was just a bit grumpy about not coming first, but was already working at BBC Radio Kent (John Warnett will tell you he remembers me in school uniform!) from the age of  15.

I joined Capital FM in London when I was 18 even before I'd even got my exam results. Capital was an amazing experience. I was thrust into the limelight, working alongside Chris Tarrant and Neil Fox in the Flying Eye for six years, before BBC Radio Five Live asked me to be part of their Breakfast team.

I was there for two years and co-presented The Weekend News on BBC Five Live with Matthew Bannister, the former controller of Radio One. LBC 97.3 then asked me to join them to present Drivetime so I spent four years on London's talk station before coming back to my roots in the South East to join South East Today in 2007.

Working for South East Today is a real pleasure as every day is different and often challenging. It's an exciting news patch here, so as a journalist you're never bored. It's a return home for me. There are still many of the same faces in the building that were here when I was in 1993!

I host the BBC South East's Children in Need coverage ever year and also visit and film with the projects that CIN help. I find this incredibly rewarding, and the live show is so much fun to host too.

I can be forgetful about the strangest things. I once forgot that I had met Kate Winslet before and when I interviewed her she was adamant that we'd previously met. I told her that she was wrong, ha ha! I blame the strange hours. I have to get up at 3.30am when I am presenting the bulletins at Breakfast and Lunch and believe that a few brain cells can still be dormant at that hour. I am a member of MENSA, which must mean that some of the cells DO work.

GMTV sent me to LA, which was a real highlight, but I've also been a regular panellist on Five's The Wright Stuff and reported for ITV's This Morning, and used to present a series called Sky Rocket on Sky One on Saturday nights. I've presented loads of football shows for Sky One too. I was also on a celebrity edition of The Weakest Link and came out half way through - in a tie-break with Tony Blackburn!

I'm a Gemini and it's true to say there are two sides to my character - many of my family are in Kent, and it's as much of a treat to hang out with them, having a barbecue at my beach hut in Whitstable, as it is to go to glam black tie events in London.  I've been known to swim in the sea off Whitstable on a warm enough day (and sometimes even on ones which aren't warm enough!).

My greatest achievement was running the London Marathon and I keep fit by running as well as going to army style boot camp classes, outside, even in the harsh winter months.

You can't beat getting covered in mud. I have to be all neat and smart for presenting the programme so it's quite therapeutic to throw all of that out of the window!  Last December I did a one hour class at 6pm and by the end I was head to toe plastered in mud - but by 9pm was in the West End in a ball gown at the OK Magazine Xmas Party.

That's Geminis for you…