The Matt Baker ‘One Show’ return lands on Friday, 14 August 2026, with the presenter back beside Christine Lampard on the BBC One sofa for the programme’s 20th anniversary special.
Baker walked away from the show in spring 2020 after nine years, swapping a London studio for his parents’ farm in the Durham Dales, and he has now spoken about how heavy that call actually was, as reported by HELLO! Magazine.
He has not sat in the chair since.
Matt Baker ‘One Show’ return reunites him with Christine Lampard
Lampard and Baker fronted the programme together for years, and their easy back and forth was half the reason viewers kept the weeknight habit.
The anniversary special will put them on the same sofa again for the first time since he left, and the pair will look back on their years in the chair together.
The presenter was one of the show’s most popular faces, a man who could interview a Hollywood star one evening and be back among the sheep by the weekend.
In an interview published on Friday, 14 August 2026, Baker explained why he gave that up:
“As life-changing experiences go, they don’t come much more life-changing than sitting on a sofa on The One Show, interviewing people every day in the warmth, than going up to the Durham Dales and running your mum’s farm…big decision to have to make.”
The real reason Matt Baker swapped the sofa for a farm
By his own telling, the move had nothing to do with falling out of love with television.
Baker’s parents were farming in the Durham Dales, the land needed someone to run it, and he chose to move his family north rather than keep the London studio life going.
His exit was announced in December 2019 and he presented his last episode in spring 2020, closing a nine-year run that had made him one of the most familiar faces on British television.
The goodbye was emotional, and UK viewers treated it like the end of an era.
Life on the farm has not been a quiet retirement either.
Baker grew up around the Dales, and running his mum’s land meant early starts, livestock and weather that does not care about television schedules, a long way from a warm studio and a nightly guest list.
What the Matt Baker ‘One Show’ return means for the anniversary special
The One Show launched on BBC One in 2006 and has run through a rotating cast of co-hosts, celebrity sofa guests and live outside broadcasts ever since. Twenty years in, wheeling out a presenter who left at the height of his popularity is a smart bit of programming.
Friday’s anniversary special airs on BBC One, and Baker has stayed on screen with other projects since leaving, so a one-off booking need not be the last time viewers see him in that studio.
Whether the sofa gets him back more regularly depends on the farm as much as the BBC.
