Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 4: Myleene Klass

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

This week Sophie is joined by the gorgeous and multi-talented Myleene Klass who is mother to her girls Ava (nearly thirteen), Hero (nine) and baby son Apollo (one in august) as well as step mother to her partner Simon's two children. In this episode we find out how dating as a mum is terrifying, why learning to mend a tap is so important, and how 20 pasta shapes can save the world. 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, dear heart. Welcome to podcast number four. How are you? How's your week been? Hope you've been having an all right time. If you live anywhere near me in London, I hope you've been enjoying the nice warm weather this

week. It's been lovely and sunny. And yeah, what's been going on here this week? Not so much. Last week we did an end of term kitchen disco. That was lots of fun so that's me and my husband and our children uh i try to perform a gig which we put on instagram live um while my children mainly dance around fight with each other and then look really bored uh during the show that's kind of what it is uh anyway um yeah so what we got up this week oh a lovely one this week i had a great conversation with mylene class so i've known mylene oh golly i think i probably met her when i was about 20 21 and mylene was in hearsay the band hearsay um and it was when i was just releasing my first solo material and we were on the same

label we were both on Polidore so we used to find ourselves performing at the same things and hanging out the same stuff um and I didn't know her super well back then but over the years we sort of found ourselves at things together and she's always been really lovely and warm and chatty and always had lots of things going on in her life so so yeah this was a real treat um and not least because I went around to Mylene's house back this was back pre-lockdown but very very close to lockdown back in March and um she had a beautiful baby boy Apollo there who they call Snoopy um and she's got two daughters of her own um and she's also now step-mom to her boyfriend simon's two two kids as well so they are um a blended family of five uh so yes that's kind of where we started having

baby cuddles and chats in her in her sitting room and uh i'll leave it over to uh over to mylene she's got so many words of wisdom um i think you're going to learn a lot i know i did anyway thank you for joining me again. Enjoy and see you on the other side. I'm off to do what I always do, go and make a cup of tea. You know me. Why, we do.

Thank you. One of the lovely things about coming here to talk to you today is not just that I get to talk to you, but there's definitely a special feeling in a house where there's a baby and your little one's only seven months and he's adorable and it's just there's a sort of what is it a sort of calmness that comes with babies when they're still so little I think that's just that it's content I think that's what it is is content

because I look at him and he's a real leveler for me in my life, I think. Yeah. I think at the age I've got him now and the stage I am in my personal life, I really genuinely am not sweating, you know, the little things anymore now. No, and also when you have a baby in a new relationship that also brings with it children from previous relationships, that new baby... I mean, that's a whole other story. Well, it is. I don't know how to navigate any of this.

Nobody ever told me. And Sim, who you've met as well, who's making the coffees, this is all new for us as well. And so when you're talking about your childhood and going between homes, we latch onto that so quickly because we want to know,

well, what does it look like? I know there is no end game with the family. There is no finishing line. It just continues. You keep on running. know we want to know we're doing the right thing and guiding them all correctly well also be interesting to see the significance for your girls of of having their new baby brother because for me if I'm honest I think the birth of my brother Jack which when I was eight um I think it's probably pretty much why I ended up having quite so many children myself because I'd had um my parents had separated when I was like four or five and my mum and I've been on our own

for a couple of years and then my mum got together my stepdad John he's a lovely man and very very quickly within three months she was having a baby so which actually I have to say if you're seven or eight is actually not like you've got no idea of time scale, so that probably felt like quite a long time anyway, but Jack just symbolised this whole happiness and a new beginning and something just purely joyful actually with him. I was obsessed with my brother. My girls are the exact same.

Like Ava actually got caught out by the Uber driver the other day because she calls him her baby. She walks around and she says, my baby, my baby, and she enjoys it. But then he actually said, so how old are you? And she then started panicking and looked over to me

and I had to then rectify things and say, I'm not the grandmother. But that's how much ownership she has. And Ava is how old? Ava's 12, going to be 13 this year. And she's a typical teenager. Her and and her phone she never wants to answer it but now she suddenly facetimes me at lunchtime to see the baby oh that's lovely it's really this is quite unusual so yeah well yes and no i mean i i was thinking earlier how brilliant um babies are for kids at that age sort of pre-teen

and teen because i know that for Sonny, who's my oldest, he's 15, he'll be 16 next month. And when he gets in from school, he'll say, where's Mickey? Yes. And every night I have to take Mickey to go and say goodnight to him.

Same, it's the exact same. But I think what's nice as well is Ava said, did you do all of this for me? And I think it's really nice for her to see that I really did. But what's also really nice is that I said I did so much of this alone yeah so you must really know how I feel about you yeah yeah you can see me now passing the baby to Sam and everybody's sort of helping out and everyone's feeding him and

everybody's just involved but for a long time you know for a good many years it was just me Ava and Hero and so she she can see the amount work, she's also said I'm not going to have a baby until I'm ready because she can see the amount of work that it takes but what's so nice is she can see the amount of love you give and so when we are at loggerheads or if she wants to go out or she wants longer on her phone and all these other things

she does know that their genuineness is underlying, she should know that anyway, you'd hope they'd know that but when she can see what I'm doing for him she knows that I did that for her yeah well actually I read a really brilliant quote the other day about um being sort of teenage and how you're desperate for someone in the world to really care about you that way but it's a shame it has to be your parents I thought that's a really good way of summing up that emotion of like I know you're doing all this because you love me but can you just love me in a slightly different shape so I can actually have the phone and stay out and do other things?

Absolutely. But then, obviously, if you don't do it, then there are no boundaries. I know. You know, sometimes here I will say, when I say, fine, go and do exactly what you want. Tell me what to do, she'll say. That's very unnerving, isn't it?

If you say, fine, okay, you've decided you're not doing that today. Okay, fine. And they're like, where's the conflict? The other thing that's good about having a baby in the house, I think, as you're not doing that today okay fine they're like what where's the where's the conflict um the other thing that's good about having a baby in the house I think when you're as you're growing up is it's a really good diffuser of things as well so if I'm having this sort of uncomfortable chat or if there's an emotional thing going on with one of the older kids because I do feel like the emotional side gets more complex as they get older then having Mickey sort of crawling about or picking things up means that we can occasionally be just happily distracted by him.

Going raspberries, just being a baby, just being cute. Exactly. It helps all of us, actually. I think so. And so while you've got your small man and your two girls and your... Big man. Yeah, is that your big man? And you've got two...

I've got two stepchildren. They're over tonight as well. So we're planning what we're going to have for dinner. Busy old house. And so what have you got going on at work at the same time? Are you working sort of pretty much full pelt or still ramping it up? Which I suppose is hard to say.

I think it definitely changes around. So when I had the girls, I was always on a plane. And I think my work has just changed anyway by the nature of it. So we can film so much more here. Socials mean that you don't have to go and do interviews abroad. But I was always, always on a plane with them. And for a lot of their childhood, I was working for CNN.

So they became the CNN mascots. And when I look back now, I look back and I think, I don't know how anyone put up with me. I don't know how they, I mean, look, it's all credit to them. They were just so incredibly welcoming and all of the team just loved them. But I've got photos of the girls in Egypt and at the Acropolis and meeting Jackie Chan at the Super Bowl.

