Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 116: Gabby Logan

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

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 son Reuben had left the nest, with her daughter Lois following suit in a year, and she told me how the house is starting to feel too big.We talked about her brother Daniel's sudden death in 1992 when he was 15, and Gabby was 19 - and how she and her family were - and still are - impacted by this tragedy. But Gabby has a core of positivity and stressed that people can go on to have a good life even when something so terrible happens.Gabby represented Wales at the Commonwealth Games in 1990 as a rhythmic gymnast, which Gabby so perfectly described as: where sport meets showbiz. The brightly-coloured leotards she wore were not a million miles from what I wear on stage now - but she wasn't too impressed by my opening bid to buy them as a job lot. I'll keep working on her!Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello, happy new year. How's it going? I'm at home today. I took down the tree. It's Saturday, the 6th of January. Is that too late? I wasn't really sure if it's supposed to be the 5th or the 6th and then we ran out of time on

the 5th. So yeah, took down the tree today, so it's kind of annoying. I mean I love having the decorations up but then again our tree had done good service and was kind of looking quite dead if I'm honest with you like when I took the decorations off a lot of the branches snapped and that kind of thing but it's also quite funny because Richard and I were doing a bit of a like look around like have we definitely got all the decorations packed up and actually to be honest in our house it's quite hard to tell there's a lot of things I collect that could definitely double as a decoration but anyway um I hope everything's right with you hope you had a

lovely Christmas however you spent it and new year uh we did my favorite thing for new year well I've got two favorite things I either like to stay in or I like to do some work because when you're working you get to do all the fun stuff like be somewhere that's, you know, a bit of a happening. But also, you know, you get fed and get something to drink and transport and all the stuff that you have to worry about normally in the new year. So Richard and I did some DJing in Brighton, which was really fun. And my brother came and some friends and my dad. So it's actually quite a sweet little night out. But apart from that, I've been very, very reclusive.

I finished the tour towards the end of December, and then I did one more show in Glasgow, and that was on the 16th, and then I haven't worked since then, which has been lovely. When I say I haven't worked since then, I've been doing bits and bobs this week because I've started the year with a very unusual thing in that a song I sang a long time ago has re-entered the charts and it's kind of crazy

so Murder on the Dance Floor a song I love singing anyway and already have lots of adventures with has now had this I don't know revival I guess because it's featured in Salt Burn, which I probably told you about before Christmas. But Salt Burn is a movie by Emerald Fennell, written and directed by her. And Murder on the Dance floor is used in its entirety at the end of the movie in a way where this isn't a spoiler. Someone dances to it and they haven't got any clothes on. And the film's been a big hit and it's brought the song along with it so how lovely and really quite bizarre for me to be having a top 10 song in the uk that i released when i was half my age i'm 44 now and i was 22 when it came out that's insane but lots of fun so yeah i've been

enjoying that well i said enjoying it it's felt surreal It's a little bit like lockdown times, really, when I knew a lot of people watching Kitchen Disco, but I wasn't really seeing anyone. It feels very similar, because I'm getting amazing, you know, facts and statistics about how the song's doing, not just in the UK, but around the world. But I'm not really seeing anyone. I'm just here with my kids, trying to sort out toys.

Mickey's got his birthday tomorrow. He's going to be five. So I've got to wrap some stuff when he goes to bed tonight and get the helium out and do some balloons for him and all that sort of stuff. And that's kind of taking up equal headspace,

I would say, if not more. But also, of course, it returns a podcast, which is really lovely. And, you know, this is really glorious because I'd already recorded a load before the tour. So I feel quite like, yeah, I can be hibernating,

but I've also got these nice conversations to share with you. I don't know why I'm being so languid in my delivery to you. I've got four kids in the next door room, and at some point they're going to notice I'm not there. I've sort of crept out. I love having them around. I'm kind of ready for them to go back to school now. It's been a lot of, Mummy, Mummy,

and sometimes you just have this vision of myself being sort of split in two or growing tentacles or either of those would be very helpful anyway this week's guest so I first met Gabby Logan when I did a show called name that tune with Alan Carr so it was a couple of years ago now and Gabby did really well on the show it was like a celebrity edition so it was her and Vic Hope and um yeah I played the piano I'm laughing about that because it's not really something I normally do but I was playing the piano there and Gabby was on the show and I just thought she gave off such a lovely energy she seemed like such a nice woman and obviously I already knew a fair amount about how I'd seen her doing her sport broadcasting and I also knew about her podcast the midpoint and I thought she seems um smart and funny and um I think she's a very good broadcaster

she's really good at interviewing people so she approached me would you like to do my podcast and I said how about you do mine so I got to have a lovely conversation with her and she came around to my house she has twins a son and a daughter they're now 18 so we spoke about having kids at that age but we also spoke about um what it's like to lose someone significant in your life because Gabby had done has already done a few interviews talking about her brother who tragically died when he was only 15 and Gabby was 19 and obviously that shapes your life immeasurably and I think sometimes when they have these big events hold on yes Jess all right two seconds listen I'm just recording something and I'll come and sort you

out yes yes I will I will two minutes two minutes who Listen, I'm just recording something and I'll come and sort you out. Yes, yes, I will. I will. Two minutes, two minutes. Tell him to stop. Who? Who am I talking about? Mickey. Mickey, two more minutes. There we go. See?

Oh, he's not happy with that outcome. Yes, when you have these big life events, they just change things. And I think Gabby is a very good example of someone where she's decided, well, I don't know if she decided or it's how her instinct was or just, you know, her emotional response was to make her life count for more because of what her brother missed out on. And, oh, for God's sake, can you hear them calling me? Two minutes, Mickey. Two minutes,

my love. Yes, thank minutes. Yes, thank you. Anyway, Gabby, I'm sorry. This is a very inappropriate thing to be consistently interrupted. But there's never going to be a better time. So here I am. Yeah, so I really love talking to Gabby and talking about this point in our lives as well and what it's like to be in your 40s, 50s

and how you feel about yourself and what life has in store. And I read her autobiography and it's really funny. And yeah, we had such a good chat. I really enjoyed it. And I'm very excited to start 2024 with my conversation with Gabby. So thanks very much for coming to find me here.

I can't believe how long I've been doing the podcast now. So much fun. I've got some amazing people lined up for the rest of the series and beyond. And yeah, happy new year. And I'll see you on the other side. See you in a minute. So exciting to be talking to you today, Gabby. I feel like I could spend the whole hour just talking about solely about your freeze the fear experience because I watched all of that I thought it was incredible and I've just finished your book which is absolutely brilliant oh thank you yeah I really loved it and you made me laugh out loud a lot as well you're a funny woman that's good so many things that really made me chuckle and I poor Richard I was reading a lot of it

with him opposite me I'd be going I just have to tell you this bit because I was laughing. I think I'd quite like to start, actually, by asking you about your podcast, because you started doing your podcast, The Midpoint, around the same time I think I started doing this in 2020. So what's your relationship like with your podcast? I started the podcast around the pandemic time, kind of early in that period, like the spring of 2020. And I'd wanted to do it for about a year before. And real life kept getting in the way and I was really busy. And then suddenly I thought, right, I've got time to do this idea, which was born out of a moment where I'd walked past a mirror

and seen somebody in the reflection that I didn't recognise inside, you know, because I had this opposite eureka moment where I'd walked past a mirror and seen somebody in the reflection that I didn't recognise inside, you know, because I had this opposite eureka moment where I went, oh, what are those lines? And it wasn't a vanity thing. It was just this inside my head. I was still this kind of mid-30s person that had loads of life ahead. And then this sparked this sudden realisation that I was what you called kind of middle-aged. I was in this midpoint of my life. And what did that mean? And was it different to all these kinds of thoughts about what my parents experience or my grandparents experience would have been. And, and then I started noticing middle-aged people more, you know, kind of, it's like when you're pregnant, you notice lots of pregnant people and, and you're, you're kind of your age group suddenly comes into your,

your vision a bit more. And I realized that there's lots of different choices now in midlife to say a few generations ago, and also that people are changing careers and doing. So the initial idea was to do an inspiring podcast where people had done different things in midlife and had big decisions to make. And actually, it just morphed into something else then. And these conversations that we have around health and relationships, And, and of course, the other conversation that has kind of spawned its own series of podcasts around menopause specifically, which when I started the podcast, Sophie, I didn't even know what really the menopause was. And I honestly had no idea that I was already experiencing perimenopausal symptoms at that point at 46, 47.

