Pregnant Sian moves out

The BBC Breakfast presenter Sian Williams has left her husband after becoming pregnant by an executive at the corporation, it emerged yesterday.

Miss Williams has moved out of the family home after confessing the affair to her husband, by whom she has two children.

The end of her 15-year marriage stunned colleagues at the BBC, where Miss Williams was always regarded as relatively prim - at least in comparison with her predecessor on the Breakfast sofa, Natasha Kaplinksy.

Insiders were struck by the uncanny parallels with Miss Kaplinsky, who also left her long-term partner after embarking on an affair with a TV producer.

Miss Williams, 41, has become one of the BBC's best-known faces since replacing Miss Kaplinsky on the programme last November.

Her belated success follows years working behind the scenes at the BBC - first as a radio producer and later as an editor on News 24.

It was while working at the rolling news channel that her on-screen career took off when she was asked to stand in for a presenter who had fallen ill.

It is believed Miss Williams began the affair with the unidentified 56-year-old BBC executive almost a year ago, but she broke the news to her husband Neale Hunt, 46, only recently after discovering that she was pregnant.

Friends insisted yesterday that the couple remained 'amicable'.

One source claimed they had in fact agreed to separate two years ago but continued to live together in their marital home in Muswell Hill, North London, for the sake of their children.

'They alternated the time they were in the house, so when one of them was there looking after the children, the other was out.'