Jeni Barnett

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Jeni Barnett (born March 24, 1949 (1949-03-24) (age 59) in London) is an English actress and TV presenter of Jewish extraction, who grew up in Borehamwood.^[1] She is married to Yorkshire-born actor Jim Bywater and has 3 daughters.

Jeni shot to fame after presenting on British breakfast station TV-am. She courted controversy by breast-feeding her new daughter, Bethany, live on air, and shortly afterwards left the show.

As an actress she has appeared many TV shows, including Doctors, and has also been a panelist on ITV's Loose Women and Five's The Wright Stuff.

Between 2002 and 2007, Jeni was host of UKTV Food's flagship food show, Great Food Live (previously known as Good Food Live) and its spinoffs Great Food Bites and Great Food Live Extra. In 2004/2005, Jeni also hosted the second series of the ITV1 cookery show, Too Many Cooks, which was filmed in Manchester and featured chefs made famous by Great Food Live, such as Gino D'Acampo. Jeni also presented LBCss Sunday afternoon food programme for a brief period in 2007.

On 16 June 2007 Jeni presented her first radio programme on LBC 97.3, when she stood in for a Chris Hawkins on Saturday afternoon. Jeni soon returned to the air filling in for more presenters, including Jim Davis' Lifestyle show. As part of a new Sunday schedule Jeni was given a new 2 hour programme talking about her passion - Food. A further change on 7 January 2008 saw Jeni move to weekday afternoons, 1-4pm, as part of the new weekday line up. The programme is a topical debate featuring aspects of news and views, in which the public are encouraged to call in with their thoughts. ^[2] Jeni continued to present the Sunday Food programme as well as her new weekday afternoon programme, working 6 days a week, until 20 January 2008 when Bill Buckley replaced her on Sundays so Jeni could concentrate on her weekday programme.