So it definitely wasn't about women's health initially or those things. And I just love it. I love the chats that I have with people. And I love the freedom as well to broadcast in a way that is totally different. Yeah, I love radio anyway. I started out in radio, but it's different obviously to radio, but it's certainly different to live television because you've got so much more control over the situation and who you're talking to and and also i love the generosity of the community you know i have not had honestly in 100 episodes nearly hardly a single knockback you know the person that has taken me a while to get pinned down i've got a date for now with kathy burke and she joked about it when i went on her

podcast she goes i've been trying to avoid you and get to the end point, not the midpoint. She said, I thought I'd be too old now. She said it with a few expletives. But she's coming on. But it's that part of it I love. And, you know, there's this kind of mutual kind of appreciation with different podcasts and you pop on to other people's and it's lovely. I really enjoy it. And so much so I kind of now have created a perfectly kind of isolated space

in the house which is my podcast room and um and I could do other things in there obviously and be on other people's podcasts but um I do like going on to other people's podcasts as well because I think there is this kind of cross-pollination in the community definitely and I wonder if as well sometimes you start a project not quite knowing fully what it's going to offer to you and so maybe I wonder if like aspects of the conversations you're having is sort of giving you a little bit of a map yeah so potential things that can happen next year. Oh it was totally self-serving I mean it was like okay I'm not sure what's going on in this period of life I'm going to ask some wise people and so we get experts on as well. And it does offer me a kind of, you know,

insights and inspiration, you know, from people's experiences and having kind of that, that well of knowledge and information from people who might be a bit older, or they might be really expert in a certain area. I didn't know about foods, for example, that, you know, help with kind of symptoms of menopause or foods that, you know, help with kind of symptoms of menopause or foods that, you know, are much better for us as we get older and why your body reacts differently to certain foods as you get older. Suddenly you feel like you're developing allergies and actually it's not that you're necessarily getting an allergy per se, but your body just doesn't like those things as much anymore. You don't process because of your hormonal changes. You don't

process food in the same way. So all those things I had no idea about you know and i suppose i'm quite instinctive with my body and my diet so i would have worked it out but it's always nice to have the science behind it isn't it when you hear you know a doctor or a nutritionist explain why you're feeling this way so that's just one kind of little kind of snapshot of the areas that you know we discuss and what we talk about relationships fascinating you know family dynamics you know your your one-to-one whatever you're you know kind of whether you're married or not whether you're in you know um a long-term relationship how those all kind of change and how some people stay together through that period other people you know move apart and and so it's yeah it is a um as you say there's something of a map there that you can kind of see and yes it's also for me working in sport my whole life pretty much

professionally as well as other things i feel like i'm speaking to so many more women now and it's always been very much like men come up to me on the street you know go oh yeah what do you think about that game the other night which is lovely but it's so nice when women come up to me in restaurants and things and go oh i just want to let you know i really love that episode you did with penny lancaster because i was feeling like that you know and i kind of want to hug people you know this woman came up to me this is god's gospel two weeks ago in boots where i live and i was coming out the door she was coming in and she said oh hello and she looked at me like in that way because people feel like they really know you. Of course, yeah.

And her eyes started filling up. And she said, you've saved my life. And I said, oh, my God. She said, I was so down. I was so depressed. I had such bad anxiety. I didn't know what it was. And then I realized listening to your podcast that it was a perimenopausal symptom.

I went off. And she said, I genuinely was at my absolute kind of lowest point. I didn't know what to do. I was not enjoying family life. I wasn't enjoying my work. And I just feel so liberated now because I've, you know, I've done something about it. And I've kind of, and I properly started like,

you know, greeting as my husband would say, like my eyes were kind of filled with tears and giving her a massive hug. But it was just, I've kind of skipped out the shop going, that's just lovely, isn't it? To be able to connect with people in that way, which I don't think presenting football quite does. Well, it gives them something,

but I think that conversations, especially because you tend to listen to a podcast in a time where you're maybe having some time for yourself, maybe you're busy walking or you're, you know, traveling somewhere or you're pottering around at home and it feels like you are the third person at the table or I guess the fourth if you've got your expert and your guest um and I you know I did your podcast earlier this week the recording and I really I feel like I haven't had a lot of those things we spoke about I haven't

really spoken about anywhere else and I think it's also really brilliant at that this stage in our lives to check in with yourself because I think your relationship with yourself a bit like when you said you saw yourself a mirror and got a bit of a jolt it can kind of be based on something that's maybe not entirely up to date with the you you really are and you know I've got things in my wardrobe I haven't worn now for 15 years I probably won't revisit that but I haven't quite let it go either so it's about kind of keeping in step with yourself a little bit yeah so I think that's really healthy just to check in and with how you are emotionally because when you get to the midpoint of your life I remember when I hit my 40s I said to my mum I don't really know what 40s is I kind of got an idea of what 30s was but 40s like what's that she said it's there's lots

of it that's brilliant but what you might notice is that for some people it's a time when they might feel a bit of regret creeping in because some doors close that don't open again. So I think it's good to kind of take stock of yourself, your 40s and your 50s, and just check in because your kids are growing up, if you have children, and you might be left in a chapter that you maybe haven't given yourself a lot of headspace for.

And now, especially Prudence, I suppose, because you, your eldest, your eldest, your children are the same age, but your children's ages. He is technically the eldest, actually, by 20 minutes. Yes, and actually quite crucially, as I understand it, the 20 minutes is vital because if it had been like 25 minutes, they would have been on different days. We decided afterwards, by the way, had it been, we'd have lied.

We'd have just told them a very practical approach to having twins born within a very small frame of time but i think um you know is a time isn't it when they reach you spend when they're born you imagine this idea of when they're 18 it's like a bit of a drop point isn't it you work out how old you'll be when they're 18 yeah but suddenly you find yourself you've actually got there and how are you finding it how have you found yeah it's interesting because i did exactly that i was i was really because we we went through ivf to have reuben and lois and i tried to start getting pregnant from the age of 28 which my friends were all gasping at they thought this was terribly young and like what was that what was i thinking you know anyway it turned out by the time i did get pregnant which you might have read the book

one of my best mates was already on to child three, you know, she hadn't even been thinking about it when I was starting. So I was playing catch up then as well with a few friends, you know, in that period of life where you're going, oh, I'm 32 and I'm having them, I'm going to be, I'm going to be 50 when they leave home. And that felt really old. But obviously then I was looking at my mom thinking, well, she was 52 and I had my first child. And, you know, this generational thing where you're, you're kind of thinking what does what am I going to be like that she's effectively a granny you know my kids are just going off to I don't think nowadays it really everybody's so different aren't they and there's

so many different ways and the generation gaps yeah yeah so so I've got to this age and I don't feel that different to the person that gave birth to them anyway and and now we're in this this is a real kind of hit home where you are in life when your first child, I know you've experienced this recently, but your first child leaves the nest because you start to see space. You start to see a bit more time. You start to see a different kind of how the future, you've thought about it, but actually now it's starting to become a reality. And there's a lot of that that you feel quite mournful about. starting to become a reality and and there's a lot of that that you feel quite mournful about and you know you're kind of grieving in a way a little bit the the opportunities that you think have i done everything i should have done you know have i you know i always used to tease him

because it was a period where he thought he'd be better off going to a boarding school when he was about 12 and i was like there's no way you're going to boarding school so you're not you're not the young man that i i feel i can send into the world right now you know you're kind of i'm responsible for it and he used to be like, well, let me know where I am and I'll go, because, you know, when they're having those kind of pushbacks against you and he thought he'd be better off living somewhere else and kind of, you know, I'd have more freedom at boarding school.

I wouldn't have to, you know, live by all the things that you, you know. Pretty sure they've got some rules. Yeah, exactly. I think he didn't know where he thought he was going, Hogwarts or somewhere. And anyway, he didn't go. But I used to think I had all this time that, you know, with and um and we still have loads of time because he comes home a lot but but it does make you see your relationship with them differently because you do have to release

you know and let them make bigger decisions obviously you're in a process of that anyway aren't you as a parent where you're trying to get them to kind of make more and take responsibility. And we discussed this the other day about, you know, certain children are better at kind of handling troubles and problems. Other children, you've got to kind of, you know, you don't want to micromanage or helicopter over them, but you've got to give them a little bit more guidance on. So all of those things come into play kind of a lot more now you know and um and i love it in so many ways it's a brilliant stage of parenting because they when they come and talk to you you know he's always been a really open kid reuben anyway he tells you everything but when they come and talk to you now it's a much more ad on a much more adult basis you know he was um discussing things like direct debits

with me and things the other day you know stuff, stuff like that, which is, I just don't understand it though. How does it actually happen? I don't know. You just, you just click something in your phone and then it's not real money. Yeah, exactly. So, but then Lois is still at home for at least another year. And so I'm also on the flip side of that, really trying to kind of make the most of that time, you know, when you suddenly realise the, you know, oh my God, in a year's time, I'll have neither of my children at home all the time. And what does that mean for Kenny and I? What does it mean for even where we live?

Because already the house is starting to feel too big, you know, because Ruben's a big character and he's not in it. But then again, he's told me that I'm not allowed to move for the next 10 years. Oh, really? Until he can buy the house because he never wants us to ever. Oh, yeah. It reminds me, I think it was my eldest son, he thought that he was going to get the house when he was older.