And when I just think of all the really random places in Cannes every single year, in Tribeca, it's just the Brooklyn Bridge. They were just always there. That's amazing. You're always travelling with them. It's travel I'm thinking of.

The day job is one thing, but getting on long-haul planes with small people is quite... Yeah, but here's the thing. I didn't know any different. Yeah. So I didn't know how to do it, or I didn't know how to not do it. Yeah. So I just thought, well, this is what I do, and now I'm on my own.

So they just come with me now. Yeah. And that's it. And I look back now, and I think I'm actually crazy, and I think that if somebody said to me, this is how you're going to do it now, I would say, this is impossible. So when you look back does it look a little bit exhausting?

I mean I think because I was younger that must be the only way I must have been able to do it and completely naive. But I remember mashing up bananas for Ava on the red carpet just before the Oscars. I've got the photo.

I've got the photo. I'm like what the hell was I doing? Yeah that's quite a lot to take on and also I but I like the juxtaposition of that I mean I know it's easy for me to say that because I wasn't having the stress of trying to get a small person to eat some banana while I'm about to do interview George Clooney really yes yes it's like if I didn't have the photos I wouldn't believe it had happened and a lot of the CNN crew now we've disbanded didn't have the photos i wouldn't believe it had happened and a lot of the cnn crew now we've disbanded but this um you know it was six years i worked on on the screening room show and um you know all of them have got photos of the girls in the most random most exquisite places so what was

happening in your work when you had your first baby where were you at with all that stuff then? I'd just come out of the jungle. Okay. I was modelling swimwear, terrified because it hadn't been announced and then it had been announced and I remember having the baby and it was actually Twiggy. Twiggy said to me, she's just going to be a dressing room baby. My baby was a dressing room baby and she was the first person that gave me the confidence to actually put hers put Ava in a dressing room situation and not feel ashamed that I was doing something wrong and Twiggy got it I mean it all sounds very showbiz it wasn't very showbiz at the time because again you're exhausted um but I remember Twiggy put a towel around Ava

and fed her mango for me while I was on set. And it was just, you know, other women looking after you. I mean, seemingly she was looking after Ava, but actually she was looking after me. Yeah. And she was a single mum. And she just said, they're just dressing room babies. They love it. And Ava, when she first started school, I remember the teacher said to me, she's exceptional around adults.

We have to keep integrating her with the children because she would just gravitate towards the adults because she just knew where she was at. Yeah. And, like, look, she soon got in with the kids, but she'd only ever been around the adults. Yeah. You know, I remember someone saying,

do you think she should go to nursery? And by that point, she only had a few months in nursery because it was too late. Yeah. Because it never occurred to me. I didn't, you don't necessarily, I don't know, there's no one to tell you how to do it no and isn't it amazing when you do feel like you've got that little bit lack of a map of what you're up to that the women that you meet at that time in your life like when you mentioned Twiggy they they make they play such a massive role in

your life at that time as someone where you think okay you've been through and suddenly someone you might have known for a long time for me it's um actually i think someone you know a hairdresser and makeup artist called lisa oh my god i love lisa she comes here all the time so that i don't have to go out so because she can then just see all the children yeah and she's she so when i met her which must have been in about 2000 she already had children who must have been actually probably about the same age as your girls and i think there must have been about 8 and 12 and you know being at the time I was like 21 and I didn't really think too much about the fact that Lisa was working these long hours and working all the time and loads of travel and and having these younger kids and then when I had my first baby and was still

working with Lisa loads she was so brilliant and wise but also suddenly to me I was so much more open to hearing what she was really telling me because you until you're actually walking in those shoes you've got no idea you're a parent you don't even see people with buggies and i remember when i first got pregnant i just thought where did all these people come from it was like it was like the underground had shut and they'd all suddenly just come back up like suddenly everyone had a buggy yeah buggies and also you're suddenly in this whole new consumer market which was very weird of like feeding off your fear yes buying every piece of plastic you could exactly we were laughing because sim and i went to the cinema and we just said we brought

we brought the baby with us and we were like we've got i've got a nappy in my pocket that's it that's all i had that was it yeah we didn't have the bag no we didn't have the bug we didn't have anything but a nappy in my pocket and if you needed feeding i'd just stick him on my boob that was it i'm the same the thought of doing that with your first child is not a thought at all i know well now i have to say with my fifth baby i thought why does anyone need a baby bag you just put the stuff in your handbag they're really tiny people their clothes fold up really small so if i do want to take a change of clothes i can fit two nappies in my bag quite happily in some way i don't why do i need a baby bag well sim goes renegade so sometimes if i'm about to go on air i'll take the baby into the studio with me um and

then sim will meet me at the studio because that's where we'll swap over and pick the baby up and he'll have nothing with him so i'm like you better get home and quick good luck i think an a nappy is not being you know i think if you'll be on nappy he just goes relax and then it's just unprepared which is like so so different uh scope but but then Richard even now I mean he'll say oh I just you know Jesse who's four like he's just got dressed and I'll be look down his shoes are on the wrong feet because Richard I think picks up any shoe and then puts it on any foot that gets offered to him and it's like that's not well he'll be wearing like the wrong pajamas and yeah there's quite a lot of that that goes on but then it's quite satisfying because I know that I don't you know I'm needed in that role but this is something I've never had

and my girls haven't really had that either to have a guy around who's who's doing these things so this is new for all of us yeah there's been massive massive changes in my life and I thought I was going to be a single mum forever and first the first shock of being a single mum was horrible because I just it's it's not a blueprint I recognised and then when I actually realised when I when I got into the role of being a single mum then I actually had the fear of how am I ever going to not be a single mum because I really like how this flows okay I like that it's me and my girls I feel like it's us against the world I love that we go everywhere together I love that my little you know with you

know with like three amigos it just was a really lovely feeling so how long was that just to give us a bit of timeline so when how old were the girls when you became a single parent Ava was three and Hero has literally just turned one oh wow really little yes yeah yeah yeah oh my goodness and within that I was it was you know without it because you know going into it too much I mean it was it was so crazy I had to sell up a house I had to try and sort out finances I had to find them both a school I had I had so and then you're doing it under such a huge emotional cloud and and you know I didn't feel like I was a very good mum at all I felt like I was just surviving and And that is where Lauren came in.

She was incredible. So I know that you know Lauren, but Lauren is the godmother to both of my children. This is Lauren Laverne we're talking about here. Yeah, so Aunty Lala. And she's a working mum. And, you know, her husband, Graham, who's now become really good friends with my boyfriend, Sim,

at the time, he was exceptional too. He'd just come over and come and help fix the fence. I mean, I became very, very, very good at fixing all kinds of things and not really wanting that help because I felt like I was taking too much from other people. I didn't want that. But people really do step up. Yeah, definitely.

They really step up. Yeah. It just becomes, I don't know it must be my girl's DNA because they adore they adore auntie Lala yeah well it's an incredibly intense thing to go through and also just to sort of reassure you I've got one girlfriend going through it at the moment and I was raised in the same way as you were with your you were handling things with your daughters and that my mum and I had a few years where it was just the two of us. Yeah.

