‘People will actually fall asleep’: how Claudia Winkleman faces the biggest week of her TV career

‘They’ve given me a talkshow,” says Claudia Winkleman in the trailer. “Agreed, an error. It might be excruciating.” Such wry self-deprecation continued in the official announcement. “I’m obviously going to be awful,” she said. “That goes without saying but I’m over the moon the BBC are letting me try.”

On Friday the 13th – lucky for viewers? – the 54-year-old hosts the inaugural edition of her eponymous chatshow. The Claudia Winkleman Show’s title might not be the most exciting, but it’s a quietly revolutionary TV moment. It also makes this arguably the biggest week of the presenters’s career. No pressure.

As the teak-tanned face of the BBC’s two marquee franchises, The Traitors and Strictly Come Dancing, Winkleman has established herself as the premier presenter on primetime TV. Now our highest-rating host, she has deposed the ubiquitous Ant and Dec after their 24-year reign. This week’s launch, however, is next level. For the first time, her name is above the door. She’s riding high. Can she continue her hot streak?

She couldn’t have had a better warmup. Last weekend, Winkleman was a surprise addition to Channel 4’s coverage of Crufts. At Birmingham NEC for the world’s biggest dog show, the mutt-mad presenter was in her element. She helped groom a black spaniel whose long, silky ears made her resemble raven-maned Winkleman herself. She threatened to french kiss a cute terrier, promised chicken-and-gravy dinners to her favourite pooches and did her special “dog voice” to a cavalier king charles spaniel. With a litter of puppies on her lap, Winkleman declared: “I’m never leaving. This is actual heaven.”

Her screen relationship with Crufts stalwart Clare Balding recalled her decade-long pairing with Tess Daly on Strictly Come Dancing, the sports presenter playing the patient big sister to Winkleman’s anarchic younger sibling. She caused canine chaos by joining a Golden retriever display team. When a tearful Lee Cox – owner of best in show champion Bruin the clumber spaniel – apologised for accidentally bonking Winkleman’s face with a microphone during an emotional live interview, she reassured him – “I enjoyed it.”

Her hugely entertaining contribution helped Crufts to live ratings of 1.5m and an audience share which was twice Channel 4’s Sunday average. Winkleman signed off with: “I’ve had the best day of my life. I quite liked my wedding but this is better.” (Talking of matrimony, she’d previously proposed to a wire-haired dachshund called Cecil.)

Now it’s time for a higher profile vehicle. Her debut chatshow caps a busy week for the versatile, genre-hopping broadcaster – she’s also been shooting the next series of the talent-search show The Piano in railway stations around the country – and marks the start of her post-Strictly chapter. Move over Wogan and Wossy. Here’s Winkle. As Richard Osman says on this week’s The Rest Is Entertainment podcast: “This is definitively the right idea at the right time with the right person.”

The series is made by So Television, the company behind The Graham Norton Show and airs on the same Friday 10.40pm slot. Winkleman calls Norton “The best of the best. To be in the same slot is a total privilege and also completely nerve-racking.” She cites Celebrity Traitors alumni Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr as other influences (“I never missed a Chatty Man”), along with US late-night host Chelsea Handler (“I’m actually in love with her”). Sounds promising – and refreshingly different from ye olde Leno/Letterman namechecks wheeled out by male wannabes.

The show’s set looks more muted, classy and clubby than those of her rivals. More after-hours salon than shiny-floored showbiz. The first guests on her green velvet sofa are Hollywood actors Jeff Goldblum and Vanessa Williams, comedian Tom Allen and all-round deity Jennifer Saunders. A slightly underpowered bill, but word is, the pre-recording was a riot. We’re promised lively conversation with the help of a dressed-up studio audience. As Winkleman says: “I imagine I’ll ask guests about their favourite biscuits and their dog, and people will actually fall asleep.”

Winkleman is an engaging and empathetic interviewer who has demonstrated an easy, breezy charm while grilling celebrities, whether it’s on Strictly, her Radio 2 show or when she stood in for Norton for one episode last year. She opened that show with: “I’m so sorry that Graham isn’t here tonight. Nobody is more livid than me.”

As a Cambridge graduate, she’s ferociously bright but wears it lightly and remains utterly relatable. She’s whip-smart but low on ego, meaning she knows when to get out of the way and let others shine. Warm and witty with twinkly charisma, her natural curiosity means she asks nosy questions. Thanks to her apprenticeship as a roving reporter and 34 years grafting her way to the top, she has the unflappability to embrace the freewheeling, spontaneous moments which make talkshow gold and go viral. Riffing on her trademark double-dipped tan, trailers saw her stirring a vat of tangerine-coloured paint (she’s described herself as “the tiny orange one with the fringe”).

Without fanfare, Friday night marks a historic TV moment. In a genre still dominated by middle-aged white men in suits, female presenters are too often consigned to daytime fluff. A woman hasn’t helmed a primetime UK chatshow since the noughties, when Davina McCall, Charlotte Church and, er, Lily Allen all had short-lived stabs. When Emma Thompson played a talkshow host in the Mindy Kaling comedy Late Night she joked that it was “basically science fiction”.

Winkleman might have the goodwill of the viewing public behind her but predictably, the knives will be out in certain quarters. The production company and time slot will inevitably invite comparisons with Norton. However, Winkleman has hitherto proven pretty immune to criticism. She’s philosophical enough to shrug it off, while her habitual modesty means she probably got there first with any self-mockery anyway. For every vocal hater, there are hundreds who adore her. Besides, surely it can’t be worse than her first ever chatshow experience, which recently went viral again. “In my early 20s, I talked about how to flirt on the sofa for Good Morning with Anne & Nick,” she recalls. “It was chronic.”

Since then, everything she’s touched has turned to a Bafta shade of gold. Even last autumn’s shock decision to quit Strictly went smoothly, partly due to her huge post-Traitors popularity. Having scored a string of ratings and critical hits, it’s crunch time. In five nights, she’s gone from the Crufts parade ring to the chatshow couch. Will she now take her rightful place as glossy-fringed empress of Friday nights? If anyone can pull it off, Claud can.