Ellie Costello GB News: Age, Career & Bio (2026)
She spent years at the BBC investigating how women are targeted online. Then a man she interviewed on air spent sixteen months stalking her.
Ellie Costello is a national reporter and anchor at GB News, and since December 2024 she has co-presented the weekday Breakfast programme alongside Eamonn Holmes and Stephen Dixon. She joined the channel in May 2021 as its South-East reporter, before it had launched.
Her route in was the traditional one: a broadcast journalism degree, the BBC World Service, then investigative reporting for the Victoria Derbyshire Programme. What she is best known for outside the industry is something else entirely, and she chose to make it public herself.
Ellie Costello: quick facts
| Role | National reporter and anchor, GB News |
| Weekday Breakfast | Co-anchor since December 2024, with Eamonn Holmes and Stephen Dixon |
| Also presents | Weekend Breakfast, with Stephen Dixon |
| Joined GB News | May 2021, as South-East reporter, before launch |
| Previously | Television news reporter, Victoria Derbyshire Programme, BBC |
| Started at | BBC World Service, as broadcast journalist and radio reporter |
| Radio credits | Outside Source, BBC Minute, The Newsroom |
| Recognition | Identified as a BBC Rising Star |
| Education | Broadcast journalism, City University London |
| From | Essex |
| Programme awards | GB News Breakfast has won three TRIC awards |
| Age | Reported as 29 in November 2022, so around 32 in 2026. No date of birth published |
| Partner, family | Not something she discusses publicly |
| Net worth | No verified figure exists |
| Wikipedia page | None |
Ellie Costello’s career
She took a degree in broadcast journalism at City University London and went straight into the BBC.
At the World Service she worked as a broadcast journalist and radio reporter, producing programmes including Outside Source, BBC Minute and The Newsroom. That is the least glamorous and most useful training available in British broadcasting: writing for a global audience forces clarity, because nothing can be assumed about what the listener already knows.
She then moved to television as a reporter on the Victoria Derbyshire Programme, the BBC current affairs show built around personal testimony and underreported stories. Two of her investigations became among the most watched films in the programme’s history: one on influencers being solicited for sex online, the other on bullying in the British beauty industry. She was identified as a BBC Rising Star off the back of that work.
Note what those two stories have in common. Both are about young women, online platforms, and what happens to people who become visible on them. That beat is the reason her later experience is so difficult to read as coincidence.
In May 2021 she joined GB News as its South-East reporter, before the channel had gone on air. She covered stories across the region, moved into national reporting, and then into presenting. Since December 2024 she has anchored the weekday Breakfast programme, which has won three TRIC awards.
She has described her own motivation simply: she was the child who always put a hand up to ask the teacher a question, and the drive to get more information never stopped.
Ellie Costello’s stalking case
This is the story she is best known for, and she told it herself rather than letting it be told about her.
It began when she interviewed a man over Zoom on the Breakfast programme. They spoke twice, then connected on Twitter, and what started as polite thanks escalated into inappropriate messages. She asked him to stop twice and blocked him on every platform. It did not stop him. The harassment moved to her email, then to flowers arriving at the office, and finally to him appearing at her workplace and at her filming locations.
The man was Leo Jones, a former cast member of the ITV series Airline who had rebranded himself as a travel expert. In November 2022, magistrates in St Albans handed him a five-year restraining order.
The ordeal lasted sixteen months. During it she covered one of the largest broadcasting events of the decade. Reporting live on the day of the Queen’s funeral in September 2022, she saw him walking towards her. She called the police and could not speak, because she was having a panic attack, and he had gone by the time officers had calmed her down.
She did not tell her family while it was happening.
What she said afterwards, and why it mattered
She spoke about it on GB News Breakfast with Stephen Dixon and Anne Diamond, and wrote a first-person account for the channel.
Two things came out of it. The first was scale. She said that once she spoke publicly, people around her started telling her their own experiences: friends, former colleagues, her hairdresser, the woman who does her eyebrows, several of them describing stalkers they had lived with for five, ten, fifteen years. Her conclusion was that it is far more common than anyone admits, and that people stay silent because they assume the police will not take them seriously. During the same interview, Anne Diamond said on air that she had a stalker in her twenties and was told nothing could be done until he did something.
The second was the number behind it. Only about 5% of stalking cases in England and Wales end in a charge. Her case was raised at the same time as a super-complaint accusing police forces of failing stalking victims, with campaigners arguing that reports are wrongly dismissed for lack of evidence and that stalking protection orders are barely used. The Victims’ Commissioner for London, Claire Waxman, herself a stalking victim, called the charge rate unacceptably low.
Costello’s own framing was that she had been lucky, and she said she felt guilty saying so once she heard from people who had been treated worse. Her advice was blunt: report it early, and do not let inappropriate behaviour go on as long as she did.
This is the part that connects her whole record. A reporter whose best-known BBC investigations were about women being targeted online ended up on the other side of exactly that, then used a national platform to argue about the policing of it. Very few presenters have that continuity between what they cover and what they have lived.
How old is Ellie Costello?
No date of birth has been published, but there is a firm anchor.
When she spoke publicly about the stalking case in November 2022, contemporaneous reports, including ITV News and GB News, described her as 29. That places her birth around 1993 and makes her roughly 32 in 2026.
Several profile pages give an exact day and month. None cites a source, and she has not made her age part of her public profile. The 29-in-2022 figure is the one that came from reporting at the time.
Ellie Costello’s family, husband and net worth
She keeps her private life private, and that is a deliberate choice from someone who has explained in detail what unwanted attention costs.
She has acknowledged personal milestones publicly without opening the rest of it, and there is nothing on the record from an established outlet about a partner. Profile pages that name a spouse and supply wedding details are drawing on each other rather than on any source.
Given the specific history here, that reticence deserves to be respected rather than reverse-engineered.
Net worth is invention. She is a salaried journalist at a broadcaster that does not publish individual pay, and no filing exists that would show it. Every figure online came out of a template.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Ellie Costello?
A British journalist, national reporter and anchor at GB News. She co-presents the weekday Breakfast programme with Eamonn Holmes and Stephen Dixon and also presents Weekend Breakfast.
What did Ellie Costello do before GB News?
She began at the BBC World Service as a broadcast journalist and radio reporter, working on Outside Source, BBC Minute and The Newsroom, then became a television reporter for the Victoria Derbyshire Programme, where her investigations into influencers being solicited for sex online and bullying in the beauty industry were among the most watched in the programme’s history.
When did Ellie Costello join GB News?
May 2021, as the channel’s South-East reporter, before it launched. She moved into national reporting and then presenting, and joined the weekday Breakfast line-up in December 2024.
What happened with Ellie Costello’s stalker?
She was stalked for sixteen months by Leo Jones, a former Airline cast member she had interviewed over Zoom. The harassment moved from messages to gifts to appearances at her workplace and filming locations. In November 2022 magistrates in St Albans imposed a five-year restraining order. She has since spoken publicly about the case and about how rarely stalking cases result in charges.
How old is Ellie Costello?
She was reported as 29 in November 2022, which makes her around 32 in 2026. No date of birth has been published and she does not make her age part of her public profile.
Where did Ellie Costello study?
City University London, where she took a degree in broadcast journalism.
Does Ellie Costello have a Wikipedia page?
No.
She trained at the World Service, investigated how women get targeted online, joined a new channel before it existed, and anchors its most-watched programme.
The story she is best known for is one she reported on herself, about herself.