And she, when I spoke to her about it, was saying, I was not a very good mum. It was not my best mothering. She said it a lot. And I was quite surprised because my mum's always seemed incredibly together, incredibly capable. And also now we're so close

and I turn to her for literally everything. I ask her advice for everything. And I've... It never really occurred to me that she ever thought she wasn't a good mother because she's so cute. Oh my God, every single day you go into bed and you just think, you know, did I mother or did I just get through the day?

But surviving is actually the most powerful thing you can do, isn't it? I know, but then everyone looks like Mary Poppins comparatively. And also everyone then thinks you should have a smile on your face. And my other best friend is my manager. Do you know Sev? I've met her, but I don't do you know Sev? I've met her but I don't know her. So her name is Severine and she is she's also a stepmother but um her stepchildren are far older and she's now got two younger children but I actually would have folded

without her and that's not that's not lashings of drama she she was there for the 4am starts when I was showing up to do breakfast tv she was standing in the car park waiting for me to arrive just to make sure I could get out the car and again I think if anybody hasn't been through a divorce or anything you know even similar it is grieving it's yeah it's trying to you know reconfigure a life that you thought you were going to have and suddenly having to overnight come up with a new solution as to how to live

and if you don't have your girlfriends around you I'd say it's nigh on possible I really would because you don't know yourself and yet you need to try and keep things on an even keel for your own children and so without Sev and without a lot of

my my friends around me i genuinely don't know how i would have done it and they're they're the friends that would ring at 3am knowing you're awake yeah they're the friends that would knock on the door when you said don't come over it's making me feel a bit teary actually my friend sorry but um i think you're right it's, but it's also trauma. It's profound trauma. Because there's a sort of... It's like taking a bullet. I've said it before, but it really is. Yeah, exactly. And I think you put yourself under so much pressure

because no one's died. You know, you're just on your own. They actually have. What you thought you had has died. Yeah, I know. And I know that the people I know close to me that have gone through it just keep saying, this is not what I signed up for how is this my life

how on earth am I here in this situation now I didn't ask for this and now no matter what no matter how I'm feeling I've got to get up every morning, get these small people dressed get them to school, all the stuff that happens you know the parents evening and seeing people at the gate

there's things like that that will just catch you. So I remember going to parents' evening for the first time. And here's the funny thing, I'd always done it alone anyway. I don't know why I felt like it. As Sev said to me, there's not actually going to be a very big change in your life, Leans, because you've always done it alone. But I think it, for me, was the emotional shift of knowing I am alone. It's definitive now this is this is official and I sat in parents evening and you sit in those silly

little chairs that you can't either get in or out of and there's another little chair next to me and I just thought oh my god I am alone yeah actually alone and then the weird thing now is I go to parents evening which I'm actually going to tonight and I know that I have the option of sim coming if if that's you know what I want but uh I got so used to doing it alone I kind of like it I it's very very odd way to describe it because you you then have to learn to let someone back into your life and to share the jobs and to do the jobs that you know you can get done quicker but it's actually just nice to just have somebody else there at the end of the day and somebody who's genuinely on your side yeah genuinely loves

you and wants to be there and it's a totally different feeling and I suppose I could have short-changed my daughters and this is what I would tell your friend if I'd stayed in a relationship that wasn't right for me, that was actually toxic, there's no other way of describing it, I would have shortchanged my daughters to have a blueprint for what you know, let's hope touch wood you never know what's going to happen but

we have a very very happy relationship in this house and I wouldn't have we wouldn't have a little Snoopy we wouldn't have him, you can now I know I like it um well yeah I think that's that's you know from the from the other point of view as the the child you went through that that is that is the sort of happy ending feeling you do get when there's a new relationship and things are happy and actually I don't have overwhelming memories of my mum being sad it just was quite serious I would say for that bit of my childhood when it was the two of us because it was quite

intense and so you know there's just two of you a lot of the time you know the fun is quite you can't stumble across it in the same way you can when there's a busy home and lots of things happening and someone who's feeling upbeat so when john came into the life our lives and jack was born it was just like ah it just it was like your mum got her rebirth again as well yeah definitely here's the problem mum is just mum that's it that's mum mum but actually when the children have gone to bed at seven mum's person again you know and mum's got she after she's done her laundry and cleaned the kitchen picked the food up and sorted out the school bags and checked the homework and done whatever emails and then the silence is deafening yeah and there's only so many times you can ring your girlfriends

then you think well actually they're trying to sort out bath time and have times with their husbands when I actually think how many times I rang Sev I'm amazed she's still married because she spent so much time on the phone to me or here with me that her own husband he he had to forego a lot and make a huge sacrifice for her to be that friend to me yeah but then when you that is actually what friendship is so you're not thinking oh I would never have signed up to this if I'd known you're going to go through something so so sad you know you just think I'm your friend and I love you and okay let's do this and you feel like if this will be reciprocated because that is the nature of friendship actually but I actually think that that that bond you have with those girlfriends in those times is

is a really um I mean you always know it's there but to have that feeling so completely that those people will drop everything and be there is actually a really incredible thing to know it's there it's very special there's a picture that you probably saw on the way into my kitchen that says family uh friends of the family you choose and sev gave that to me and that's you know everything moves around the kitchen all the time but that doesn't move because i want my girls to know it's so important that my girls know that that you know that they can choose their family and I think you know it can be quite um it I think it's the wrong lesson to teach that family is everything when you haven't necessarily got the right family you can feel like your puzzle is incorrect and if the pieces don't you know fit together and you're told to continue

working at it if you've got someone in your family that's not treating you well, whether it's a mother or a father or a brother or an uncle, and you're told to keep on working because family comes first. And I just think, actually, you know what? Actually, it doesn't quite work that way at all.

My friends have been my family. And I've said to the girls, if something happens to me you call Sev or you call Lala and they will be there for you they know every intimate detail of my life they know everything and they still love me I'm like these crazy women but you call them they know everything and so how was it for Sim when he had to come into meeting friends that are that that tight with you that's quite a big thing for him probably it's funny because my girlfriends were so willing it's for it to happen for me because I'd sit in the car with Sev saying I don't want to meet anybody I actually thought I

was going to be like Madonna I mean I don't know who I think I am but she seems like she knows what she's doing so I thought, this is my plan. She seems to just have a really happy life and her daughter seems quite balanced and she doesn't really seem she's tied to anybody. And she's just carrying on working. So I'm going to be like Madonna. There's my blueprint.

Well, I think the thing to learn from someone like Madonna and the thing I've always loved about her is the lack of apology for anything. And I'm still really terrible at that so yeah women that are just doing things without ever having to say sorry about anything I actually think is a pretty cool cool thing to aim for yeah no matter what you're set up um and I think I'll probably be trying to learn that for a long time because I don't know Madonna seemed to come into her world with a bit of a mission whereas I feel like part of the reason that I do what I do is because

I'm also a people pleaser I don't know if Madonna really seems to be so she must have that somewhere but I'm less of a people pleaser since I actually since I got divorced I really because I actually realized the people who genuinely are there for me and the things that I went through uh it it's so defining for you as a person that actually you'd be doing them a disservice to then just let people in that are fair weather. It was the quickest colour of my Christmas card list you ever did see. But it was brilliant because I learnt my lesson so early on in life.

