Janet Ellis, the beloved former Blue Peter presenter, is stepping into a significant new role at the start of 2026. At 70, she will become the next president of Humanists UK, taking over from geneticist Adam Rutherford. In a candid interview, Ellis opens up about her journey from children's television to championing secular causes, navigating single motherhood, and coping with profound personal loss.
A New Chapter: Championing Humanist Values
Ellis, who lives in London with her grandson and a large Italian spinone dog named Angela, says she has always been drawn to the "steady calmness" of Humanists UK. The organisation campaigns for secular schools and assisted dying laws, causes she strongly supports. Her appointment comes at a politically charged time, with increasing polarisation and the influence of evangelical funding from the US.
"Since I was a child, I've found the idea of prioritising what came next over this bit a really weird concept," Ellis states, explaining her lifelong atheism. "Everything starts and finishes in our minds." Despite the potential exposure of advocating for issues like abortion access, she remains undaunted. "I've never been scared of saying what I think," she asserts. "The reassuring thing is, as you get older, it gets easier."
From Plant Pot to Presenter: An Accidental Career
Ellis's path to television fame was far from planned. Born in Kent in 1955, she trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, dreaming of a theatre career. Her first professional role involved playing a plant pot on stage. Television was initially a reluctant compromise. "Telly in those days was a bit, 'Well, if I have to,'" she recalls.
Her agent's suggestion that she try presenting was met with horror. "When my agent first said, 'What about presenting?', I found it absolutely, outrageously awful as a suggestion," she admits, gesturing that her ambitions lay with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Nonetheless, she took presenting roles on Jigsaw and, famously, Blue Peter from 1983 to 1987.
Her tenure on the iconic children's show coincided with major personal changes. She had her first child, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, at 23, and was divorced by 29, just as her Blue Peter career began. "I established myself quite early on in my mind as somebody who was free to be," she reflects, grateful that the pre-social media era afforded her privacy.
Love, Loss, and Legacy
During her third year on Blue Peter, Ellis met television producer John Leach. Their romance began awkwardly with a cinema trip to see Aliens, and they married in 1988, having two children together, Jack and Martha. Ellis describes Leach as "the funniest person I've ever met" and a brilliant stepfather to Sophie.
Tragically, Leach died in 2020 at age 63, after a two-and-a-half-year battle with tonsil cancer. His illness coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which Ellis says severely impacted his care. "It was ridiculous that he should die so young," she says. "The godsend was, we had fantastic weather. We sat in the garden for months. And all we ever wanted, really, was to be together."
His death tested but did not break her agnosticism. "If anything was going to challenge it, it would be the hope that you'd see someone again. But I'm not going to see him again... I genuinely find it comforting that we had a good time here."
Ellis left Blue Peter in 1989, not because she was fired while pregnant, as rumoured, but because she chose not to return after having her son. She later presented Open Air and co-wrote a book. Now, as she prepares for her presidency at Humanists UK, she remains her characteristically forthright self, even asking if she must stop saying "Oh God." She was reassured she could try not to. For anyone who remembers her guiding a generation through sticky-backed plastic projects, it's clear Janet Ellis's next chapter will be navigated with the same thoughtful, principled calm.
