Background and career
Claudia Anne Irena Winkleman (born 15 January 1972) is a broadcaster. She co-presented the BBC One dance competition Strictly Come Dancing (2010–2025) and hosts the BBC One reality series The Traitors (2022–present), the latter of which won her a BAFTA award in 2023. She hosted the Saturday mid-morning show on BBC Radio 2 from 2020 to 2024. Winkleman was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2025 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Claudia Anne Irena Winkleman was born in Westminster into a Jewish family on 15 January 1972, the daughter of author and journalist Eve Pollard and book publisher Barry Winkleman. She grew up in the Hampstead area of London. Her parents divorced when she was three. Her father's marriage to children's author Cindy Black produced a half-sister, actress Sophie Winkleman, who married Lord Frederick Windsor. Her mother's marriage to Nicholas Lloyd gave her a half-brother, Oliver. Winkleman was educated at the City of London School for Girls before attending New Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated in art history.
Her television career started in 1992, when Winkleman began appearing frequently in the long-running BBC series Holiday. This continued throughout the mid-1990s and culminated in a special documentary in which she travelled around the world for 34 days, reporting from Japan, India, Costa Rica and Dubai. Throughout this period, she appeared as a reporter on other shows, particularly This Morning, interviewing various celebrities. During the late 1990s, Winkleman presented a number of programmes on smaller digital channels. She had a stint on the cable channel L!VE TV, but soon left to pursue other projects. In 1996, Winkleman hosted Granada programmes God's Gift (taking over from Davina McCall) and Pyjama Party (co-hosted with Katie Puckrik and Michelle Kelly). Winkleman also presented a number of gameshows, including the dating show Three's a Crowd, LWT show Talking Telephone Numbers, the second series of Granada TV show God's Gift, and Fanorama. In 1997 she was the co-host of children's Saturday morning TV show Tricky. She was also an occasional team captain on a gameshow called HeadJam, hosted by Vernon Kay.
Winkleman's first major television job was in 2001, on the regional discussion programme Central Weekend. Between 2002 and 2004, she began her first daily television role as host of the BBC Three Entertainment update show Liquid News, taking over from Christopher Price on the now defunct BBC Choice. She shared the presenting duties with Colin Paterson, and later Paddy O'Connell. The show featured celebrity interviews. In 2003, Fame Academy appointed Winkleman to present a daily update show on BBC Three, in conjunction with its second series. She repeated the show in 2005 for the much shorter celebrity version Comic Relief Does Fame Academy. Also in 2005, Winkleman co-hosted The House of Tiny Tearaways, a BBC Three reality TV show. She also began hosting Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, a supplementary programme to Strictly Come Dancing. Winkleman then presented several more reality shows, including End of Story and Art School.
Winkleman, along with Graham Norton, hosted the first annual Eurovision Dance Contest, which was held on 1 September 2007, in London, England. The format was based on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing and the EBU's Eurovision Song Contest. Norton and Winkleman also hosted the 2008 contest in Glasgow, Scotland. Winkleman narrated the 2008 BBC Three show Glamour Girls, a documentary series about glamour modelling in Britain. In March 2009, Winkleman was announced as the host of the new series of Hell's Kitchen on ITV1. She fronted the nightly show live from the restaurant in East London in its fourth series in the spring. On 14 November 2009, she appeared on the main show of Strictly Come Dancing to present backstage, due to main presenter Bruce Forsyth being on sick leave. She co-hosted the show with Tess Daly and guest presenter Ronnie Corbett. On 29 March 2010, she was named as one of the new co-presenters of the Film programme, replacing Jonathan Ross. The Guardian stated, in reference to her recent hosting of Sky Television's coverage of The Oscars, that Winkleman had "proved both a passionate and engaging advocate of cinema". Her husband Kris Thykier is a film producer with credits on several mainstream releases.
On 2 April 2013, Winkleman began presenting the BBC Two sewing competition The Great British Sewing Bee, continuing until 2016. The show went off air for 2017, but was brought back in 2018, with Joe Lycett replacing Winkleman as presenter. In 2015, she appeared on The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz. In May 2015, she appeared on an episode of Watchdog on BBC One in which she discussed, during a segment on dangerous Halloween costumes, that the previous year her daughter had been badly burned when the costume she was wearing caught fire. In November 2016, Winkleman presented the one-off BBC special Bublé at the BBC with Michael Bublé. From 2018, she presented Britain's Best Home Cook and The Makeover Show for BBC One. In May 2018, Winkleman co-presented The Biggest Weekend on BBC Two and BBC Radio 2. In 2022, she began hosting the BBC reality gameshow The Traitors, in which contestants respond to challenges testing loyalty and deception. A second series was announced in February 2023, with Winkleman returning as host, premiering on 3 January 2024. Winkleman returned to host the third series, premiering on 1 January 2025, followed by a Celebrity Traitors series in October 2025. On 1 January 2026, Winkleman hosted the fourth series. In 2023, Winkleman hosted a five-part Channel 4 competition show The Piano, which gave amateur pianists the chance to perform at London's Royal Festival Hall. The show was renewed for a second and third series, a Christmas special, and a documentary focusing on the winner of the first series, Lucy Illingworth. On 29 December 2025, it was announced that Winkleman would host her own celebrity chat show on BBC One from spring 2026, named The Claudia Winkleman Show. On 16 July 2026, Winkleman announced that she had declined to return for a second series, disclosing that she found the chat show format uncomfortable.