He was like, where are you guys going to go? And I was like, it's not quite. Sit down, son. They did not say that. There was a lovely little cottage on our road. And he said, you could move into the cottage on the road. We don't own it, by the way. You could move into this cottage and I'll have the house.

I don't think it works like that, no. And all that kind of, I suppose it's like succession, isn't it? You know, and feeling like, you know, they're going into the world and you're changing as well. And, you know, it's exciting, but it's also, I can't tell you how many, my husband's feeling, I think a lot more potently. He's been sending me pictures all the time, randomly of when they're like six, you know, I'll just be in a meeting with somebody and I'll see these pictures pop up. I just was looking at my phone and I saw the and I think he's really feeling it you know that yeah that movement of time that yeah I do get that

I've been so suddenly emailed he hasn't moved out but he has left a lot of his things so I've been sort of trying to help him sort out the room a bit so that I can make it a room we can use for other people now because I really need that room back, ideally. And it's got all these little pictures from when he's small. And I did get that moment where I was like, oh, it's happened. He might come and stay here occasionally, but this is not going to be his home anymore. And it is a bit of a shift.

And I was like, I'm not going to be that mum stood crying in her son's empty bedroom. It's not going to be at home anymore and it's it is a bit of a shift yeah and I was like I'm not going to be that mum stood crying in her son's empty bedroom it's not going to be me today but I mean I remember even when I left home I'd been gone a couple of years and my mum said I moved out at 18 as well she suddenly said oh I just I realized I forgot to teach you how to make a white sauce you left home without knowing how to make a white sauce yeah I was like it's fine mom it's fine um but I don't think she did try and attempt to teach me actually at that point but um but when you roll back I want to go back now to when they were born what was going on in your professional life when you had your babies I felt when I had them I was

kind of in what I thought at the time was the absolute best job I was ITV I was the lead football presenter and things were going really really well and I didn't know how I was going to keep juggling and you know keep everything going but I I felt it was going to be possible you know because I didn't have any intention of not doing what I was doing but I knew I was gonna have to modify some things in my life so professionally I was on a really great you know kind of uh period it was in a great period of my life didn't it didn't stay like that for very long but but that was you know I and I felt like I was I know I now I look back and realize I wasn't but I felt quite accomplished you know I felt like I really knew what I was doing and I think I probably didn't as when I look back I think I definitely feel much better at my job now than I was then but at the time I felt like a grown-up you know

yeah that's good as well it's good to have confidence and when you start piling up the experience you know these things will count and you've learned and you've made some you know early mistakes and then progressed and you've worked with people for a few years and you start to know people. These things do help you feel like, I'm supposed to be here. But, I mean, now we're really used to seeing women folk in sports and presenting. But I would imagine then this was not the case. Well, I mean, by the time I had them, there was some more coming.

But when I started out, there were hardly any women doing what I did. I mean, a couple, you know, and they were people like Sue Barker started presenting tennis at the BBC and Claire Balding and Hazel Irvine were probably at the BBC, but not kind of on main, you know, main channel kind of broadcasting, but they were contemporaries. But at Sky, I was, you know, pretty much one of the only women at the time. And then I went to ITV and I was the only woman doing what I did and presenting live football and things.

And so I think what was troubling and slightly difficult for them to deal with, I say them being some of the bosses I worked with, was, okay, it's one thing we've accepted this woman to do this job, but a pregnant woman? And I think that was, even if they didn't openly say that that I think it was quite tricky to kind of handle a little bit of that and and it was certainly challenging for me anyway because I was doing um Champions League so I was traveling around Europe doing these games and I and pregnant with twins it was quite a physical challenge but I was determined you know that I

wanted to kind of you know keep going and not use my pregnancy as a reason to shift back from what I was doing or use you know kind of um the whole process to say oh I'm just going to take a step away now because I felt I could do it but um but I did feel more under the microscope I think um and certainly the reaction when I had Ruben and Lois um I remember a journalist writing a really nasty kind of piece about, because I was paparazzi walking them in the pram and made this kind of connection saying that I was, you know, instead of enjoying my babies, I was out power walking to try and get rid of my baby weight or something. And it was a completely ridiculous article. And I should have, of course, I was full of hormones and emotion, should have just ignored it. But I just remember

sitting on my bed thinking, how am I going to do on my bed thinking how am I going to do this like how am I going to please everybody because I think that's the thing at that time you know we're all a bit more susceptible to being people pleasers when we're younger and I was how am I going to be a great mum how am I going to be a great worker you know produce kind of the stuff that I've been doing produce the kind of quality of work I've been doing and oh be a good wife you, be a good wife. How am I going to do all these things? Oh, and stop people writing things that are ridiculous about me. And, you know, so, and Kenny was brilliant with me about things like that. He was just like, doesn't, you know, like you cannot for one minute

put any kind of, you know, stock in what somebody like this says. You just have to have the people around you that you trust and who understand and know you. But you can't help, you know, I think. No, we're all human. Also, it's all the stuff you're in a monologue, isn't it? And your insecurities about, you know, what did it mean to be a working mum in that environment

and how was I going to do all those things? So I did have some real wobbly moments in the first couple of years where I just thought, I can't do this. You know, I'm going to do something that's way more under the radar so that I don't get, so that my mothering doesn't get scrutinised. And that I don't feel that, because I didn't mind my work being scrutinised. Yeah, but that's just you. You're building that. But this bit I felt really exposed and vulnerable about, I think. I wonder as well. I mean, look, we all feel an immense responsibility when you bring your baby or babies home from hospital

and you're a new mum and you're responsible for this tiny person and you question so many decisions you're making and, you know, if your instincts are right. But I think sometimes if you've also come to it, these are much-wanted babies, you've been through all the IVF, thereF there's sometimes this extra thing of like the thing that you've been wanting so much and you've you have to protect yourself through the process what if it doesn't happen sometimes when it's actually happened and the babies are there you haven't really even allowed yourself to think about those days as much maybe yeah I think I mean that's probably the case isn't it

for a lot of people having babies actually you think about the birthing process you think about you don't think about what your policy is going to be when they're four on you know homework or what's your policy going to you know so all those kind of things that come into play and I certainly hadn't really thought about how are you going to deal with you know if people don't you know think it's great to go out to work and have children and have you know this how are you going to deal with criticism about the fact that you're probably going to employ somebody to help you because I don't live anywhere near my family and Kenny doesn't live anywhere near his family he lives with me obviously but we he does his family in Scotland

my room Yorkshire every bit of help we were going to have to have was going to be paid for and and that is a responsibility in itself, isn't it? Because then you're thinking, oh, I've got to really make the right decision about these people and how is that going to work? And I didn't mind that because I thought, right, you've got to be upfront about it. I didn't want to be one of those people that when you do articles

and interviews that you kind of make out you're doing everything. There's no way I could do everything. I was going to have to have somebody help me because Kenny just finished playing rugby, but he was going to start the next stage of his career as well. So he wasn't going to be at home all the time. We were very lucky because he was quite flexible. So he was around a lot. And especially in the early months of Ruben and Lois's life. And, and so we were very much kind of, you know, like most people in the first charge, you're kind of juggling, aren't you? How much help does it

take? What does it, what's it like when your husband goes away when you've got two month old twins can you go 24 hours you know without seeing another human being is it possible to kind of you know of course you can but you know it's it's much nicer if you do see another another human being and somebody pops in for 10 minutes so all of that uh those early days i there was part of me thinking, okay, I might not be able to do this. I'll, you know, do something else. I'll have to retrain

and do something that's much more under the radar. So I don't feel I have to justify my decisions. And, you know, and then I thought, you've got to own it, actually. That's how I kind of came to peace with it. And just being honest and being authentic and not pretending that it's anything other than a team effort. And, you know, in the back of my mind,

there's always that proverb, it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to raise a child. Yeah, me too. It's a big one, isn't it? Yeah. And if I have to pay some of the members of that village, then fine, you know? Yeah, that's so true.

They're not all going to be people in my village. Yes. Some are on the hour and they leave, on a certain time but actually there was a bit in your book uh about that that stage and of early childhood and i thought oh i wish i'd read that when i had my first at that stage because you said something like that you actually were a bit i don't't know, it's puzzled by mother guilt, but it wasn't something you automatically took on with wanting to be a working mother. And you said it wasn't so much that, you know, you would have someone else doing the pureeing, but it's when you didn't actually mind that it wasn't you that had done it. No, that's the thing.

I think I came to peace very quickly with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to do everything, you know. It was more my kind of unrest, if you like, and my restlessness was more about how the rest of the world, how I was going to explain that in a way. Do you know what I mean? So I was really happy with the idea that actually Judith, who was our first nanny for a couple of years, was amazing at puring, right?