I think some people get to 50, 60 and then they know the five friends that are there for them, whereas I know that already. Yeah. So I suppose if you are going to look for the silver lining that's it right there I know who's there but yeah Madonna is unapologetic and I thought she had quite a good blueprint so just the problem is I'm not Madonna so I don't know how I'm going to last it. Don't worry about that there's only one Madonna that's

the way she wants to keep it. Don't be so hard on yourself Loons. Well when you look back are you surprised at how strong you are because there's so much strength that goes on with that yeah 100 i really am to the point that now when i speak to the girls about it you know ava remembers so much about it and here remembers the feelings of it but then she um now that she has friends that are single mums it's funny I think that she just gravitates towards them because she knows how much strength is involved and she well both of them they love working mums and if you're a working single mum I mean it's like triple ticks because they just know how much you're doing their respect for it is infinite as is mine because you know

every single day I just I'm prepared for the plates that I'm about to drop yes whereas I also know that it's not the end of the world as long as I get everybody to bed happy you know the laundry can wait you know even the homework can wait there are things that just can wait but I need to get everybody to bed happy and just you know just content that I think you know I've lowered the bar whereas before here that's still where my bar is but i was getting everybody into beds but it's still that way for me i i think it just changes around and i have the greatest the greatest greatest respect for working mums and i've got a lot of friends who are working mums and who are the breadwinners for their families

which isn't necessarily something that I grew up around or understood. And I still don't quite understand it. I still feel like I am fudging this every single day. I don't know how it really works. And I think it's really impacted me because I do sit with the children and we call it mumma school. So every Saturday morning we do an hour of mumma school and Sims children love it now.

And I will pick a topic that i think is going to benefit them and we'll have a chat about it and they always love doing household budget this is one that gets repeated over and over again so i give everybody 20 pasta pieces and then i say right give me the mortgage and they throw it into the pot then i'll say right now give me house that give me the water rates give me gas give me electricity uh school clothes uniform food and they keep chucking it all into pot and I keep doing it until I've got one pasta piece left and they all look utterly devastated and I say well that's that's for you to spend at the cinema or whatever else is that you'd like oh flat tire sorry I'm taking it off you and he said is this how you feel every month

and so now you know it's I'm not saying that it's you know completely comprehensive but I think little things like that I want them to understand their surroundings I want them to know how to fix a tap which we did last night I want them to know how to do things because they they most certainly are with how things run in the world that we live in now they're going to be called to do that yeah and do you think that's always the sort of way you would have mothered them or do you think it's circumstances that influenced them or wanting them to be so capable and switched on I want them to be capable and switched on for sure but I was you know I was raised by a nurse and a navy I'm a navy brat so when you've got a dad in the forces and a mum who's a nurse your arm could be falling off and you'd still go to school

right so I'm wondering if there's a bit of that in me um also you know both of you and I we both work for save and I do a lot of trips abroad to and you see things that nobody should see or no child should experience and then I come back here and I think I want it was the intercom I was thinking he's really able to project his voice do you want to how do we do that

yeah it's nice to have a little bit of it but do you want to stop and go it's just there it's there

the intercom's just there I can see it no I can just switch the intercom off I can see it on the wall there give just switch the intercom off. Okay. I can see it on the wall there. Give the opportunity to have a swig of coffee as well. I noticed you mentioned dropping plates,

which is one of the things. I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I was going to ask you what your parents did when you were small. So that's actually probably quite a defining thing as well, if they're a nurse in in the navy your mum being I just think what what it does is because my dad worked away so much so I had to know how to change the oil in the car and fix the pilot light in the boiler and little things like that and so I then I just want the girls to be able to do those things I don't want them to feel helpless I think that's the worst

thing you can ever feel in the world is helpless. And I've got friends who don't know where the fuse box is or where to do the gas reading or how to turn the water off if it all goes wrong. And I think, actually, maybe I wouldn't have banged on that drum as much as I do now, but I think when I became a single mum, I have to know where all those things are in the house.

I have to run the house. Yeah. And also I felt less vulnerable, I think because I'm really a practical person. So if I could do things that would practically help us, that made me feel better. I don't know if that's a psychological tactic or... I mean, it does make sense that you should know

those things but is it going to save the world if not if it really does all go wrong I'm sure I can ring somebody that could help but just you know a lot of people think it might be my pride it might it was just actually my way of looking after the children and feeling if I knew how the house ran if I knew how to look after them from a practical point of view which when you are a child so much of it is practical yeah I'm cold I'm hungry I'm bored it's just it rolls in that way I wanted to be able to just know that I I had that I think it's a lot of things actually I think you're right that it's obviously practical and probably psychological but it also if you're slightly in free fall or feeling a bit out of control of things, there's only so much time that your brain can keep thinking about things

that are actually out of your control. And focusing on jobs that you can control or can attempt to is quite reassuring. I mean, I know, I don't know if it's quite the same thing, but I know when my baby, first two babies were born very early and they were in hospital a lot, there's lots of stuff going on and bells and whistles in the hospital and they've all got their own you know nurse assigned and you're not supposed to touch them before you sterilize your hands and it's all very medicalized and your role is quite you feel a little bit redundant really because the survival is not

really down to you it's down to all the clever medical equipment but if I could focus on the feeding then that became the thing I could do that you know was the thing that could fill a gap that can't be that you know I felt more more useful but actually when I look back I think it became a really big fixation more because I actually felt incredibly frightened about what might happen to my babies um yeah I get it yeah so I think it's like I think when you're responsible for someone feeling safe, the love bit is easier to sort out, but the safety thing, then I think that, yeah, you do get very focused on the, what can I do?

What's the thing that I can do that will actually progress us towards feeling safe in those ways? But also, you do all of these things, and your children see right through it. I will never, ever forget, I'd moved into this house, everyone had been incredible you know my cousin Sev, Lauren, husbands everybody came along and helped um their husbands not mine I'm so sorry it wasn't clear um so Lauren would bring Graham, Sev would bring Vinny, everybody was helping my cousin came along and it was just you know this house has been built on love this is this house is built on nothing else but love and i

love that about this house it is my sanctuary without a shadow of a doubt but it's funny because we're in the standing in the hallway and hero just said it to me off the cuff she said it's really funny because you do that loud laugh and you do that smile but it never never goes to your eyes your eyes always still look sad and I was just like Christ she got me yeah they can floor you with that sort of thing got me I just thought but I thought I thought I was getting away with it well yeah I suppose yeah as you say they can just get you sometimes but then I mean I've had similar things with my kids all the time like perception actually my oldest boy is really I think really quite precocious with his empathy,

even when he was really little. And so sometimes when he'll say something about me or a friend of ours, and you're like, wow, how did you work that out? It's funny you say that. I've got the exact same with Hero. Oh, really? Hero spotted very recently that someone didn't have their wedding ring on that came to the house.

