Alison Hammond, Dermot O’Leary, Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard are brightening up our screens in the run-up to Christmas on This Morning. During a chat in which they all revealed the best present they had ever received, Alison spoke about the gift that has meant the most to her was one she received from co-host and pal Dermot and the entire This Morning team.
“My best present was last year when Dermot and the This Morning team got my mum’s name put on a seat at the Hippodrome Theatre in Birmingham,” Alison said. “It’s right at the front and it also says, 'Maria, the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.' It was the best present I’ve ever had. I did get emotional on the show. I’ll get to see it again this year when I’m back doing panto. It’s like I’m performing for my mum.”
Alison’s mum Maria sadly died of liver and lung cancer in February 2020. At the time, Alison wrote: “Today I dedicate Valentine’s Day to my beautiful, wonderful Mother Maria who passed away from liver and lung cancer. Yesterday my family and I celebrated her amazing life and laid her to rest in a beautiful ceremony she would have been proud of.
"Thank you mummy for giving me the strength to move forward in the knowledge that your ok and with God in Heaven now. I will always remember you and try and make you proud. I love you mum."
Alison has spoken about how her mum was always pivotal to her family’s Christmas celebrations. In an interview with OK! in 2019, she said: ”I’ll be honest, I just do the vegetables and gravy because I can't be bothered. My mum gets up at like 2am to cook a turkey. It's crazy. I'm not doing that. I need my beauty sleep! My favourite part of Christmas is] waking up and seeing my son Aiden's face when he sees all the presents.”
This year, Alison will be spending Christmas with her family in her new home. “I’m hosting Christmas for the first time in my new house, but everyone’s got a job to do. My sister’s doing the turkey, my nephew is doing the lamb and I’ll do all the veg,” she said.
She’s not the only one in the This Morning team planning a big family get-together. Ben Shephard, who celebrates his 50th birthday less than two weeks before Christmas, is planning a get-together large enough to fill a village hall. “Because there’s so many of us, we’re having Christmas Day in the village hall. It’ll be a big lunch with all 26 of us,” he said, while Dermot is having “a bit of an open house for the family to come over". Cat, meanwhile, knows it’s all about the kids on Christmas Day.
“Our usual Christmas Day involves getting up early because my boys are six and eight, so they’re true believers in the magic of Christmas,” she said.