Fred Talbot - Career

Career

Brought up in Altrincham, at the time in Cheshire, he was a pupil at North Cestrian Grammar School, and in 1964 Talbot was a founding member of the Altrincham and District Astronomical Society, and remains involved today. He co-discovered a meteor shower, the June Lyrids, in June 1966.

He taught biology at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and also recorded a weekly astronomy programme for radio. This work later, in 1984, extended into TV, where he presented reports on Granada Reports, a local news programme in North West England. Granada Television later commissioned Talbot to appear in a general educational science programme for children called The Final Frontier. He remained a regular reporter for Granada Reports prior to, in 1988, accepting a position as a TV weatherman for the ITV network's This Morning.

Until production of This Morning was moved from the buildings at the Albert Dock, Liverpool to London, Talbot presented weather reports from a large floating map of the British isles, which was located in the dock. He was forced to jump across a gap to go back and forth between Ireland and Britain; crowds often gathered to watch his leap. One occasion involved a diver who swam near the map to distract Talbot, and in a memorable incident, a streaker once swam naked up to the map and jumped on.

In 1998 Talbot was named 'Weatherman of the year' at the Annual International Weather Festival in Paris.

Talbot has presented various regional programs for the ITV Granada region since 1985. His programs have got up to 35% of the audience share during prime time.

In early 2006 Talbot presented a regional series for ITV Granada called Locks and Quays which explored the canal system of North West England. This was followed by a second series in 2007. However, this was presented by Matthew Corbett.

To celebrate the centenary in 2007 of Alfred Wainwright, the writer of the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells guidebooks, Talbot undertook a series of walks – one from each of the seven guidebooks. These were shown on ITV Granada during the summer of 2007 in the series Wainwright Country. This was repeated on Discovery Realtime under the name 'British Walks with Fred Talbot'. Talbot's series 'Locks and Quays' was also shown nationally to satellite and cable viewers on Discovery Realtime.

In February 2009 he begun presenting weather forecasts for ITV Granada and occasionally provides cover for ITV Central. Talbot also produces occasional reports for Granada Reports, including a Tuesday evening Where's Fred feature where viewers have to guess which city, town or village Fred has been out and about in. Additionally, he also regularly appears on CITV's Prove It! where he demonstrates to children how to use simple home items to perform various fun and interesting experiments.

In December 2010 and March 2011, Talbot acted as a weather forecaster on ITV Breakfast programme Daybreak.

Talbot is also a popular after dinner speaker.