And I just said, it's fine. She probably just washed her hands. And so she made this massive deal of it. And anyway I just said to her look auntie I'm so sorry she's like here is really worried could you just tell her that you your wedding ring is not on because you washed your hands and then she burst into tears and she went oh and I'm like oh my god hero picks up on every vibe she's so good picks up on things that I don't even see so she was right so I'm like you watch everything hero and you come back and you report to me yeah it's a good ally actually she's

she's handy to have but it's funny because when I met Sim then you know the things I was looking for in Sim or not even knowing to look for um changed because you're not looking for somebody for just you anymore you know i i've i've then had to think well is he gonna then fit with my children can he love my children and that is a massive ask yeah for anybody you know because when i think i had to do it in reverse you're being asked to to love complete strangers in the way that you love your own children you die for your own children yeah and so you know I think everything changes and how you look at it before when I was in a pop band it was just it was just fun and you're out there and you just don't have to worry about these things you're like and then later you become a single

mum you think I'll still be Madonna because that's a good idea. But now here I am in my house and it did all fall into place. I got my house and I got my girls into schools and I felt that we were settled. I just wasn't ready to meet anybody then but I suppose in my life I'd set up all the little ducks. Ducks were in a row for me to meet somebody. And the first thing that I checked when I met him is I didn't want to be with someone who had left their family and as soon as I

found out he had a family I refused to meet him until someone could give me a backstory okay yeah I wouldn't meet him so that was our he rang me and that was our conversation to each other which isn't the happiest first conversation but I wanted to know he hadn't had an affair it turns out he he'd been you know he'd been on the receiving end of an affair but then I was like well then that's nice I will meet you yeah but actually that's again your survival thing coming in because you don't want to start having feelings for someone that could hurt you and if you've been through something I didn't want to go I didn't let anybody into this house who had the potential to do that to exactly his family exactly so i thought if you can have an affair and walk out on a family you cannot come into this house yeah but actually as well it's quite a different shift probably when

you start a new relationship with someone who has got a family i mean i think with my stepdad john when i met him he i think i might have been pretty much the first kid he'd ever really met and we're incredibly close now and i i love him very much, and he's an amazing man. But it took me quite a long time to get him, because he was very, he's from Huddersfield, he has a very dry sense of humour. And the first thing I ever got from him was at Christmas time, he gave me a pack of balloons that said, Happy Birthday, Jane. And my mum thought it was quite funny.

Yeah, exactly, that's the face I made. now i kind of get that for him it was just like well that's funny it's christmas and your name's sophie like if you're a seven-year-old kid you're just thinking what i don't get this man and actually i remember because my mum was very careful about who she introduced me to she did do a little bit of dating she'd been with my dad between the age of like 16 and 27 i think it is so hadn't you know gone from being a baby pretty much to oh no let me tell you dating when you've got children everyone thinks oh my god it must be so fun because everyone's been married for 100 years or with their boyfriend it's absolutely terrifying it's terrifying because you've got a crappy belly now and you think you know I am

gonna have to keep looking at my phone through this date because there might be something wrong with the children or it's it's just there's nothing hot and sexy about dating when you're a mum like that all these people who think but you know you get that time for yourself again you get to feel like you again but I'm like as a mother you never feel like you again because you've got dependence well I think it's what's a little bit I don't think I can think of is it's a little bit like when you first start deciding you want to move home and so the first bit you know you start looking around people's flats and you're like well this is quite fun I get to see inside like how people do their houses and maybe I could live here and after a while you're thinking I'm really bored now this isn't okay I

just want to find a really nice place where I can live and I'm sort of bored of looking and maybe I'm just never going to find it and I'm sick of the novelty of looking around other people's the novelty wore off really quickly and I would just sit there thinking not just do I like you I would think what's hero going to make of you you're going to scare her or Ava's going to buy you're going to buy and sell you in a second and you're not dating as a one I was dating as a three yeah yeah so it's really hard I think what your mum did is I have nothing but the greatest of respect for her to be a single working mum then you know meeting a guy that you think no this is this is the guy for us yeah you have to have so much trust yeah I think you're absolutely

right because yeah initially I was not sure and I remember my mum had said to me you're allowed to tell me if you know you don't don't like him and I was like okay I don't I just have these stupid balloons I was like I don't really I don't really get it mum and she was like trust me he's he's actually a really good man and she was completely right and looking back at the timeline um I think she was already expecting my brother at that point because it happened so quickly so you know she must have been thinking you know this is another emotional thing I've got to try and navigate my way through because I know I'm committed to this relationship and there's a new future ahead for us but my daughter needs a little bit more time to get we were together for a year and a bit before we met. And then it was actually Sim that bottled. We all arranged for the children to meet here.

Oh, wow. And the girls had completely covered the... They knew that I had a boyfriend. I actually told them about him. And they covered the entire garage with chalk drawings and welcome. Oh, that's lovely. Yeah, they wanted to make it nice. And they'd already met Sim at this point and they thought he was nice.

But to put the children together, that was nerve-wracking beyond belief. I can imagine. And he bottled it. He rang the night before and he went, I think they're really tired. I think we should do it another time because they're just not going to be able to cope with the long car journey. Now, knowing him as I do, he would have been tailspinning. Yeah.

But at the time, I just thought, said, look, all the children know this is happening. This is really unfair. Yeah. It's not, you know, it's not about what we think now. It's their go. Yeah. But I was, this was total bravado too. Yeah.

Because I was terrified. Yeah. Well, that is quite nerve-wracking. But it all seems to have... There's so many layers, you know, when people just say, oh, we're a blended family now. And I'm like, you have no idea how, you know, I'd say for

a conventional 2.4 family which is again brings its own challenges that's tricky but when you've got people that you know didn't wish to be in this position yeah no one wished to be in this position no you're putting them all together and hoping that they that you get you know the outcome or just an outcome that you'd like it's it's you put so much faith in your children but we did but we both did that we put a lot of trust and faith in our children and thank god it worked out yeah they ran there in the garden and it was it was quite special actually oh that must have been incredible to look at and be like oh the two of us held our breath the entire time yeah we really did and now i look at this house and it's funny because

the way I configured the house as a mum of two girls to know how the house looks as a mum of five children yeah I mean you're a mum of five but you knew that was coming yeah I've moved a lot of things around this house now and it's quite nice actually to see how things have moved and you know one room was meant for one thing and actually it's not I don't have the spare room now because you know it's taken up with with all of our children and I just think you know sometimes you you don't know what's good for you it's just as well that I'm not in charge of my own destiny because what do I know yeah well that's the thing you the thing. You've got to sort of turn on your back and float sometimes and see where the current takes you a little bit.

