WHEN viewers heard presenter Fiona Phillips was quitting GMTV after 12 years to spend time with her family, they were not inclined to sit on the fence. There were a few generous souls who voiced their appreciation of all she had achieved since she made herself comfy on the cushions. But for every one of those who sang her praise there were others who celebrated the departure of the queen of the sofa.

Not that we need to feel too sorry for her. The 47-year-old presenter, who is paid £500,000 a year to interview celebrities, politicians and the mothers of dead children in the timeworn gushy but sympathetic, head-cocked-to-one-side breakfast television style is well used to taking flak and has a Masters in giving as good as she gets.

Whether she's confronting hostile female journalists or Strictly Come Dancing partner Brendan Cole, who she claims "bullied" her during her four weeks on the 2005 show, Phillips is never less than feisty.

"Usually they want to be on television themselves," she has said about the "sniffy" journalists. "They have great big pictures on their bylines and you think: 'God, you'd so love to be doing what I'm doing.'"

And just don't get Phillips started on those who insinuate that being married to GMTV programme editor Martin Frizzell helped her get to the top. "If I stamped my foot and said I'm really sick of that editor, that would be it," she has railed on more than one occasion. "The thing is, we were reporters when we met. I got my job and then a few years later he got his job, so actually he married me."

It's not just vindictiveness that gets her on her high horse either. Phillips, who has two children, Nathaniel, nine, and Mackenzie, six, has opinions on everything from the state of the NHS to Alastair Campbell (she thinks he's brilliant) and who should be England manager. And she's not afraid to communicate them in a way that is accessible to the man on the street.

She is also enthusiastic about politics and has a relationship of sorts with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both of whom have parked their behinds on the GMTV sofa. "Blair had that way of connecting with people which on a private level Gordon does, but it doesn't come across and I think that's frustrating."

Perhaps it was Phillips' understanding of Brown's inability to communicate his vision that led him to offer to make her a Baroness and give her a job as a minister last year. After toying briefly with the idea she turned it down – not, she says, because it would have involved a hefty pay cut, but because the hours would be even less predictable than GMTV and, with an election apparently in the offing, there was little in the way of job security.

Phillips' left-wing leanings were inherited from her grandmother, a passionate socialist who refused to call her son – Phillips' father – Neville by his Christian name after Tory Neville Chamberlain became prime minister. She got her cynicism from Neville, a TV repairman who was so upset by her unplanned birth he didn't go to the christening.

As a child growing up in Canterbury, Phillips was precociously clever. At five she had a reading age of 11, and at six she won a national poetry competition. But something went wrong when she hit adolescence and she changed overnight from a bookish goody-goody to a 10-ciggies-a-day troublemaker with a penchant for shoplifting.

The stealing stopped when she was caught and cautioned by police, but the lack of application did not, and she left school with just one O level to her name. Shocked into action, she went back to college, did an English degree, studied journalism and worked her way up through local radio and television until she got a job with Sky News.

She was poached to be Los Angeles correspondent for GMTV in 1994 and arrived just in time for an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale. She managed to negotiate her way through the chaos and produce a news package. She showed her initiative again when – after breaking the news that Michael Jackson was facing child abuse charges – she snatched an interview with his family from under the nose of NBC by sneaking into the studio and pretending she was from the American channel.

Phillips first hooked up with Frizzell when he was sent to Los Angeles to cover for her. Although she had previously regarded him as "arrogant and cold", they soon became an item.

Although her critics accuse her of being patronising, Phillips has a way with celebrities, who seem to respond to her enthusiasm and approachability. She has interviewed more than her fair share of household names – including Brad Pitt, Daniel Radcliffe and the Beckhams. When Michael Barrymore decided he wanted to talk about the death in his swimming pool of Stuart Lubbock, it was Phillips he turned to. Similarly, Heather Mills' spectacular unravelling at the end of her divorce case took place on the GMTV sofa with fellow vegetarian Phillips at her side.

Phillips' relationship with her colleagues, however, appears more fractious, and she has a reputation for making jokes at their expense. Her co-presenter for nine years, Eamonn Holmes, seemed to like and respect Phillips, going as far as to say: "Fiona and I genuinely adore each other. We are like an old married couple." She, however, was less generous, saying of his departure: "I still miss Eamonn, but on the other hand I have a skip in my step as I'm coming into work."

Phillips clearly enjoys her job, but admits getting up at 4am has taken its toll on her. "I really love my job, but juggling strange hours with two children is a bit like being a hamster on a wheel."

Trying to combine the programme with her myriad other projects – her Daily Mirror column, appearances on programmes such as Loose Women and Room To Rent and charity work in aid of breast cancer and Alzheimer's – has clearly proved unsustainable.

"I have other responsibilities, my children and a home life and an elderly dad who needs me, and I've recognised that I can't have it all," she said. So desperate is she to get off the treadmill, she has decided to leave in December, halfway through her £1.5m three-year contract.

But despite her pledge to spend more time at home it would be foolish to write Phillips off as a spent force. With plenty of doors still open to her, few doubt she will embark on fresh projects before long. After all, a hamster may tire of its wheel from time to time, but it would be lost without it.