So she was really good at that. And while she was doing that, I could then go and change the babies. And I just needed that extra, because then I was going to be going out to do a bit of work. And, you know, and so I was really happy that other people were good at other things. And, you know, they could do those parts of the job. I wanted to do as much as I could. But also I had this other, Kenny was very much of the mindset that we had to look after our relationship as well, because he felt that it was really important that, you know, i don't know why he was so big on this actually it's

really interesting he's right though isn't he yeah he was right i mean that's also quite a challenge when you first had your baby is to think that that person is as important as you know as these two dependents who you know it's not just that person it's the two of you yeah it's the relationship yeah i remember um after i think it might have been after our third baby, and Richard gave me a locket with some pictures of us in it. And I said, oh, hasn't got the kids. And he went, some things are just for us. Yeah.

I was like, oh, you're right. It's so easy to neglect that side of things. But actually, your kids love to see you happy and doing things together. Even now, my kids um when they're 18 they i know even though they get a bit kind of they do really like seeing you have um affection and you know touching each other and you know kind of if they see kenny kind of put his hand on mine watching tv or something or especially my daughter she's a real romantic and she'll be like oh you two but I know she really likes it and and he always said um at the very beginning and he was like look our love is what

has helped to create these babies as it transpired some really good doctors as well um but but he said that's you know and our love is going to bring them up and you know and we've got to remember and that that needs work on on it as. You can't just take that for granted. So I think I was probably, I would have been a much more, well, that will sort itself out, do you know what I mean? And actually, no, it doesn't. Any relationship needs work, doesn't it? So he was quite wise to that.

Yeah, I think that is wise. And actually, I think when I was reading a book and you said something about how you've been with Kenny over half your life I suddenly realized as an adult that I've been with Richard for half of mine and I think there's a lot of parallels actually and it's nice because sometimes with conversations on spinning plates we don't really speak very much about the partners that often to be quite honest with you it's not always necessary but it is nice to have a little minute to appreciate all that support that you get that gives you the freedom to do really do what you do yeah and to give you the and the confidence as well I think in terms of because there's a practical side to it you know because there's

nobody I'd rather have left the kids with any day if I was working than their father right so because I know he was great with them and he would but he couldn't always be there but it wasn't just the that practical backbone kind of support it was was also the nurturing and confidence, you know, which sometimes you need a little kind of push to get back out there and do the things that, you know, that you did. And he was always such a big fanboy. He'd be like, go, you're really great at this. You should say yes to that or you should do something like that.

And sometimes I'd be like, well, you would but actually he was completely you know 100% his belief you know that's what he felt and so he did at times when my confidence might have been ebbing a little bit he did fill that gap and you know help me believe in myself I think and um yeah and I'm really grateful for having had a great relationship. And it's interesting, you know, Katlin Moran, what she says about the kind of 50-50 split of jobs and, you know, pulling the sledge. And, you know, you kind of, when I read that, I'd been married probably for about 15, 16 years at the time, maybe even longer. years at the time, maybe even longer. And I kind of realised that subliminally, I was, I suppose, at the beginning, trying to kind of explain that to Kenny as well about, you know, well, it's not me just telling you all the time, sometimes you have to, you know, take responsibility for that.

I think a lot of new mums find that thing where they have to kind of almost check in with their partner to say that they're going somewhere, whereas the partner doesn't feel the need to kind of like, you know, do the same back. And so I think early on, there was that mutual kind of respect like that, you know, that he'd call it diary time. But you know, I said, well, as we both know where we are, then we'll both there'll never be a situation where one of us feels resentful, that the other one's kind of able to just slip off and do, you know, their thing. And you both need those kind of things in your life, don't you, that fulfil you outside the relationship. But I think it's just putting all those pieces together that is very much, you know,

it's our modern lives, isn't it? It is. And I think it's important as well to sort of, probably a little bit like what I was saying about the podcast and checking in with yourself with where you're at in life. I think relationships need that as well to sort of probably a little bit like what I was saying about um the podcast and checking in with yourself with where you're at in life I think relationships need that as well sometimes and just articulating if it's all got a little bit out of balance because nothing's ever hunky-dory all the time you know and sometimes you need to just check in with each other and have those boundaries and those things that you know to put in place to get you back up

to where you need to be it's really important um but as I'm hearing you talk I you're so brilliant at talking about your you know the times when you felt a bit more vulnerable and I just wondered if that's something you always felt comfortable with because I would imagine being someone blazing your own path in a predominantly very male environment it might be something that you would normally try not to show any vulnerability in those situations I would say that was probably the case until um maybe about 10 years into my career and when I'd had the kids and they're a few years old and I started going on trips with male colleagues as I did a lot and realizing that when we'd finished work at the end of the day quite a few of them wanted to talk about their families and their kids and other things would come out.

And I don't know if it was because I was a woman and we were having more of these conversations. And I felt like, actually, it's okay to, you know, to show that vulnerability to them. Because I think at the beginning, you know, you wanted to kind of look like everything was in order. Everything's perfect. It's all great here.

There's, you know, no sign I'm going to let you down here. You know, i'm a safe pair of hands for you and actually that might be true but you could still have you know um admissions of feeling a little bit wobbly about something or insecure about something and i suppose it's a confidence thing as well perversely isn't it actually the confidence to admit that and that's very true actually that's definitely something yeah as you get a bit more secure in yourself you feel able to say bits when you're not feeling as confident yeah and I think also women the women in my industry that as in early on there was this outside kind of force they putting this kind of pitting you against other women that you you know oh there's another

woman coming on doing you know and I think like i don't i didn't start this competition no and also there's no there are loads of men right so why why why can there only be one woman here like you know there's room for both of us and once you get over that and you start to and i think quite quickly i realized like this is somebody else's problem not mine i'm just going to keep doing what i'm doing and also realizing that you can then turn around and help those people and new people coming in and give people advice if they ask for it. And there's room for loads of people to do the job. Then I think at that point, you feel a lot more likely to admit those feelings of vulnerability. And, you know, there's a colleague who's going to have a baby very soon. And I just felt, I don't know her that well, but I just felt

she's done amazingly well in the last few years that I don't know why I needed to text her, but I just sent her and said, look, I know you might be feeling like, how am I going to do this job with, but, you know, you will. And I thought maybe I'm overstepping the mark. She sent back a lovely message just saying thank you because I, you know, I know there haven't been many of us

who've been visibly pregnant doing this job and also bringing babies to work and things like that, which I never did. But now what I'm so pleased is that people feel confident to do that. We had Ellen White, who was the Lioness's top goal scorer, was our pundit this summer. She breastfed her baby in the green room all the time. Like she was running off sets. And she wasn't at all apologetic about that. There was no sense of her feeling like as there shouldn't be, like, you know, why should I not do this?

I thought, wow, that is progress. Because, you know, while I might have been pregnant, I certainly would never have felt the confidence that I could have walked onto set with my babies. You know, that was a whole different level of kind of progress, if you like. So I think it's great that, you know, not only are more women in my industry feeling they can be pregnant at work and visibly you know visibly so talk about football with a with a baby bump they can then feel well actually I need to bring the baby on this job so I know Natalie Pinkham who presents Formula One at the beginning her mum would travel around with her on the grid you know Formula One grid with her baby and and so you know otherwise women are going to just disappear if we can't do that

you know they're not going to be visible at all in the industry they're just going to get to a certain point and have to you know stop doing what they do which seems like a real waste yeah a waste but also it's not necessary and i think we've realized that uh i think the whole image in fact of motherhood has changed massively in the nearly 20 years since I've been a mum. Yeah. I just feel that we've got a lot more used to seeing women with all the needs that they might feel put upon them by motherhood and much more open dialogue, much more ways to do it, more options for how it might look like to you. You don't have to have a one-size-fits-all way of dealing with these things. And it's

you know everybody's kind of paving the way for the next one a bit like we're saying about women being slightly pitted against each other in the workplace it's such an old trope i do think it's fading away now but it was exactly the same music late 90s early noughties very very similar you encouraged to sort of look at each other kind of side on really which is not really very healthy and also not how you feel you know I love spending time with other women yeah and you don't want to get into that at all because then you're answering questions or you're saying things you know this is not actually how I feel at all this is your this is your opinion so I'm just going to let this go and you know and as

