Daniel Jonathon Lobb (born 7 January 1972) is a British retired tennis player and television presenter, best known for co-presenting the

ITV Breakfast ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Limited (previously known as GMTV Limited) is the national ITV breakfast television licensee, broadcasting in the United Kingdom. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of ITV plc in November 2009. The breakfast license r ...

programme '' Daybreak'' from 2010 until 2012. Since 2015, he co-presents ''Cowboy Builders'' on Channel 5.

Early life

Lobb grew up in

Colden Common Colden Common is a civil parish in the Winchester District of Hampshire, England, approximately 5 miles south of the city of Winchester, covering an area of with a resident population of approximately 4,000 people. It includes the village of Cold ...

near

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

. He attended

Peter Symonds College Peter Symonds College is a sixth form college in Winchester, Hampshire, in the south of England. Founded as a boys' grammar school, it is one of the few specialist sixth form colleges which is also a boarding school. It serves Falkland Island ...

in Winchester, where he studied Biology, Chemistry and Economics.

Tennis career

Lobb was assisted by College Prospects of America to gain a tennis scholarship to the

University of Tennessee at Martin The University of Tennessee at Martin (UT Martin or UTM) is a public university in Martin, Tennessee. It is one of the five campuses of the University of Tennessee system. UTM is the only public university in West Tennessee outside of Memphis ...

in the USA. He was named as an All-American (for tennis) and graduated from the school of Business with high honours. After coaching at various tennis clubs in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, Lobb played professionally for three years reaching a British ranking of 18 in 1997. After retiring in 1998 he combined coaching and modelling for three years as well as getting involved in sports PR and

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

in London.

Broadcasting career

In 2001, Lobb started part-time work at a local cable station assisting the sports producer before being given the opportunity to present a live show. From there he moved on to ''

5 News ''5 News at 5'', also known as ''Channel 5 News'', is the news programme of British broadcaster Channel 5, produced by ITN from its main newsroom on Gray's Inn Road, London. History ''5 News'' was one of the new station's flagship programme ...

'' and was offered a contract by Sky Sports in January 2002, presenting mostly on ''

Sky Sports News Sky Sports News (SSN) is a British pay television, paid television sports news channel run by Sky Limited, Sky, a division of Comcast. History Since 1992, Sky Sports had broadcast sports news, initially a brief ''Football Update'' and lat ...

''. In October 2007, he began presenting '' The Club'' on

Sky Poker Sky Betting & Gaming is a United Kingdom, British-based gambling company, owned by Flutter Entertainment, with headquarters in Leeds, West Yorkshire and offices in Sheffield & Solihull. Sky Betting & Gaming consists of five core brands: Sky Bet, ...

, a humorous magazine show based around

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

. He presented with Matt Broughton. On 30 December 2008 during a live Sky Sports News programme, Lobb was co-presenting with Simon Thomas when it was revealed that this would be Lobb's final appearance on the channel. Thomas thanked Lobb for his seven-year service and joked that he was "still the only presenter to have beat

Tim Henman Timothy Henry Henman (born 6 September 1974) is a British former professional tennis player. Henman played a serve-and-volley style of tennis. He was the first British man to reach the singles semifinals of Wimbledon since Roger Taylor in the ...

- as he has liked to remind us over 400 times!" (This was in reference to Lobb's professional tennis career). In May 2009, Lobb became a sports presenter on

Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel and organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of Comcast. John Ryley is the hea ...

. Lobb moved to

GMTV GMTV (an acronym for Good Morning Television), now legally known as ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Limited, was the name of the national Channel 3 breakfast television contractor/licensee, broadcasting in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1993 ...

as the sports correspondent in January 2010. He transferred to the replacement programme '' Daybreak'' on 6 September 2010, appointed sports editor, and stand-in presenter. On 2 September, he took over from

Adrian Chiles Adrian Chiles (born 21 March 1967) is a British writer and television and radio presenter. He has co-presented both ''The One Show'' (2007–2010) and '' Daybreak'' (2010–2011) with Christine Lampard. He was also the chief presenter for foo ...

as the Friday co-presenter of ''Daybreak'' and on 6 December 2011 he took over from Chiles full-time on an interim basis.

Aled Jones Aled Jones, (born 29 December 1970) is a Welsh singer and radio and television presenter. As a teenage chorister, he reached widespread fame during the mid-1980s. Since then he has worked in television with the BBC and ITV, and radio (for Cla ...

was appointed as Chiles' permanent replacement with Lobb leaving the programme on 31 August 2012. On 6 September 2011, it was announced that Lobb would take part in the 2011 series of ''

Strictly Come Dancing ''Strictly Come Dancing'' (informally known as ''Strictly'') is a British dance contest show in which celebrities partner with professional dancers to compete in mainly ballroom and Latin dance. Each couple is scored by a panel of usually 4 ...

'' on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

. He was partnered with

Katya Virshilas Katya Virshilas (born 10 September 1983) is a Lithuanian-Canadian dancer and actress. Early life Virshilas was born in Lithuania, to a Jewish family. She subsequently moved to Israel at age 6, and to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at thi ...

. He was the second person to be voted off the show. In January 2013 he presented a one-off

Ping pong Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

event for Sky Sports. In 2015, Lobb returned to television as a co-presenter of ''Cowboy Builders'' on Channel 5. Lobb has been a commentator on Wimbledon television broadcasts for Wimbledon Broadcasting Services.

Filmography

References

External links

Dan Lobb
Official website (archived)
Dan Lobb
on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lobb British sports broadcasters GMTV presenters and reporters ITV Breakfast presenters and reporters Living people Sportspeople from Winchester Sky Sports presenters and reporters 1972 births British male tennis players UT Martin Skyhawks athletes College men's tennis players in the United States Mass media people from Winchester