And it's funny, we've been speaking so much about all these really complicated layers of what's happening at home, but all the time you haven't just been doing one job. You seem to have, I mean, your Wikipedia has a fun time trying to count or your day jobs really. Because when we first met yes which was um I think back in sort of 2001 yeah because we were um on the same label when you were stable mates yes exactly stable mates when you were in hearsay and I just released my first album and I remember um

this really funny time when I think we had a like a radio road show to get to so all of hearsay were on a plane and I was on the plane and daniel beddingfield i remember this so well because i feel like you were the epitome of just what class should be i felt really i felt so sorry for you because we were a bunch of morons there was five of us from hearsay and daniel beddingfield putting a banana skin on everyone's shoulder and i remember you just sitting at the back of the plane i just was like this poor woman was saying and Noel was trying to see if he could fit his fist in his mouth so we all then tried to see if we could do that because that's what we did in a pop band we just had nothing better to do so we were flying around on this plane with a polydor plane with Daniel

Bedingfield the banana skins and all of us trying to see if we could fit our fists in our mouth yeah and you just sat at the back oh and I think I just was actually really shy. Everybody seemed so confident. Oh, God. And Daniel Benningfield was, like, beatboxing away. Yes! Yes, he was! I remember thinking, if the plane goes down,

I'm sort of the big bopper here, probably. Like, I'm right out this door. Oh, God. It's just such a weird feeling. Pop roadkill. Just pop roadkill. Yeah, but um so you've never heard anything more 2001 exactly a sentence of who was on that play i know i was literally about to say the same thing it's so funny to look back and think on all of that i mean i wonder like what you at that point would think of where you are now. I mean, a lot of time has gone by.

Oh my God, seriously? I don't even know what my 23-year-old self would think of this. I really don't. Because I think you do have an idea in your mind. I thought, here's how we're going to live forever. I just go to show how I laugh so regularly. It was entirely possible. I know.

I mean, I just had no idea absolutely no idea all the gear no idea that was just us all over I had my little hearsay belts and I just thought we were gonna rule the world we were on borrowed time already so but how I mean but yeah well like to be honest if if I wasn't a solo artist I'm sure the Sophie Ellison Bex would have gone solo a long time ago I mean it's like I've only stayed together because I can't break up but so at that point sort of leading up to when you did become a mum was it mainly pop music

that was what you were doing up until then I mean pop music is funny because I wasn't even meant to be an essay I was working as a session musician so if you can sight read you are gold dust yes on the uh and especially as a singer

you are absolute gold dust so I could play like so I'd do whatever piano sessions or anything else but whenever they needed a mezzo sight reader I worked non-stop because you don't get mezzo sight readers no so I was I I have to say singing sight reading singing is completely I'm wowed by it I can't do it don't be honestly I just it's just a thing I just it I don't know if everyone's got their thing and I just really I didn't know at the time I could make money from it because I just find it really easy I find everything really hard but I found this was just super impressive no it's not because I can play the piano so I can see where it goes and that's all it was really and I didn't have a very high voice I wasn't you know I didn't stand out for any particular reason I didn't have a high voice

never low voice I mean it's typical that I would be cast as a mezzo and I was a mixed race girl having spent most of my time grew up in Norfolk trying to keep my skin white and trying to trying to fit in suddenly all the things that didn't fit were the reasons I was getting bookings yeah you know and I was getting bookings working for Cliff Richard and Katie Lang and Michael Crawford and Robbie Williams and so I'd just go in and do these recordings and I was meant to be on the Brits as a backing vocalist for Robbie Williams and then it was very well remembered that he say that was our first gig at the Brits we got booed by the record industry and I lost my booking we got booed

that's so rude well I get it now now I look at it I don't think you should boo anyone well no I do think about it you know what all those big male record execs booing a bunch of kids yeah it you know it wouldn't sit well now nobody would allow that to happen you know us mums wouldn't allow that to happen if I saw that happening on stage I'd be taking them out yeah with you and Lauren by my side definitely but you know that's what was happening at the time people didn't like you know the birth of of reality shows or x-factor like shows because they could see it was the death knell of something else well i don't know about that because i think they just got annoyed because it was very very successful and seemed to sort of do it do things in a different way

but they can sit this room for everybody actually they didn't see it that way because i remember that audience but you know what fair play because i learned a lot and I do feel for you when you say that actually that you were on your own I feel really sad for you because I think the best parts of hearsay they wrote about how tumultuous it was and everyone was arguing no the best bits where we were together yeah I can I remember Kim I remember I go boo go on boo louder like come on then and I just remember her getting really leery and thinking oh my god I'm this is quite funny yeah that's good you could see it that way as well but if I'd been on my own I don't think I would have seen it that way no I've been pretty personal isn't it you can't pretend it's oh it's probably we got used to it you know what in here so it

became like our calling card but at the time it was it was really good fun but at the time I was meant to be singing for Robbie Williams at the same gig so funny my life changed very quickly but you ask you know what would I've made of it and I just think there's been so many twists and turns I went into classical music straight after that you go back to your foundations you go back to what you know yeah yeah so that's when you went to the classical things so I went into classical music and I felt a lot more comfortable yeah you know what I mean it was fun to do the pop thing but I really didn't understand so much of it I really just didn't get it no but then I didn't either I'd come from like an indie band before right so the pop thing to me was also and major

labels and the way all decisions were made was really perplexing well i'd be going into studios and again don't get me wrong because there's a lot for me to learn about the desks and all sorts but i'd be going into studios with producers that i knew more about reading music than they did well i was going to say reading music makes you highly overqualified for a lot of fun it's funny i remember us i won't say which track it is because then you'll know which producer it was but i remember just saying to the guy you're it's just an e flat you're missing an e flat because he sat at the keyboard he's like something's wrong somebody's done i was like it's just an e flat dude it's an e flat and it was almost like you know you know your place and after that you then almost become a product of your environment so i remember us flying out to

to work with stargate in norway and i just sat on the sofa eating marshmallows and you know yeah just not thinking then not playing the piano not doing anything and then what was nice is you know I did enjoy playing the piano and having those gigs in the band but you do sort of you do fall into line so do you because since then you've now got so many feathers in your cap of areas where you do lots of well that's because of hearsay i learned we made more money in hearsay from the dealy boppers okay then we did from the tour tickets right from the the songs because we were splitting that so many ways as you'll know well you won't know this is the whole thing we split it five ways with the band six ways with the manager seven ways with the record company eight with the tv company my pasta is

going into the bowl and i've got one piece left exactly you know so uh we we realized that the cars were siphoning off our money because we had five lots of cars they were siphoning off our money every single day we left them running and what was bringing in our money were the db boppers so if any of the stands opened late on tour or closed early that's where we would feel it we'd see it and i was fascinated by the accounts i would go to the meetings wow i would do all of that especially towards the end when we lost management and lost pretty much everybody i would i knew those books inside out that's so impressive it really isn't it really isn't it's just again I suppose me being practical when when Rome is burning I'm like what can I do I know I'll fix the fuses I'll go to I'll go and do something practical I think it is impressive not just because

you had the desire to know about it and to sit in but because i would have been so intimidated and even now i think i feel like your relationship with money and they and actually all the things you're talking about for all the stuff of how to be practical and home all that i feel like they should put that as part of school this is why i do what i do with my children this is why i sit down and we do pasta pieces household budget know where the fuse box is when I'm doing the ironing and and if I've got the iron on the washing machine on and the uh tumble dryer sometimes and I don't know why because it doesn't happen every time but the fuse the fuse just goes so I've showed the girls what to do and you know they just they they'll fix it and I and you know we've done first aid courses recently in the house because again I want them to feel empowered and then and they can fix things.