I say before there's there's a lot of room for other people and you know and it's great for I think anyway I'm quite one of those people that I know it's really hard staying at the top of your industry and your job and you've got to work hard all the time so the idea that you're going to somehow get a dream job and then just sit back with you put your slippers on and you know other people coming into the industry they want your job that's everybody does do you know what I mean that's not that's not just one woman that's like you know everybody wants you, to do those things. So I feel like I would always just want to do the best I can,

whether or not they're deciding to pit somebody else against me. And you also, you grow a thicker skin to those things. Definitely. So it doesn't penetrate and worry you in the same way that it might. Well, cheers to that. So I said your book made me laugh a lot, but it's also responsible for making me cry as well. You write so movingly about, I have to ask you about Daniel. It's one of those

things where I'm looking at you talking and I'm thinking, you should look so happy. And I want to ask her a brother and it's going to make her sad. But I know that that's not how grief works. That's not how losing someone you love works. You don't need me to remind you about Daniel. And you write about him so beautifully. I wonder if I could just ask you a little bit about what he was actually like. Well, it's such a long, it's 1992 when he died. And, you know, we were talking before

about kind of walking past a mirror and seeing yourself as a certain way and feeling different inside. And of course, he's forever frozen in my mind as this beautiful 15-year-old who's about to be 16. And sometimes I've tried to imagine him older because there's a very strong look in the boys in our family so I think I've got an idea roughly what he would look like but when you say his name immediately he's that

fresh-faced you know gorgeous 15 year old and he was such a positive happy happy, healthy, you know, really popular, brilliant footballer who just signed for Leeds United. He was going to be a professional footballer. He was two months away from realising his dream. Just incredibly well liked and at ease. You know, one of those people that's just at ease. I never had any, like we have, you know, we all have sibling moments with four of us before he died. And it was more me and my sister would have little kind of fights and stuff and he was always he always seemed to

be the person that was on i don't know he just seemed to be the in the right do you know i mean everybody kind of wanted to be around him and um and he was just set for a great life you know and i and at 19 years old as i was when he, I hadn't felt the need to spend every minute with him until he died because I didn't know he was going to die. So it's so kind of like I look back now and think, oh, the year before he died, I left home for a year. I went to have a gap year. I should have stayed at home for that year.

If I'd known he was going to die, I would have been at home every day and spent every minute so I could answer your question more fully and tell you exactly what he was like, you know. But I kind of knew this teenager who lived in the house with us you know I didn't I didn't know yeah and of course all those questions when he died my mum who was living obviously at home with him even they didn't know you know he had this girlfriend but she really is you know what kind of relationship had they you know all those things that you kind of just evolve because you don't think your teenager's not going to be with you the next day. So, yeah, he was just a great kid.

Well, I'm so sorry that you've had to go through losing him because you basically had to live through what everybody has as their nightmare it's it's getting that phone call that changes everything and I think when you have well anyone significant in your life there's a bit of it in your peripheral because you know it happens sometimes and then when you have a child it's you know the peripheral moves in a bit more and you think I don't know sometimes I'll be like is this the day that everything flips but my heart just goes out to you and your family for having to go through all that and navigate that new reality. And when you have children, it always causes you to think a little bit

about the dynamic in your family and what traits come from who, but it also makes you think about significant moments. And so there must be two, one that's yet to happen and then one that already has. So the yet to happen is, I suppose, your children reaching the age that everything changes for you. And then also you've had to go through the point of them being 15 and seeing what that looked like, but then turning 16.

So when your children are small, the whole thing we're encouraging to think is the world is wide and your life is ahead of you and everything is out there so how have you been able to sort of navigate having lived experience of when that next bit doesn't happen yeah i didn't realize how impactful and how significant that age would be when Ruben was about to turn 16 so Ruben's birthday is in July and it was um obviously GCSE year so he was doing his GCSEs and I kind of realized on Daniel's anniversary that year which is in May oh gosh this is about the same because because Jordan um sorry Jordan's my other brother Daniel's birthday was also July they were like three days apart from each other in their

birthdays and so in that May I thought oh this is this is now almost the exact day kind of thing that he was away from being 16 as Ruben is and. And it really did kind of hit me how we were going to cross over, you know, a threshold that he didn't. And also the similarities, he was very accomplished in his sport, Ruben, and he wants to be a professional rugby player. And so there were so many kind of parallels there as well. And then I kind of had to realise, you know, do I treat him, am I treating him subliminally differently as well?

You know, it was different, I think, with Lois because of that, the male kind of thing, you know, it was the same kind of, he was a boy and he was a son. Yeah, completely not trying to do that. And my parents' relationship with their son. And I talked to Kenny about it and I actually talked to Ruben about it as well because I was aware that maybe I'd treated him differently you know had I subliminally kind of prepared myself for some kind of disappointment or some kind of you know experience that you know was inevitable was it

you know was this kind of you know I don't think I'd thought about it in those terms but I think when and also then understanding even greater my parents' grief because, you know, it's that person on the edge of adulthood and where they're going and their possibilities and all of those things that, you know, conversations you're having with your teenagers about their futures and, you know. It's immense, isn't it? Yeah, what they want to do and where they want to go, which we were having with Ruben.

And seeing that through my parents' eyes again, you know, I understood it, of course, when he died, how horrific it was for a parent to lose a child, but I think it came back again in a different way because even when I had them, I had another feeling like that. You know, when they were born, I suddenly realised that love and that relationship and how, you know, how impossible it is to kind of put yourself in that

position and um and so yeah that that period of time and then even more kind of bizarrely a few months later because of his sport reuben was asked to go all the players at his club had to have heart screening because he played at a certain level of rugby. And that was something they were already doing? Well, yeah, they must have just started doing this in the previous few years. And they all had to go in to get a kind of make sure their hearts were. And of course, on the form he's filling in, is there anybody in the family who's had a heart? You know, my brother had a thing called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It was instant death, basically. No warning sign, just the heart collapses and he died on the spot.

And when Reuben was writing kind of the form and I was helping with the form, I'm like, oh, they're going to read this form and think like, what? And it wasn't genetic what happened with Daniel. So there was no reason why Reuben would. But they did take extra care and kind of make sure the screening was really looked at and how whether he'd need more screening but there's nothing there at all so it was just a complete um aberration with daniel but even that i thought well this is progress you know because had daniel had that a few months before he died we would have known then that his heart was already showing these signs of being you know kind of very, even though he hadn't shown any signs as a person at all.

You know, so he could go for a 10-mile run. He slept well. He ate well. He looked great. So there was nothing outside that was showing us. So, yeah, it was a very strange period, actually. And it did help me understand my parents dealt with his death in very different ways, and it helped me understand my dad a bit more, I think. And, you know, I always felt immense sorry for him

and compassion for him, but it probably deepened, I think, at that time. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, when the wheel turns, how your perspective shifts around and you step into different shoes for that bit and you're like, oh, I can see it as the parent now. Starts to touch the edges of what they went through as well. But anyway, I'm just sorry that it happened.

I think it's the bit where you write about him, especially when you're with him after he's died and you're speaking to him. And it was just the simplicity of saying I loved him so much. And, of course, love doesn't stop when someone's not here. It just sort of takes on a new shape. And I guess you almost kind of have to put a bit of him in you carry him with you and then they put the legacy is that that you carry them you live you've the best outcome of that pain I think is to try and live your life in the fullest way to honor the fact that they didn't get that opportunity

and also because that is what they would want. Yeah. And I think that's exactly what my immediate reaction was. You know, I went off to university and I became this kind of like, you know, carpe diem times 100. I'm going to do everything and I'm going to, you know, make sure that I'm going to live my life. I think I was already a kind of go getting kind of busy person, but I was really going to do everything I possibly could to live the fullest life I could. And not only that I was going to tell other people to live their life and then I realized after about a year I kind of crashed a bit and realized I needed to get some help because I hadn't really processed his death in a in a in the way that I needed to I'd just been running like this you know really big ball of energy that wanted to do loads of things

and have him completely at the front of my mind all the time when I was doing that um but I also needed to deal with it in a different way because I don't think that was going to be healthy long term and grief isn't always chronological it's not chronological it morphs depending on what else is going on around you and where you're at and what you're processing so yeah and who you're with and you know um and I think you know I've seen that in my own family how everybody has dealt with it so differently yeah and there is no right or wrong way i mean eventually there's a way that okay that those behaviors are quite unhealthy and if you want to live a better life you're going to have to do something about this you know because you can take grief and it can become a really destructive ally, you know,

that doesn't help you at all. Or it can be, you know, something that you can use eventually in a positive way to try and inspire you and try and live in that person's or give that person's memory a really, you know, kind of positive reflection. And when, you know, you look back, you know, obviously over your life, I'd prefer to feel like that, you know. look back you know obviously over your life you you I'd prefer to feel like that you know um and I think in my parents I saw two different ways of dealing with it and and also what it made me realize is you can't you can't make somebody grieve in a you know I've been asked like how would you give people advice about that and I think you you've got to just be there for people and try and listen and try and help.

And when they ask for help maybe, then there are things that will help them. But I've had this woman called Julia Samuel on my podcast a few times. That's so funny. You mentioned how she was literally in my mind while you were talking. Really? Yeah. I think she writes brilliantly on grief.

