November 2010
ONE would think that getting a presenting job on MTV at the age of just 22 would impress the family.
But when Alice Levine came back home to Beeston to show her mum and dad her very first recording as the new host of Celebrity Bites...
“My dad fell asleep,” laughs the former Alderman White pupil.
“I woke him up and he just said ‘well, it’s not really my kind of thing.’”
Dad was a lecturer at the University of Nottingham, now retired, while mum is an artist-turned-caterer.
“They have watched it since and assure me they like it,” says Alice.
The show, which broadcasts on MTV every Friday night, finds her interviewing celebrities and music stars from a customized trailer in Battersea Park.
“I like to think of it as Popworld in its heyday mixed with Paris Hilton,” says Alice, who was a regular at The Bodega, Broadway and Wax Bar when she was a teenager.
“It’s a look at celeb gossip with really funny, irreverent interviews.”
So far she’s interviewed Mel B, Marina & The Diamonds, Scouting For Girls and rock band Good Charlotte.
But TV presenting wasn’t the plan when she studied English at university in Leeds.
“I’d never considered it before,” she admits.
“I expected I’d stay on and maybe do an MA but after my first year I thought that probably wasn’t likely to happen. I got involved with the student TV station when a friend asked me to co-present an eight minute music show. We interviewed bands like Editors and the Pigeon Detectives and I really got in to it.”
It wasn’t just music, as she would also interview Hollywood actors John Cusak and Christian Bale at the London Film Festival.
“It was a really pro-active group of people and I see a lot them in London, working in television.”
She was among a group from the TV station who spent a summer filming a documentary while travelling across Australia and North America for US TV network, PBS.
“It was definitely a test of our friendship, having to travel together in a campervan that long,” she laughs.
“The idea was to interview inspirational people, who had forged a path in whatever their discipline was. One of my favourites was Cheryl Hines from Curb Your Enthusiasm, who plays Larry’s wife.”
After university she headed to London to work behind the scenes for RDF television but also co-presented shows on the internet, interviewing the likes of Sir Patrick Moore and Tom Jones.
Last weekend she was in Madrid on the red carpet for the MTV Europe Music Awards.
“There are other projects in the pipeline with MTV next year, although they are plans they’ve not let me in on yet,” she says.
Celebrity Bites airs every Friday on MTV at 8pm.
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