FEATURE
Home comforts – Kay enjoyed a look around the Riverside with Tees Life when she came back to see family and friends recently.
Proud – Middlesbrough-born Kay is a lifelong Boro fan.
Kay bagged her first job as a trained journalist on The Hendon Times in North-West London. Then, just nine months later, she made the amazing leap to Real Madrid TV, the Spanish football club’ s first international channel.“ When I told the editor, he said‘ In my 25 years as an editor a lot of people have come in and told me they were leaving but no one has ever left for such a great job’.”
Having initially been employed behind the scenes to write news bulletins, she rose to host the Englishspeaking channel’ s flagship show, travelling with the starstudded team throughout the world during a six-year stay in the Spanish capital.
Name-dropping time! Kay rubbed shoulders with such football royalty as Cristiano Ronaldo, Jose Mourinho, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Fabio Cannavaro, Arjen Robben, Kaka and Mesut Ozil.
She grins.“ If( goalkeeper) Iker Casillas was receiving an award from UNICEF, we’ d cover it so we’ d be on a private jet with him to Geneva. I can’ t lie, it was a brilliant job” But one of the highlights of her first season was meeting England and Manchester United legend David Beckham. She recalls:“ Beckham was lovely – always very nice with people, though you did get a sense there was a barrier around him; a line that you couldn’ t cross. Until Cristiano Ronaldo joined Real, I’ d never seen such a demand for somebody’ s attention.
“ But David was always very nice to deal with – and yes, he was better looking in real life than I’ d seen in pictures!”
But she has an admission to make.“ I must be the only female in Spain who met David Beckham but gave him the‘ Pleased to meet you’ handshake instead of a kiss on both cheeks, which is the Spanish tradition.
“ I got so excited about meeting him for the first time, having come of age watching him. I did my hair and my makeup but it was only as my taxi got near the training ground that I had that awful heartsinking moment when I realised I had forgotten to clean my teeth. I think it’ s because I’ d been chewing gum, so had that minty taste in my mouth. So, when I met him, I just stuck my hand out instead of giving him two kisses – though the next time I met him I made sure I got right in there!”
Another major perk of the job was having a stylist and makeup artist before every show.
“ You’ d go on air looking a million dollars,” she recalls.“ You’ d also have stunning new clothes to wear every day, which we could borrow for nights out, though we only got to keep them on special occasions.”
It was a dream job – but this football fairytale took a new twist
12