And I've had her on as a special on grief and I found her I've had her on as a special episode actually about grief and then I've read her books and I really kind of everything she says I think makes a lot of sense about grief you know in terms of um how people react obviously so totally differently and how you know how it can be um how you can help you know you can help people but it's not not an exact science no and I think you know, how it can be, how you can help, you know, you can help people, but it's not an exact science. No, and I think you have to be very forgiving with yourself too because sometimes the reality of the fact that it's just something really shit that happened, it's like just going to be,

that's what you're going to be looking at for a little minute. Yeah, and also I think for me when I was younger, because I was so young when it happened, you know, 19, I think I thought at that point that, you know, things like that were going to happen to me all the time. Exactly. You know, this is, okay, shit stuff's going to happen a lot and so really protect yourself against it, you know, the world

and actually, you know, don't let anybody really in because, you know, you don't want to be too open to that disappointment again and I had to learn, you know to to feel emotion in a different way and not be so kind of hardened to life because otherwise you know I was going to get hurt you know and I think that's what happened with my dad in lots of ways because he just I think he just felt he couldn't love you know again you know in anybody because he was going to be hurt again and um and that was hard to see i think especially for my younger brother he was only six at the time oh yeah that is hard yeah i mean it's

the concentric circles it affects everything yeah the ripples go on and on because obviously you know i'm fascinated in kind of how patterns repeat as well and how family i don't mean in terms of deaths but in terms of behaviors and. Absolutely. And how you can break that. You know, it's not a fetal conflict that your family is like this. Do you know what I mean? This is what we, you know, you can help and change that direction, you know. Yeah. And I think it also helped when I met Kenny.

We were in our mid-20s. He had lost his cousin. He was like a brother to him when he was was similar age. His cousin was a lot older, his cousin was in his early 30s and left two small children. Again, it was a tragic accident where he, you know, he was alive and healthy in the morning and he was dead 24 hours later. And I think because he'd experienced this sudden, horrific, you know, loss, he was very understanding, I think, of how that changes you you but also how you live with that and you know he was very openly emotional about his cousin in a way that you know I had not really

seen kind of I've been near somebody since my brother had died that was very tuned into that you know I think which allows you to be able to talk about it as well yeah yeah it doesn't become this scary topic to bring up when it's in your mind anyway. Ages ago I spoke to Mary Berry who lost her son in a car accident and she said she found her way to deal with her grief but one thing she found she really struggled with was actually other people getting very dramatic and annoyed and wound up about small things in life.

She's like, you've obviously never had anything like this happen to you if you can let yourself go on a date like that that's something as inconsequential as that it's the only flip of anger and I remember that as well in my books when I went to university I would be especially my first year at university was I was fresh off this experience basically you know he died in the May and I'd gone to university in the October and I was totally bemused by people that would be annoyed by not being able to get the accommodation they wanted in their second year. You know, the flat wasn't going to be quite as nice as the other, you know, like properly, you know, having meltdowns about it. And I was like, what is the problem? What is your problem? Internally, I was saying this to myself, it was internal monologue.

And I had to really take a step back after a few months and realize that the other people's shit and their problems was was actually permissible that was their problems it was okay and I could you know I didn't have to grade it all I had to you know otherwise I was going to find life tough because everybody was going to be quite you know because people generally in life thankfully what happened to us doesn't happen to you know to every family on the street and and that's great because you don't want that kind of you know to every family on the street and and that's great because you don't want that kind of you know tragedy to befall people but they will experience in their life disappointment but it might not be to that extent so I had to learn how to kind of

process that you know so that I could be an empathetic kind friend yes while at the same time yeah yeah it's going to be all okay you know that don't you it's going to be fine yeah I think it's the same all okay you know that don't you it's gonna be fine yeah i think it's the same thing happens when you have kids you have to remind yourself don't you like when my son first had heartbreak with a girl when he was 15 i had to really stop myself going oh my god you'll so get over this and you'll be like yeah no no the problems are huge yeah because he was such a poet about it and he kind of had to have a day of school and said to me yeah he said there is a space here where my heart was and it is empty and i when does this feeling feel and he was properly like really heartbroken and me husband

and i he mckinney had to sleep with him the first night he won't mind me saying this now reuben because he said i just i can't imagine like falling asleep and how i'm going to feel when i wake up. Oh, wow. I mean, it's lovely that he feels he can love that fully. Oh, I mean. It's an amazing thing. All in at 15 years old.

And so I was, after a few days going, Kenny, like, at what point? I mean, I think a girl wolf whistled at him on the Tuesday at school and he came home skipping. He was fine after five days. But when I told him it might be a week he went a week and he said every song on the radio reminds me of her every song is written to me they're all writing songs to me I remember him saying that and I just started inside I was sniggering because I remember thinking I remember that feeling so do I I really remember that Where you go, how did she know to write this song? Yes, oh my God, they're speaking to me. It's amazing.

But you can't obviously belittle those experiences, can you? As a parent, you have to fully, you know, kind of embrace their emotions. Oh yeah, if it's real to them, that's just it. And minimising or dismissing it only means they won't come and talk to you about it, no matter what it is. So yeah, you have to let it be as big as it is. But it's also, you know, you back on how and you did that same thing anything i mean thank goodness there's music there because music gives them that yeah all by myself or whatever it might be because i'm later on with the modern day equivalent of that i'm not even sure

yeah and i think those things are important but thank you for um talking to me about daniel because it seems such a keystone moment for you in terms of the before after yeah absolutely huge and i think because you i think i was a certain age which was so pivotal anyway at 19 and such changes kind of going on in your life and yeah still developing and yeah and all those things so i so when i sat down to write my book i could only start there i sat down but this is the day i have to kind of start from because even though there is a before which i'll write about it very much was where everything changed and um and where i think i i really started to grow as a person and learn a lot in those years that I wouldn't want my kids to have to go through to learn in life but I value now more than I think I realized at the time you know

that those experiences actually gave me a lot of human kind of capabilities and um and you don't want to say kind of you know that like but there was, in a way, there were some kind of superpowers that I, you know, kind of experienced that I didn't know at the time were giving me qualities and, you know, it sounds like I'm kind of glorifying, you know, his death in a way, but I think I learned so much. I think that's what probably, you know, I really learned a lot. Yeah.

I hear that. I don't's what probably I, you know, I really learned a lot. Yeah. I hear that. I don't hear it like you're glorifying. I hear it like you're saying that it was, you know, had such magnitude, but it also is the making of you because it had to make you, you know, you had to work on so many aspects of yourself to be able to survive it, but then to actually excel as well. Yeah. And that takes a lot. and that's that takes that

takes a lot and that's emotional that's layers upon layers when in the middle of it there's something so raw and for your i had you know lots of things happened to me around that time i didn't experience grief like that but things that happened that still i refer back as being a really pivotal moment and your kids will have something, their version of it. Yeah. Whatever it may be. A trip they go on, someone they meet, somebody breaks their heart, a business thing they start that fails.

Whatever it might be, there will be their version of actually looking back that changed everything. And I wouldn't deal with anything afterwards the same if I hadn't gone through that. Yeah. It's kind of... And like you say as well, I think even though, you know, it's 31 years ago now, it's a long time, because I really don't mind talking about him.

And I don't mean that in a way that I feel like it's, you know, that obviously he wasn't known, he wasn't a famous person, he wasn't a headline-making person, but I'm so proud of who he was that I don't mind talking about him and I also talk to my kids you know my kids will talk about him and and I think it's I think that's important in our family as well to keep that you know that memory alive but I think it's more reflective of kind of what grief is as well and how how you can get over things that are really really bad and disappointing and you know I mean disappointing is a mild way of, you know, expressing that.

But, you know, that won't always happen to people. It won't be a death. It'll be something else, as you say. And actually, I think that's why I don't mind talking about it, because I think it's important that people, you know, know that, you know, that they can come through something. And I've seen it in the last couple of years with friends who've suddenly lost their partners and things.

And, you know, and I see that depth of grief and I just kind of want to put my arm around go you'll get you'll get there you'll get there it'll be different but you'll get there but I know at the beginning you can't say that to somebody because they just not ready to hear that they'll get there you know and you see the different stages they're going through and and it's tough you know it's never it's never an easy kind of transition for people. No, and I think also it's nice to talk about them because if I'd lost anybody I cared about that much, I'd want everybody to know their name. That would actually really matter to me.

I'd be like, let's say their name. You know, I think that's something you can give people who aren't here anymore, just that moment. They existed. They walked this earth. They were here. Let's acknowledge that. Well, thank thank you I appreciate that very much and um yeah as I said I'm just sorry you had to go through any of it um I do want to talk to you about something that's

a complete change in subjects because I'm slightly fascinated by the fact that you did a lot of rhythmic gymnastics that's so cool like I know it hasn't had much in the way of like airtime yeah but I think if the internet had been around then I think Instagram loves a rhythmic gymnast it does and when you get into the algorithm of you know which me and my sister she lives in the states now she was rhythmic gymnast too and she'll send me little clips and go and I said to her imagine if we'd had the internet when we were kids yeah because we used to watch old VHSs of Russian gymnasts and wear the tape out we would just be watching routines all the time and even my old rhythmic gymnastic pals you know one of whom i played golf with this morning we still go oh my

god was that the sport we did like we kind of like you know we love it yeah it's so cool and it brings such joy i love watching it and also when you were describing the outfits you would wear the leotards with things stuck on and sprayed on, I thought, I'm pretty sure I've won some of those in auctions on eBay. So after we finish chatting, you should come and look at it. I'm pretty sure I've got some of your older outfits. Honestly, my sister and I, my mum must have just thought we were like, what are they doing on the kitchen table?

