Adele Marie Roberts is a British broadcaster and English reality TV personality and DJ. She was born in Southport and is of Barbadian and British descent.
Roberts was a housemate in Big Brother 3. She came in seventh place after being evicted on 5 July, 2002, seen by 7.1 million viewers. Adele later returned to the series in 2007, and participated in a task for Big Brother 8 alongside Alex Sibley.
Career
Radio
In 2002, she landed her first radio job at Rock FM in Lancashire, presenting the weekly “Smooth Grooves Show”, a self-produced urban specialist show airing Friday 10pm-2am. Roberts also presented shows on The Hits Radio in Manchester. In 2006 she joined Galaxy in Leeds. In 2012, she moved to BBC Radio 1Xtra. Roberts has stated that presenting on BBC 1Xtra had been a long-term aspiration and that she had attended a development event for the station in 2002 but had been too nervous to approach anybody and left immediately. In 2015 it was announced that Roberts would be the new host of the BBC Radio 1 Early Breakfast show from 4:00-6:30am. Previous hosts of the same show include Greg James, Scott Mills, Chris Moyles and Dev. She is also regular cover for The live lounge show. In 2020, Roberts became the first black female to host the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast show after the regular presenter Greg James failed to make it on air after attending The Brit Awards. It was later revealed that this was a planned stunt in which listeners had to locate the whereabouts of James with the help of on-air clues.
Television
Roberts is a regular presenter for BBC Sport. In 2019 she joined the London Marathon coverage and commentary team alongside Gaby Logan, Steve Cram, Paula Radcliffe and Andrew Cotter. In November 2019, it was announced that Roberts would be participating in the nineteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. She was the first campmate to be voted off the show on 29 November. The show received complaints for the eviction as the voting app used to nominate camp mates had caused confusion due to ambiguous wording on the interface; because of this, no votes from the app were counted and only phone votes were used. In January 2020, Roberts won the sixth series of Celebrity Coach Trip on E4 alongside her girlfriend, Kate Holderness.
Personal life
Relationship
Roberts is currently dating actress Kate Holderness. They present a cooking show on YouTube called Friday Night Fakeaway.
Sport and Fitness
Roberts is a keen runner and has completed two London Marathons, finishing both races with a qualifying time for the following year. In 2017 she finished with a time of 03:36:31 and in 2018 she finished with a time of 03:30:38.Roberts ran both marathons for the charity Heads Together. In 2017 she received a surprise visit from Prince William and Kate Middleton who head the charity to wish her luck in her race. Roberts took part in the Sport Relief charity netball match in 2019. She played on the winning the team captained by Oti Mabuse.
LGBTQIA+ Rights
Roberts is an active member and campaigner for the LGBTQ community. In 2013 she presented “Coming Out”, a documentary for BBC 1Xtra & BBC Radio 1, sharing her own and others’ personal coming out stories. She was nominated for ‘Broadcaster of the Year’ at the in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and the LGBT Awards in 2018 and 2020.
