Presenters and their rotas

I have been nursing rather a nasty hangover in the Wellington Dungeon, I had attempted to synthesise a non-alcoholic porkpie, when I became very nauseous whilst inhaling some of the fumes from the Wellington Pastry accelerator.

Anyway, a thought occurred to me, how are tv presenters and their work loads spread?

For instance, Lisa Riley only ever seems to present You’ve Been Framed – this can’t take up a whole year, so what does she do in the mean time?

Other presenters and news reports, they seem to be on TV most of the year – where do they fit their holiday etc?

And, how to those who work in soaps, like Eastenders and Corrie fit in their holiday etc?

Lisa Riley is by definition an actress and most actors/actresses take any job that comes their way, hence how I reckon such a wonderful actress as Jane Gurnett ended up in a walkon role one one of the Basil Brush shows last year

Anyway I suppose actors get a standard holiday rota like everybody else albeit probably more and the kid actors technically speaking get none at all, during school terms at least.

Well no. Actors are self employed. Lisa Riley will sign a contact agreeing to present a number of editions of the programme for a fee. What she does for the rest of the year is up to her and her agent and of no concern to the company which makes the programme

Well that figures, I dare say its probably different for the soap operas as opposed to stand alone programmes, I presume they have a "so many episodes a year" type clause for, say, Corrie?

I don't think they do - what I can tell you is that in the current Radio Times (other magazines are available), Leslie Grantham says of his first time in EastEnders: "I did 505 episodes out of 508, so I didn't get any time off".