Because the best leotards seem to be in other parts of the world. The leotards we could get in the UK were just never as good. So we would try and replicate them with glitter and marker pens and various other, of course, dyes and all sorts. We weren't allowed to have adornments on the leotards. Right, noted. As in they weren't allowed to flap or anything. Fair enough.

Which my mum thought was terrible. She would have loved us in more marabou, a lot of diamante. She would have loved a cape, you know. It would have all been, yeah. But we were desperate to kind of replicate those. And then we would dye our ribbons and we would, you know, my mum would go to her laundry and be like, what has gone on here today?

Who's been in the washing machine? And my sister and I were just like, you know, we loved it. It was such a, but it was weird because on the one hand, you know, we kind of, the sport part of it was really important, you know, which we love the training and everything. But the great thing about rhythmic is it's unashamedly kind of showy as well, you know, and all that part of it was great. So you're kind of like, you're kind of crossing over slightly into showbiz,

you know. Definitely. It's sport meets showbiz. There you go. It's set the tone. It's like you've actually been life there after. Why are football kits so plain? It's true.

Why do they not have more diamantes on them? That would be amazing. Yeah, they could have anything on there. Yeah, the lionesses should have like little kind of strips of kind of rhinestones or yeah yeah that would be good i'm gonna suggest that um well thank you i mean honestly i love that so much i was reading i was like i just want to watch the routines now what's the music as well because when we did it you only had one instrument so most people had piano oh yeah that brilliant story about the guy about the guy with the harmonica yeah i ended up going to this guy's house,

a little terrace house in Leeds, because he played the harmonica, with my cassette recorder recording him play the harmonica for me for my routine. My mum outside in her Ford Cortina going, what's going on in that house? My daughter plays ten pounds to some bloke to play the harmonica. I mean, you know, you couldn't make it up with me.

Putting a postcard in a shop window. Anybody play the harmonica? Just your average hobby event. And then sitting through hours and hours, I was about 15, of John Williams' cassettes because he was a brilliant classical guitarist and he played, his albums would just be the guitar, so I could just get guitar music off it.

Yeah, I loved that part of it. You know what? It was a strange but good way to spend your 15, 16-year-old kind of years, I think. It was fun. And if you ever hear music now, do any of the little moves come out? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I start, I mean, that and also like, I mean, I didn't go as far as you and Strictly,

but I hear my routine Strictly routine music. Takes you right back, doesn't it? Yeah, well, I did a jive to Elton John's Saturday. Good one. Saturday night, yeah. And so whenever that comes on, Kenny goes, right, come on, everybody, clear the kitchen. She's going for it.

She's going for it. And you still remember it? Yeah, but in the last, I need to look back at it because I've started to kind of like realise I'm starting to forget it. You know, I used to know. Didn't you do it in like 2007 or something? Yeah, so it's a long time ago. A long time for remembering it.

Yeah, but the jive still, you know, kind of. I mean, Kenny's the same because he went a lot further than me so he'll be like we'll be driving along and suddenly a mute piece he'll go

like this with his arm I'm now putting my arm out in a strictly kind of he'll go oh do you remember I did my rumba to this wow and I have those flashbacks

with gymnastics music certainly but it's more things like Tchaikovsky and you know just some really good harmonica yeah some good harmonica music.

Well, there's so many other things I could ask you about, but I feel like I've taken a lot of your time, so I'm just going to pick two things. I do want to ask about The Free Is Your Fear. How did you find that experience with Wim Hof? I didn't know what at all I was getting myself into because they deliberately didn't tell us. Oh, one of those?

Yeah. I can look surprised on telly, I promise. You can tell me what I'm supposed to do. Well, they said Wim Hof, you see. So I thought it was going to be all, you know, there's going to be some cold. I thought maybe some ice baths maybe, but not the level that we went to.

And I certainly didn't foresee the height stuff happening. But I understand why that was so important because it's all about, for me, that was about how you can put blockages in your mind about things and tell yourself that you're not something. And I told myself that I was scared of heights and it transpired. There I was two days later kind of forward abseiling down a mountain and standing on the edge of a cliff doing a yoga pose

or eventually jumping off a 400-foot bridge, which I would never in a million years have done had something not happened in that process over those three weeks where I'd released those blockages and I think for me why that was important was um you it might not be heights you know it might be that you tell yourself that you're not the kind of person that goes and I don't mean me necessarily but in life that I'm I can't do that job because I'm not that kind of person I'm not the kind of person that does running or I'm not the kind you know and I think we tell ourselves these kind of messages sometimes that that can be quite harmful you know and I don't mean that in a

you know harmful they're not going to kill you but they're going to inhibit and they're going to stop you in life doing things that are exciting and interesting and and then you can pass those on to your kids as well if you're not careful you know those kinds of limiting behaviors so um and i'd hoped i had never done that with my kids but i definitely um through doing this realized that you know that even subliminally sometimes you can have those conversations so that was amazing to do but the the whole breathing process i found extraordinary and that sounds so intense unexpectedly really unexpected I mean we walked into that tent that day expecting to lie down have a nice lie down for about 10 minutes and you know instead had these unbelievably um real kind of uh experiences that were obviously through

through the mind but the the the breathing took you into this place you know it was like um i'm not somebody who has done magic mushrooms or you know those kinds of things but i imagine this is what a trip feels like you know and that's sort of vivid and psychedelic so vivid i mean to the point where how i kept saying to tamsin tamsin out of it was doing um the show with us and this experience had led me to her mum had died not long before I didn't know much about her at all but I knew her mum had died so it wasn't a great surprise in the sense that I knew her mum had died but this woman was telling me that she was her mum and that she had all this love she had to give her and it was so strong I was in tears when I was doing this breathing but

it was so strong it was like if I could if love was a glass just mean breathing, but it was so strong. It was like, if I could, if love was a glass, just mean it was like, it was so real that I could almost touch it. And I, when I was lying there, I was kind of thinking, oh my God, I'm going to have to get up in a minute. Cause I'm going to have to give her this love that her mom is just keeps telling me she's, you know. And so when we stood up, Tamsin hadn't had the same kind of experience and she was slightly kind of going, what was all that about the breathing? And then she looked at me and just burst into tears because she saw me crying. And I put my eyes around her and I was like, your mom's here and she just loves you so much. And she was like, whoa, like that was, and I felt, there was part of me that just felt completely stupid even saying that, you know. And Lee Mack was the host of the show. And he said

to me afterwards, when you did that, he said, we were watching on the monitor. We were going, okay, Gabby, Gabby's just, he said, I've known you for a long time he said I kind of couldn't believe what I was seeing and I said I couldn't believe what I was feeling it was this such a a real um experience of this love and as well as having all these other kind of incredible um insights into like I could feel like I could see my body inside like I could see the blood running through my veins and um and what transpired was that he not just done like three rounds of breathing something in your drink yeah he was blowing stuff through the airwaves there was but he'd done like 10 rounds of breathing normally you do like two or three to relax and feel kind of chilled and sometimes your fingers

tingle most times your fingers tingle and your feet tingle. But he'd gone really deep. So it was like, you're typically taking it to that next level. And that was what I took from the breathing, though, was just how powerful breathing like that can be in terms of relaxation, deep relaxation, deep detoxifying. It's really amazing for your system to have that breathing and what i loved about the show as well was that when i talked about it to people breathing and cold showers are free so you i wasn't coming out of a show going well what you need to do is you

need to go to whole foods and you need to buy about four thousand pounds of herbs and you know it was this was stuff that anybody could access you know and um and do and change like ever since then my husband's done cold showers every day he's really turned on to that and really helps lots of things including psychological as well as physiological things you know um information and things and so i learned a lot actually it was i was the right point in my life i was 48 when i did it and it was kind of like a good time to do something like that and just shift my mindset on something and see things differently I think I was probably a little bit more cynical about you know yeah okay

what was he doing what's this guy with the beard and the um and the big poncho what's he up to and you know he lives and breathes it obviously that is his passion but um but I think you can do it in small doses you know you can you can dip into that world and get a lot out of it. Yeah, I think it's amazing how powerful it was. And funnily enough, I watched the show thinking, I don't like cold, I don't like cold showers, I don't like all that, but I actually feel like maybe that could be something quite good for me because I don't do it.

