Episodes
Trinny Woodall is the CEO of the beauty brand Trinny London - she's an entrepreneur, businesswoman and author.   She became a household name in the late 90s when she teamed up with Susannah Constantine to present the TV makeover show What Not to Wear.   Last year she published her book Fearless about how to find your style and boost your confidence.   She has a 20 year old daughter Lyla, who she describes as joyful, and she told me how, without her own roadmap to motherhood, she found a way...
Published 02/12/24
Michelle Kennedy is a tech entrepreneur and businesswoman. She is CEO of Peanut App, and mum to two young children, Finlay and Nuala. Michelle started her working life as a corporate lawyer and became interested in tech when she worked for Badoo and then Bumble.  She set up Peanut after she gave birth to her first child and felt lonely and isolated.  Peanut is an online community for women, as Michelle says, at 'seismic stages' of their life including fertility, pregnancy, motherhood and...
Published 02/05/24
Kelly Hoppen is an interior designer who is renowned for working with big celebrity names and is known for her signature neutral palette. Kelly started her business aged 16 and a half, just afer her father died unexpectedly, and she told me that the feeling she wants to create for her clients is the one she had from her grandmother's home where she remembers learning to crochet and having tea. Kelly has spoken openly about being dyslexic. When we met at her office, just before Christmas, she...
Published 01/29/24
Sophie Darlington is a wildlife cinematographer for shows such as David Attenborough's 'Planet Earth'. She regularly gets up way before dawn in places such as Sri Lanka or East Africa, and sits for over 12 hours a day watching the animal she’s filming, often for weeks at a time. She says it’s the best job in the world but you come back 'rinsed'. When her son Louis came along 23 years ago, Sophie had to take a break from her cinematography work for several years, but she returned when Louis...
Published 01/22/24
Amy Hart is a social media influencer, former reality TV star and podcast presenter. She appeared in Love Island in 2019 (Richard and I are avid viewers!) and she now has an adorable little baby called Stanley. Amy is the only Love Island contestant to have appeared on Question Time and she is a big food bank supporter. Amy worked as cabin crew before she joined Love Island, which I imagined would prepare her for sleep-deprived motherhood...except Stanley is a very good baby and sleeps...
Published 01/15/24
Gabby Logan is best known as a BBC sports presenter but has also turned her hand to stand up comedy for Sports Relief (2012), to writing her memoir called The First Half, and to ice baths on Freeze Your Fear (2022). She hosts an excellent podcast called Mid-Life in which she, a guest and an expert explore how to navigate the mysterious territory of middle age. She has 18 year old twins and is married to retired Scottish rugby union player Kenny Logan.  I spoke to Gabby a few months after her...
Published 01/08/24
Alex Head is the founder of Social Pantry which runs food events with the wow factor, as well as a restaruant, and a cafe. I first met Alex this Summer where she was rustling up a banquet twice a day, in a tent at Latitude Festval. Two of the banquets featured food from 'Love, Food, Family' and Richard and I had the much easier job of meeting and greeting everybody there. Alex got into catering aged 16 when she was expelled from school in Saudi, just before her GCSEs. As she says, she was...
Published 12/18/23
Sandra Igwe decided to turn a painful experience into purpose.  When we spoke recently she told me about some of her difficult experiences both during childbirth and afterwards. These led her to become the founder of The Motherhood Group which supports the Black maternal experience. Sandra has also written My Black Motherhood which demands that Black women are listened to, believed and understood by healthcare professionals. We spoke about Sandra’s two daughters Zoe and Chloe, and the legacy...
Published 12/11/23
Julia Bradbury is a TV presenter and an author with a passion for the outdoors.  She has a 12 year old son, and 8 year old twin daughters who she had through IVF. Her motto to them is: 'Be good, be strong, be kind'. We met at Julia's London West London home and talked about how in 2021, she and her husband had the nightmare task of breaking the news of her breast cancer diagnosis to their children. She also mentioned how 'Fruitfly Collective' and 'Maggie's Centres' can support all sorts of...
Published 12/04/23
Presenter Helen Skelton has been a familiar and much-loved presence on our TV screens since she presented Blue Peter (2008-2013) and then Countryfile. Famous for her can-do attitude to life she still has several Guinness World Records under her belt, she’s run a Namibian ultra-marathon (which is 3 marathons back to back), kayaked the entire length of the Amazon, and made it to the finals of Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins... and Strictly!  Helen and her three children now live in Cumbria, near...
Published 11/27/23
This is an extra special bonus episode in partnership with the lovely team at Clarks.  Thanks to Clarks, I have brought my mum, Janet Ellis, back for this special shoecentric chat! We talked about the excitement of buying your child’s first pair of shoes, and we happily admit that we very much share the sentimental gene, as we have kept all our children’s ‘firsts’. My mum even has them on display as you go down the stairs to her kitchen.  My Ma also shares her memory of a Clark’s badge that...
Published 10/16/23
Dilly Carter is an expert in decluttering who presents the TV show 'Sort Your LIfe Out' alongside Stacey Solomon.  Born in Sri Lanka, she was adopted and then brought up in the UK, and is very positive about the cards she was dealt. However, her childhood home was chaotic, with her parents at work all hours, and when Dilly was 11 her mum was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. During her childhood Dilly found peace when she frequently spent time at a neighbour's more ordered home. It was also at...
