Weather presenter Wincey Willis has died aged 76 after being diagnosed with dementia.
The popular TV star, who was ITV’s first ever female forecaster, died on 18 December last year, with the news announced to the public on Wednesday (18 June) this week.
Screenwriter Russell T Davies, 62, shared a tribute to Willis on social media, detailing a run-in with the weather presenter, when he used her name in an episode of his Nineties drama series Queer as Folk.
“She hunted me down!” the writer said on Instagram. “She got hold of my email address just to tell me how delighted she was to be mentioned!
Speaking about Willis’s personality, he said: “She was absolutely hilarious and full of joy, what a lovely woman. We corresponded for years, having a wonderful laugh, she was a hoot.”
“And what a great career! Adored her. Well done, Wincey, night darling,” he concluded.
Willis, known for her colourful knitwear and cheery disposition, joined TV-am, which broadcast the ITV breakfast television show from 1983 until 1992, as its weather presenter in 1983 when the channel was competing with the BBC’s new Breakfast Time show.
She was scouted for the role by ITV’s deputy editor in chief, Clive Jones, while she was a presenter for ITV in the Tyne Tees region.
The TV star was forthcoming about her lack of expertise in forecasting, stating she was “not a meteorologist, but a presenter”. Willis inspired a wave of female presenters to try their hand at meteorology, including Trish Williamson and Ulrika Jonsson.
“Most people don’t want to know about high pressure over the Azores. All they care about is whether they need their umbrella,” Willis once told the Liverpool Echo.
Her popularity soared when she became an adjudicator on five seasons of the Channel 4 game show Treasure Hunt in 1985, alongside Anneka Rice. She subsequently left full-time TV in 1987 to fulfil her ambition of becoming a wildlife conservationist.
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During this period, Willis wrote two books: It’s Raining Cats and Dogs (1986) and Greendays (1990). She spent six months living in Greece while monitoring a breeding turtle population.
Willis later returned to broadcasting in 1993, this time as a wildlife presenter on Tyne Tees Weekend. She simultaneously worked for the worm composting company, Wiggly Wigglers.
In the 2000s, she switched to radio and hosted her own shows on BBC Coventry & Warwickshire and BBC Hereford & Worcester.
Willis was born Florence Winsome Leighton in Gateshead on 8 August, 1948 to a single mother. She was adopted as a baby and brought up in Hartlepool, where she went by her middle name. Children in her class at school began calling her Wincey after learning the lyrics to the nursery rhyme “Incey Wincey Spider”.
Willis said she had wanted to be a vet as a child but “wasn’t clever enough” to secure the necessary grades. After leaving Hartlepool High School for Girls, she took A-level equivalent exams in French and studied at Strasbourg University in the Alsace region of the country.
Following her studies, Willis worked as a travel courier in Tunisia before flying back to the UK to become a rep for the record label DJM records.
From 1975, Willis worked in the record library and promotions team at the station Radio Tees (now known as Hits Radio) and made her on-air debut as a co-presenter of their Saturday morning programme alongside disc jockey Les Ross.
Willis lived in a former train station near Barnard Castle, where she kept a myriad of pets, including cats, dogs, rabbits, tortoises, birds, iguanas, fish, and goats. Prior to starting at ITV, she hosted the 1982 series Wincey’s Pets, which gave animal care advice to young children.
The broadcaster returned to the North East to live in Sunderland after being diagnosed with fronto-temporal dementia in 2015.
She married bed salesman Malcolm Willis in 1972 and continued to use his surname after they divorced.
