Freelance presenter scrambles to save BBC Breakfast’s bacon

Regular BBC Breakfast viewers tweeted to say they thought war had broken out this morning when they woke up to see a shoestring version of the show fronted by an unknown face.

When all the usual big-name presenters, including Bill Turnbull, Sian Williams and Susanna Reid, refused to cross picket lines, BBC bosses were left yesterday with a last-minute scramble to find a stand-in.

Eventually they tracked down veteran freelance presenter Gavin Grey, who found himself going head to head against ITV's struggling big guns, Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley.

Grey, whose career has included stints at Westcountry Television, Central South and Meridian Tonight, worked his way through the morning schedule. On his personal website he states that he is "no longer a journalist, now an associate director of a well-known media consultancy firm in Hampshire".

Appropriately he describes himself as an expert in "crisis communication strategies".