And I think, you know, I don't know where that trait comes from, but the more I talk about it, the more I think about what do I do in times of crisis, I just try and fix things. And I think there's actually... You know, Ava has said to me, that's what I will take from my own children. I'd like to do household budget.

I'd like to show them how to feel empowered as a woman. You know, it's really good that she's recognised that. Trust me, there's a whole list along the way of the things that she probably won't do that I tell her to do. But I think just not feeling helpless is just a really nice, it's a better place to be, isn't it,

than just waiting for someone else to fix it. It's amazingly empowering and they will definitely take so much of that on to their adult life. And then if they become mothers to their children too, and to your son and your stepchildren, they'll all carry that. That's the wonderful thing about that stuff. I've said to the girls, just always have a trade.

If it all goes to shit, have a trade. My daughter's started teaching now. Okay. I teach my stepdaughter so because she was she used to stand around the side of the door watching me teach the girls and i said to her one day i said do you want to learn she's she said yes and now that's our little thing that we have together as well oh that's really nice so i'm taking her for her grade two exam in oh next week i'll get to sit and watch sim go green. He can't cope with the nerves.

And it's just nice. You had to sit in on the exam? You can sit in the room next door. I was going to say. Can't be sitting in the room next door. It's a bit distracting if your parents are like literally sat there while you're playing. I didn't remember that.

But it's just something I can give to her. And I said, look, you know, you've got a trade. It's the same as being a plumber. It's just to have something that you can A, enjoy, but also, you know, Ava Ava's you know she doesn't make loads of money from it but it's more the idea of yeah you can make something but I mean you talked a lot about practicality but there must be ways that because you're a creative person it's not like you do all practical jobs they're creative jobs so there must be ways that you're like the two going

together so I was talking about the Dealey Boppers, how they made the money. That's what then carried on with the rest of my business life. So I realised, actually, I was the first person to have a baby brand in this country because I looked at J-Lo's working model. I looked at how she put together her working model of celebrity branding,

because there hadn't been that before. No, it's for us that came in probably just, the first thing I remember was Madonna doing something with H&M. Do you remember that? Like in the late 90s. And at the time it was really quite shocking because it was the first time you'd seen someone,

a creative person. Jump into a different lane. Yeah, and doing something very corporate. And then before you knew it, it was like, well, why haven't you got a sunglasses range if you're bringing out an album? If you're selling everybody else's. Well, until only literally a few months ago

before Mothercare went into liquidation, I was with them for 13 years. Oh, wow. Actually, 14 years, because Ava's 13 this year. 14 years. So to have had a brand running that long, it's been really, you know, I've learned

how to both be creative but monetize um that creativity and and and and you know be able to raise my children with it but at the same time really I you know I love that creativity I love that input I love being able to create something different I wasn't going to be in a in the pop arena for long or for any time at all, really. By the time the plane had landed, I was out. Well, it sounds like you were doing quite a lot of observing and learning, actually, because to be in something so high profile and such a big, speedy rise to fame

and then also for Auschwitz Mantel, I had a similar experience but on a much much smaller scale with my first band when we were really hyped signed a record deal front cover of the music press and then we would split up like within two years and i think it taught me so much in that time oh god it's the biggest apprenticeship i've have ever had because everything i learned at music college i look back and and, you know, it was the Royal Academy. It was amazing, but it was practical. I didn't learn the business side of the music business.

And you can learn facts and figures, but you need to also learn people. You need to learn how it actually works. And, you know, it is people just being nice to other people. You will give a job to your friend over somebody that you don't know if they've been nice and they can get the job done it's as simple as that and just watching how you know like I said there were producers who couldn't read music yeah that didn't stop them no and then I learned there's singers you can't sing that didn't stop them either so like I'm like

okay right it's open season so you can basically do anything you want to do yeah which is actually quite a liberating place to be in I wasn't a designer many people wanted to turn around and say you know and chastise me for not being a designer but I wear clothes and I know what I like and if you don't like them don't buy them yeah so I worked with M&S and then I went straight on to working with Littlewoods and I've worked and you know that's been like eight years all in for those two brands and now um soon to announce the next brand that's coming up so it's you know I love the business side of it I really do but I still think I try and keep it as creative as I possibly can yeah and you still feel as ambitious as ever for all those things and I don't have that massive massive hunger because I feel like I've been to every country I could ever wish to go to

and seen the best of it because you get taken around by the tourism board the head of tourism you know I there's a there's an Egyptian um uh tour in town at the minute but the very first time I saw that was when Ava was one years old and the head of antiquities took me to go and see the head of Tutankhamun, which for me, being obsessed with Egyptology, was like a dream come true. And I thought, is this what I can do? Is this what I get the chance to do

because of the job I do? Then I'm like, well, this is the best job in the world. So, you know, there are things, there are doors that you get to open that you never even knew existed. There are so many crazy experiences that I've had that you just you don't believe they even exist that's so true and actually it's so nice as well to be open to so many things I think that's but also we go home to be able to go home to your family yes I once went to a party where

everyone got ushered into this room it all sounds so odd but they gave you diamond earrings to wear and I sat at the the girl who went in after me was like this supermodel I mean I must have come up to her elbow and they gave me the diamonds and the guy didn't even want me to touch the diamonds so he put them in my ear which again was a really weird feeling because I want to put them in my own ear yes of course but obviously I was deemed not worthy to to touch them and I just sat at dinner the whole time just trying not to move because I didn't want anything to there was a bodyguard watching over me so that my diamonds wouldn't land in the dinner or I wouldn't go and run off

with them and then at the end of the dinner they took them off me I've heard that happen to you once I think it's bizarre but that's what I'm saying and then I just go home in my tracksuit yeah have you know one of the kids throw salmon at me, go to bed, and then think, well, did that really happen? Did that really happen? It's like a real, like, it's midnight, there's your pumpkin outside.

My pumpkin was revving. It was like pedal to the metal, let's go home. So it's nice to see all, you know, I didn't even know that world existed, and it's not my world, but it's also quite entertaining, and I'll have a million and one stories for my grandkids. Exactly.

There are days I think, I'm really fudging this. Am I really working? Well, I think if you love what you do, that does feel like that. And I think also when you do come home to a proper family life is an amazing way to really draw out the absurdity of experiences like that because, you know, they're so ludicrous and they're so far removed from the practical nature of sorting out the absurdity of experiences like that because, you know, they're so ludicrous and they're so far removed from the practical nature

of sorting out the fuse box when you've got your iron and your washing machine and all those things on at once. Well, it's funny because I just don't understand why people think I wouldn't be doing the laundry or the bins or the... I'm like, well, who else is doing it? Or the night feeds?

Who else? They're my boobs. Who else is doing it? There is a lot of judgment that can come on with um working mothers in public eye and i was sort of hoping it wasn't really thing but then the more i've been thinking about these sorts of conversations the more i'm noticing it and actually yesterday i saw an article about um a model and she was talking about how she much she loves working because it's good for her you know children she thinks it's going to give them

a good work ethic and she happens to be married to a man who it seems like a very wealthy man and all the comments were which I have a really bad habit of looking at the comments because I'm fascinated you are so naughty well I'm not doing the comments ever I don't do it to I don't feel like I'm I get emotionally invested but I'm I am quite fascinated by the way some people's mind think I do but they don't that's the whole point they don't think like 10 people it's mind think. I do. But they don't. That's the whole point. They don't think. Like 10 people. It's just, you know, I don't know anybody, or I'd like to think I don't know them, that would fire a comment off.

