KAY Burley is set to leave Sky News, it is being reported.
The 64-year-old first joined the channel 35 years ago and has been presenting Breakfast with Kay since October 2019, becoming one of the UK's most recognisable news anchors.
According to Deadline, she is expected to step down from her role with an announcement expected as early as this week.
She was involved in the reporting of Princess Diana’s death in 1997 and broke news of the 9/11 attacks on New York in 2001 that won Sky News its first Bafta.
But her career has not been without controversy. In 2008, she was criticised for asking the former girlfriend of serial killer Steve Wright if she thought he would have killed had their sex life been better.
The channel was forced to say that comments Burley made about Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot gave a “potentially misleading representation of his views”.
In addition to other blunders, including commenting that David Cameron had “put on weight” during a live broadcast, she was taken off air in 2020 for celebrating her 60th birthday in breach of Covid restrictions.
Agency rail workers will be stopped at picket lines and asked not to cross. RMT union's General Secretary Mick Lynch got a little flustered explaining why...#KayBurley FC pic.twitter.com/GiTb0WQkxn
— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) June 21, 2022
She said she was “embarrassed” about breaking rules saying that after she had been celebrating at a Covid-compliant restaurant, she briefly popped into another restaurant to go to the toilet as he was waiting for a taxi.
She also had a famously awkward interview with RMT leader Mick Lynch in 2022 where she became increasingly flustered as she harked back to the violent miners’ strike of the 1980s to draw parallels with RMT workers picketing outside stations.
After Burley asked what striking workers would do if agency workers brought in by the government crossed the picket lines, Lynch appeared bemused by her line of questioning asking her “do you not know how a picket line works?”.
Burley continued to press him on what picketing would involve as the interview got more and more tense as she began to reference the miners’ strike.
"I'm sorry you feel the need to ridicule me," Burley snapped back after Lynch suggested she was "surreal".
"Your questions are verging into the nonsense," he replied.
In recent times, Burley has faced personal challenges including her sister being diagnosed with cancer and a horror accident last year that almost killed her.
She revealed she had fainted in the shower in June 2023 and was told she could have died by medical professionals, despite escaping with some bruising to her eye.
She said she now takes care to ensure she has a more considered wake-up routine.
Sky News and Burley have so far not made any comment on the reports.
