TV presenter Kate Garraway and her Bridget Jones moments

The most famous of these happened last year, when her crotch – sporting nude-coloured support pants – was accidentally flashed to the nation as her co-presenter, Ben Shephard, scooped her up and pretended to dunk her in a pool of muddy water.

“I’ve made such a fool of myself so many times on TV. When you’ve flashed your crotch in front of the nation, it’s hard to get nervous about anything ever again! It was my worst nightmare,” she laments.

She may have been horrified that her nether regions were exposed for a nanosecond on national TV, but she can laugh at herself with the best of them.

She’s now tackling middle age – she’ll be 50 this year – with The Joy Of Big Knickers, an upbeat, positive and humorous book which looks at middle age for the modern woman.

It’s partly anecdotal – we learn her thoughts on cosmetic surgery, embarking on a sex challenge with her husband, changing her couch potato habits and eating more healthily – but there’s plenty of research in there which addresses the problems and feelings of today’s women as they reach this phase of life.

She admits she had her own mid-life crisis while writing the book, when she walked into the office at Smooth Radio, where she presents a daily show, on her 49th birthday and they’d decked it out for her 50th.

“It made me think, ‘But I am going to be 50 and it feels like a very big number, where you should have achieved things or be content with things’. I thought, ‘I’m still overstretched, overworked, feeling like I’m not being as good a mum as I should be or as good at work as I should be’. I needed to take stock.

“I needed to look at exercise, eating, and the great thing about my job is that you not only have super-glamorous famous people who seem to have got it all sorted, to take advice from, but also as a journalist, I know how to find answers from experts.”

She’s worked on breakfast TV for nearly 20 years, interviewing everyone from heavyweight politicians to film stars including Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise.

And there have been times when Garraway has wanted to enhance her own looks, although, so far, she has resisted Botox and going under the knife.

“I pretty much wanted a facelift quite obsessively for ages. But everyone said it wouldn’t make any difference at all.’’

Garraway’s been married for 11 years to her second husband, former Labour adviser Derek Draper, who she met through a mutual friend at GMTV.

“We went for drinks in London and she invited him along, telling him there was this girl at GMTV she really wanted him to meet. He thought it was Andrea McLean. He’d Googled the wrong person. I think he was a bit disappointed when I turned up because Andrea’s gorgeous!

“We got on straight away. I thought he was, and still is, very interesting.”

Married in their late-30s, they have a daughter, Darcey, 10, and son, Billy, 7.

In the book, she writes: “Sex isn’t the be-all and end-all, as we mid-lifers know so well. Companionship, trust, support in raising a family and caring for elderly relatives can make us adore our partners much more than any special antics in the bedroom.”

l The Joy Of Big Knickers is out now, published by Blink, priced £14.99.