Yeah, well, that's part of the reason why it works. I had a psychoanalyst, no, he's a professor of um extreme and adverse conditions at portsmouth university and he was analyzing the psychological physiological and pathological um responses from adverse conditions and he said one of the things about cold water is that it's not just the physiological so it obviously does help with inflammation but because you're putting yourself through something that's tough it's what it does to you mentally in terms of uh telling yourself kind of that you've you know you've gone through this and that fortitude and that experience is actually really strong as a mental strength um kind of builder if you like and and doing something that's tough i think is it's actually

quite good for you you know yeah to push yourself sometimes out of your comfort zone is a good thing and especially when you get to a certain stage of life where you might have decided you don't think you can anymore you know and it might then take you somewhere i i do a bit of cold water swimming on sundays at a lake near me and one of the women i swim with you know that's that's her big thing i think that she likes she used to be a stunt woman oh wow and so she's in her mid 40s and she i think doesn't like the idea that she won't keep pushing herself because be a stuntwoman. Oh, wow. And so she's in her mid-40s, and she, I think, doesn't like the idea that she won't keep pushing herself. Because as a stuntwoman, you imagine that's kind of what, you know, you might have a certain mindset. But I see that with other women who swim there.

And it is mainly women because Kenny keeps asking to come. And I'm like, I don't think you're actually banned. But you'd be in a minority, and you might feel. And we were saying the other day, maybe my friend of mine's got a husband does a male swim club where they live. And I do think there's something else about the community aspect of it that's really important. Yeah, I can totally see that.

Well, you've done so many amazing things in your career, but actually the thing I wanted to ask you about, just because it's sort of another one of my, so if I go to a comedy club and I'm watching a comedian on stage, I feel like if I catch eye with them directly I might quantum leap and find myself on stage having to do stand-up but you actually had to live that experience when you did stand-up I think it was in 2012 yeah and I just wondered how you found the experience of having to actually go on stage in a comedy club because I think that sounds sort of simultaneously like slightly exciting but also terrifying it was one of the most um terrifying and physically like you know

when people say they're so nervous that it manifests itself in all kinds of ways whether you start getting really sweaty or your you know your headache you maybe need to go to the toilet more than you normally would all those things that happen to you I mean it really was profoundly horrible that feeling but what was lovely, before I went on, I was doing this thing for Comic Relief, Sport Relief, where it was five sport-related people, including Tyson Fury and Michael Vaughan, who all had volunteered, I was one of them, to learn to do a stand-up comedy routine with a comedian as your patron-like. So mine was Paddy Kilty, who was training me.

And backstage, people like Jason Manford, all these amazing comedians who were used to places like the O2, and we were at the Bloomsbury Theatre, which I think is about 400 to 500 people. They were all in the same state. So these guys have been doing it for years. They've been doing comedy in front of thousands of people, but they still got into that.

They were still really nervous, you could tell. That's reassuring or worse. Well, it kind of reassured me that actually it doesn't matter how you know how amazing you get at this you still got that edge but as soon as you go on stage that and the first joke has landed it is like a drug like you literally are looking for the next laugh and then you totally get why they do it because you're like wow that was such a powerful connection I mean it must be when you're on stage singing and you performing and you just know the audience is totally with you if you're at a festival or something and they're totally in your you know thrall basically they're loving what you're doing and it's very powerful yeah I also try and do

jokes in between songs and if they all laugh oh my gosh well it is yeah if I'm hosting like a corporate awards or something and I throw a joke in and the audience like it you know it's such a lovely feeling isn't it it's one of the greatest things to make a room full of people laugh and and so I came off stage and I knew it had gone well you know I could tell it had gone well I ended up winning um I got given my trophy by Claudia Wingelmann which was like fantastic and I got home that night and I remember sitting on the kitchen worktop we live not far from where we are now

and there's a little chip shop at the bottom of the parade and we got chips on the way home we sat on the kitchen worktop and I had my little trophy and my bag of chips and I was saying to Kenny I think I want to do this the rest of my life I was like totally like I was what 39

I said this is all I want to do this is what I want to and he's like because we discussed earlier on, he's like, do it. Go for it. I went to bed writing new routines. I was going to, like, you know. Wow. I was like, oh.

And then I woke up in the morning. I went, I've got a mortgage. I've got, you know, I've got school run. I've got stuff to do. I've got real life. And there's a bit of me that kind of thinks, you should have just at least kind of kept going as a hobby. Do you know what I mean? But I didn't have Paddy Kilty with me every day telling me what to do you know so also isn't it quite nice that you did your life as a stand-up comedian a career as an actor was award-winning yeah sold out the Bloomsbury Theatre yeah you

never had a night where they didn't laugh yeah you peaked I kind of the whole thing yeah you're right absolutely I I hit the jackpot I can move on from there didn't sell out the o2 but you know it doesn't matter it was uh yeah it was a surreal day because I'd been given this award by Tesco's that lunchtime Tesco mum celebrity mum of the year or something I think basically they just have lots of mums of the year and they want somebody off the telly to come for the it was lovely a lovely lunch and I'd taken the kids with me to that because I mean I wouldn't have got it if it wasn't for them right so I took them along and they loved it as well and we had this really lovely lunch and I'd taken the kids with me to that because I mean I wouldn't have got it if it wasn't for them right so I took them along and they loved it as well and we had this really lovely lunch and then I sent them home while I went off to the Bloomsbury Theatre to do this

comedy and came home with it and I said that night I said to Kenny this is like you know all these different facets of you as a person kind of like in one day kind of being you know kind of coming into sharp focus and and I guess that's you know I was I say I was just on day kind of being you know kind of um coming into sharp focus and and i guess that's you know i was i say i was just on the edge of being 40 and i suppose that's the start of where i really started to feel like well you can be lots of things to lots of people and it's okay to not please everybody all the time but it's nice to make a few of them laugh yeah and i guess also it's that thing of getting yourself to a stage in life and then going but i wonder what happens if i try that i've never done it yeah what happens if I try that? I've never done it.

Yeah. What happens? And I suppose that sets the tone for things you're still doing now. And if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. What's the worst thing that can happen? And I suppose also showing my kids that it's okay to laugh at yourself, you know, because a lot of the gags were obviously at my expense. And I don't want them to feel that you know that they couldn't try

things so it was it was a lesson in that as well um although they're so competitive for them it was all about the trophy um but did you bring a trophy home um so yeah it's and it's you know now I'm 50 god I mean you know there's no um I'm not not going to change back I don't think and be somebody that says no in case I fail I think think that's pretty much the template for the rest of my life now. Yeah, I don't see that in your future at all. I think it's going to continue to be a series of exciting adventures for sure. Thank you so much, Gabby. Thank you, Sophie. It's been lovely to chat.

I'm not kidding about the leotards. I can go and show you some really funny ones. Well, I've still got boxes I could probably send you for your shows, you know, that you'd... Oh, amazing. I say I have, but my mum, we were talking about kids leaving home, my mum sent boxes and boxes of stuff to my house when I was about 24. I said, what are you doing?

She went, I'm moving you out. And so they're probably somewhere in my attic, actually. Okay. If there's a job lot, auction, bids, I'll do, yeah, 20 quid for the lot. The dye was more than that. Sorry, OK, make it 25. Thank you. What a wise woman, eh?

Such a lovely conversation. And I hope our paths cross again soon, because I really liked talking to Gabby. I thought she was brilliant. And actually, I don't know when it's going out, but I spoke to her for her podcast as well, so you can catch that, I'll share that with you when I've done that, when that's published, and in the meantime, well, just kind of wish me luck here, really, I feel, I feel like today, I've very much very much got like lockdown head um which is a feeling I haven't had for ages but when I'm trying to do things and there's just my head space is a bit

crushed and I I'm feeling good about life like there's lots of reasons to be cheerful and I'm so excited about the things I'm doing this year but um I also feel like I just need everything to settle you know what I know this is going to sound insane but having all this lovely stuff with murder has actually also made me feel a little bit weird i think i'm very british and i'm very good at dealing with the kind of like pootling along and then when everything's kind of have an acceleration it makes me feel a bit icky so like sometimes richard will start being like oh my gosh i've just seen that the song's doing this on this chart or it's this on this and i'm like you have to stop talking about it now i can't actually listen to it it's this and this and I'm like, you have to stop talking about it now. I can't actually listen to it. It's like making me feel weird.

And I think that's probably quite British of me, isn't it? What else was I going to say to you? Oh, I'm starting songwriting next week. Well, I've done one or two sessions, but I'm basically back in the studio making a new album. This is what I really wanted. I can't wait. I'm ready.

I'm so ready. making a new album this is what I really wanted I can't wait I'm ready I'm so ready I want to write some really happy strong pop dance that's really for where I'm at in life as well so let's see what that looks like to be quite honest I'm not entirely sure but I'm gonna have a go anyway in the meantime keep safe keep happy and I will speak to you again this time next week if you're still free. More lovely women coming your way. And in the meantime, yeah, take care. All right. Off to go and deal with the smalls.

All right. Speak to you later. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. you