Published 10/09/23
Charlotte Hawkins presents Good Morning Britain where she proudly helps set the news agenda for the day and quizzes the people in power on the TV viewer's behalf. She also has a lifelong love of music and presents a show on Classic FM. Charlotte talked about how she and her husband tried without success to have a baby and were just about to set off down the IVF route when Charlotte unexpectedly became pregnant. She also spoke about how she lost her beloved Dad to motor neurone disease, just a...
Published 10/02/23
Professor Alice Roberts is a TV presenter and biological anthropologist - in her own words, she looks at old bones and tries to construct the person's history from their skeleton, and she loves the link betwwen the living and the dead. Her pink hair hints at her less traditional and more playful side, also illustrated by the amazing story that as a junior doctor she did some of her paediatric ward rounds on rollerblades, much to the children's joy!  Alice was offered her first solo TV series...
Published 09/25/23
Laura Lee Dockrill is an author of both adult and children's books. She went to Brit School, she's married to the love of her life, musician Hugo White, and her best friend is Adele. After giving birth to her son Jet, Laura suffered severe postpartum depression which saw her waking up alone in a psychiatric ward on her first Mother's Day. One of her books based on her experience is called What Have I Done? She also has a new children's picture book out next year called Gray. It's about...
Published 09/18/23
Helen Pankhurst is a writer and a scholar who works for women's rights.   Her grandmother Sylvia and her great grandmother Emmeline were both suffragette leaders, and Helen carries her family name with pride. We talked about how Helen kept her family name of Pankhurst when she married, and about how she and her husband shared both their surnames with their children, in a clever way theat I've not heard before. I first met Helen when we were involved in a podcast for Care International, where...
Published 09/11/23
Suzi Ruffell is a writer and stand up at the top of her game, playing to packed audiences at her comedy gigs and with numerous TV appearances on panel shows. She also has two podcasts - 'Like Minded Friends' with Tom Allen and 'Out' showcasing gay success stories.   She uses her personal experiences of being ADHD, of having anxiety and of being the parent of a toddler, in her act. It's important for her to share the joys of family life, she says, because as a gay teenager she thought she...
Published 09/04/23
Ruby Hammer MBE is a make up artist and entrepreneur. I first met Ruby when she made me up for a Christmas cover of Red magazine. I love her hardworking ethics as well as her helpful and gentle honesty. I spoke to Ruby earlier this year and she told me how her family moved to the UK from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the civil war there. She talked honestly and movingly about her strong connection with her late mum, who had her at the age of 17. She also told me how she believes the...
Published 08/21/23
Rachel Riley is the co-host and face of maths on Countdown and a self-confessed 'proper maths geek'.  I first met Rachel 10 years ago when we were both on Strictly together. When we chatted recently we touched on those rollercoaster competition weeks, and the mild PTSD which Rachel experienced afterwards. However she also said she got some good things out of it, namely a lovely husband and two children. Last month Rachel picked up her MBE for services to Holocaust Education. She also told me...
Published 08/14/23
Laura Whitmore is a broadcaster and writer. Born in Bray in Ireland, she started out in live TV after winning an MTV competition in 2008 and moved to London in her early 20s where she remembers being suddenly sent to LA to interview Coldplay. She told me how she thrives on being flung into the deep end and loves multitasking, which comes in handy when you are presenting live TV.   In 2022 she appeared on the West End stage in 2:22 A Ghost Story. Her most recent TV project is a documentary...
Published 08/07/23
Sam Dabb has loved live music all her life and she has run the Le Pub music venue in Newport for decades.  Le Pub is one of the 130 venues being supported by the National Lottery this summer, as part of the United By Music tour.  I talked to Sam about her love of small gigs, about growing up in a pub herself, and about bringing her own daughter up in a pub and live music environment.  We also talked about her frequent visits to the jungle in Calais, when her daughter was a teenager, to help...
Published 07/31/23
Julia Haart is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur and author of her bestselling autobiography 'Brazen'. She was also the subject and executive director of the Netflix documentary series 'My Unorthodox Life', about her life as a working mother of 4, after she left her ultra-orthodox Jewish life. Julia updated me on her latest projects including a new type of shapewear that she has developed.  She explained how her little daughter Miriam gave her the courage to leave her husband and...
Published 06/26/23
Kate Ferdinand is a TV personality and author who is married to footballer Rio Ferdinand. Kate was best known on TV for appearing on Towie and now has a successful podcast called Blended. 1 in 4 families in Britain are now blended and Kate is stepmum to Rio's 3 older children Lorenz, Tate and Tia. She loves them as her own children. She and Rio also have a toddler called Cree and she is expecting a new baby next month. So soon she'll have five children, just like me! Kate talked to me about...
Published 06/19/23
Anne Fish is a mum of two sons... and a pro gamer.   When her younger son Benjy won a Fortnite tournament aged 14, he also won thousands of dollars and it became clear it was a serious sport that he wanted to pursue. Anne made the decision to homeschool him fromt he age of 15, to make room for the late-night tournaments and the long hours of practice that Benjy had to put into gaming. She also got more involved in Fortnite herself. As a self-confessed workaholic she put hours of practice in,...
Published 06/12/23