BBC’s Wimbledon presenter is descended from King Henry VII and had awkward moment at breakfast with The Queen
THE BBC’S new face of Wimbledon tennis coverage descends from King Henry VII – but that did not stop her from having an awkward moment with The Queen.
The legendary Sue Barker stepped down from her £190,000-a-year hosting duties for the Beeb last year and is already missed by viewers.
Now it has been confirmed that Clare Balding, 52, will be the one to fill those big shoes.
The widely-popular presenter has covered a range of sports throughout her own illustrious career from the Olympics to rugby league and BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
And she has also covered Wimbledon since 1995 for both BBC radio and TV.
Now she cannot wait to begin her new role as the main host, saying: “It’s a huge honour to be given this responsibility but I am very aware that no one person can fill Sue’s shoes.
“This will always be a team effort and we’re lucky that the BBC line-up includes former professionals with huge insight as well as wonderful reporters and commentators.
“It’s my job to bring out the best in them and to help make our viewers feel they have a front row seat on the greatest sporting stage.”
Balding, who was formerly an amateur jockey, also has a fascinating backstory away from her impressive career.
Back in 2017 she discovered her family history on the BBC1 show Who Do You Think You Are?
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Their investigations revealed that her grandmother can trace her family line all the way back to King Henry VII, who died in 1509.
And that is not Balding’s only brush with royalty as her father, Ian Balding, trained horses for the late Queen Mother and her uncle, the Earl of Huntingdon, trained for the Queen.
That resulted in the late Queen Elizabeth II often coming to the Balding’s family home for breakfast while the Queen Mother would come for lunch.
Balding, who has also revealed that she has lost 90 per cent of her hearing, previously recalled: “You’d have that situation where you came back to the house, the Queen was there for breakfast, that was really odd and dad had forgotten to tell us.
“I thought it was a bit odd because we weren’t having breakfast the way we usually had it, it was all a bit smarter.
“I was meant to curtsey but I forgot because I ran in and thought ‘cooked breakfast, fantastic, sausages!’”
However, Balding also endured another embarrassing moment around The Queen at breakfast time while sat opposite the monarch.
She said: “I had a similar incident with a sausage at the breakfast table, trying to cut it to put it on toast and it shooting across the table.
“The Queen was sitting at the end of the table, I grabbed the sausage and put it back on the toast and she just raised an eyebrow and I thought, ‘Okay, we’ll be okay’.
“The informality of it, she loved coming to the stables because it was the one place that didn’t smell of fresh paint, it smelt of horses, life carries on.”
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Balding also met the Queen many times in a professional capacity and she was also part of BBC’s commentary team for the King’s Coronation in May 2023.
Among the other interesting facts about Balding, who bravely overcame thyroid cancer after being diagnosed with it in 2009, is that she can claim to also be a movie star.
She made a cameo as herself in the 2020 film movie Dream Horse which starred Toni Collette and Damian Lewis.
And she appeared in TV series Dark Money, W1A and Watson & Oliver.