Jakki Brambles

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Jakki Brambles (aka Jackie Brambles) is a British television and radio presenter and reporter. Born 1 March 1967 in Harlow, England, she was the first female presenter to get her own weekday show on the national pop network BBC Radio 1.

Brambles joined the station in 1988 from Capital Radio in London, having started her career in at West Sound in Ayr as a studio cleaner, whose personality was noticed and put on air.

She took on the Radio 1 early show, initially at weekends, before graduating to the weekday equivalent, essentially working as a warm-up act for breakfast host Simon Mayo. She also joined her colleagues on the Top Of The Pops presentation roster.

When Sybil Ruscoe left her role as Mayo's weather and travel reporter, Brambles took over that slot, thereby keeping her on air each day over two separate programmes. On her own shows, she worked with a portable microphone headset and wandered round the studio during links in order to maintain a more 'live' feel, claiming she found it difficult to keep her demeanour lively enough if she was seated.

The combination with Mayo worked well but a minor revamp in 1990 saw Brambles progress to a 90-minute drivetime show and then, when Gary Davies went to weekends, promotion to the important lunchtime slot.

Brambles was arguably the station's first female sex symbol since the heyday of Annie Nightingale in the 1970s and as such, some interest was paid towards her by the media over her private life, though there was little to report.

She married an American and ultimately left Radio 1 in 1993 to move to the States. There was a plan to make her an American showbiz reporter for the BBC but this never transpired. She has since rebranded herself as the more maturely-spelt Jackie Brambles, and moved on to work as a reporter on GMTV.

She has a baby boy called stanley born on 23 March 2006 and she is expecting her second child due to be born in March 2007. Jackie has since stated that she has left GMTV to concentrate on motherhood.

Jackie has most recently been seen on TV as a guest presenter on ITV's lunchtime show Loose Women.