Therefore, they're not my people. And then I just think, well, do I care then what somebody I've never met thinks about me? Well, I agree with that, but I suppose I'm intrigued because it made me unpick it a little bit because a lot of the comments were saying, you know, well, if it's so hard for you to go to work, don't you just stop work you're wealthy enough you can raise your own kids and and also call it work and i thought isn't it extraordinary that like i if there was

the flip and her husband was saying about the same thing it wouldn't even occur to people to say firstly just stop stop your work then and raise your kids the sort of subtext of it is if you're economically uh functioning at what people perceive must be you must be going home to and you're able to pay your bills then why on earth would you still want to pursue your stuff because you're not allowed to they don't really like the idea i suppose that women might want to just have the ambition and the desire and work for work's sake and for a sense of yourself because isn't raising a family enough work and enough of a job and satisfying

enough and I do I do find it quite bizarre that that's still the case that you know 2020 like I I just didn't really think I've thought about this long and hard because there are days when I just think it's 5am and I've had you know one one child up all night not very well or I've I've had to find child care or balance a b c and d to even get to do this job and and you know I really do have sort of those tussles with myself and then I think what am I doing if I don't show my children what a work ethic looks like what am I doing if I showed my children that I sat at a piano since the age of four years old and then as soon as I had a child decided I wasn't going to play it anymore other than maybe for their enjoyment I you know I can make money I can I can I can um I can provide for my children because of the talents that I have honed and I didn't know what my 21 year old self

was was going to make of any of this or do with any of this but I do know that if there is anybody out there that thinks it looks easy anyone could do that you sit at that piano for 20 years you go through the fear of the exams and when everyone else is going out you're having to stay in on that Friday night because you've got the practice that's got to get done and it's not woe is me and let's play a smaller violin but it really is a case of I put the hours in and it's only fair or it's only right that I should be able to do something with that and feel feel the benefits of that and I want my girls more than ever to be able to understand the reason they are going to school the reason they are learning

to find their passions and who they are as women and make their own decisions up and have their own minds and be able to contribute to society they have to be able to do all those things otherwise what's it all for just to keep the you know the pleasure and the attention of a husband who could potentially just walk out and go off with the secretary who's also been doing those things or not I just want them to contribute to society I want them to feel that when they have done a long day's work or half day's work whatever they feel is appropriate for their family life that they did it well and they've got pride in themselves the amount of times I've come home and the girls have either seen what I've done on tv

I've let them stay up and watch it or they've come to shows they've come to shoots you know they revel in it they love seeing the people that are at these at work hero loves coming into the radio station she goes from capital to heart to classic to smooth and makes everyone a coffee i said to her you're going to be the coffee girl and you you know you start at the bottom you make sure that you know everybody's orders and you go in you're polite you give the coffee and you go to the next studio and she absolutely revels in it and you just think that there's a whole world there that they'd be completely cut off to you know is if you choose you know that your life is running around the park um and yoga class is good for you but what

if you choose that isn't your life yeah i've watched my daughter do three hours of homework every single day i do not make her do it she wishes to do it she has this drive well that's what I was going to ask actually because massively inquisitive how do you when you were small and doing all the piano practice is this something that was instilled in you from your folks or do you think you've always had a natural drive because I've definitely got a natural drive for it okay I think a lot of it was instilled you know a lot of it was instilled for sure i think i think it has to though ultimately come from the child because i don't think you can make somebody it is the horse to water analogy you can't make some metaphor you

can't make somebody sit and play the piano well this is a conversation that comes up a lot in our house because my husband and i have slightly different feelings i say that he's he's not um the way the house is at the moment with the kids and their practice and things like that is actually more the way I envisage it but I know he would like it if we were a bit stricter about discipline and saying can you do you know well that's to say discipline he just wants him to do like five ten minutes every morning I'm with your husband on this because I think if you don't put in five or ten minutes in the morning which is what we do here i feel like you're i said to them you're taking from your teachers yeah that they gave their time as working mothers so you know they've they've got

teachers you know i don't have to play the trumpet here has got a teacher that gives her time yes she's paid for that time but she's giving her time to you to make you better and then if you're gonna have you know as I think audacity is maybe too strong a word but if you haven't got the respect for her to then walk back into that class with what she gave you and showed you and and you haven't taken it on board and you can't show it to her then I wouldn't do the lesson I'd just stop the lesson because it's really disrespectful I used to teach at one point when I was 13, I had seven pupils. I had, that was my money.

That was my pocket money. And I would be, I would genuinely say to anybody that, you know, is a performer or is out there, you know, do it from another perspective. Understand it from another perspective. And as a teacher, I'd be crestfallen if they hadn't practiced because I'd given everything.

I'd thought about the lesson. I thought, how can I make them understand this? How can they play this piece and enjoy it? How can they find the storytelling in it? Loud and soft, dynamics is not enough. What are they trying to say to the audience? And I'd really think about it and I'd give it my all and then they'd come back the next week and go,

oh, I didn't have a chance to practise this week. And I'd just feel really crestfallen. And I i just said to the girls just put the respect back in that you're being shown yeah that's an that's actually a really good way of doing it i do well if you don't want it and if you don't want to do it don't waste that person's time exactly i've done a bit of that like what is the what is the point and you know talking about the way that it is in their day and the teacher who comes to our house or the ones they see at school about the sort of backstory but we laugh since got a brother who used to play the trumpet i don't know the first thing about playing the trumpet but i try and he tried he it's a joke in his household and in this household he did it for eight years and he still can't play

a tune and all i can think about is ha ha ha ha very funny but actually i just think about that poor teacher yeah yeah that poor teacher who sat there day in day out and you just gave her that I just think that's awful yeah it's like you putting putting your your putting everything together from you know going into the studio putting the song down putting the track down making sure it's right that's not quite right twisting it around again playing around with it getting the look right bringing Lisa in and then nobody in the audience even acknowledging it but even acknowledging it was bad just not acknowledging it you know it's I think that that's the worst thing it's lovely actually yeah yeah apathy is the biggest insult you can give anything that's exactly it so I say to the girls all I want from you is five or ten minutes and if you don't want to do it then I

will never force them yeah because they weren't able to do it, then I will never force them. Yeah. Because they won't be able to do it anyway. Oh, well, I'm sort of sitting here thinking, I really think you should put motivational speaker as your next venture, Miley, honestly. I can barely motivate my kids out the house. Are you kidding?

You've got like a seven-month-old baby and look at all the things in your brain about how to, all the extraordinary mothering. I think it's phenomenal. And you barely scratch the surface of all the things youing i think it's phenomenal and you we barely scratch the surface of all the things you get on with with your work life honestly i feel like i need to go home and i mean i've got some pasta stored away i'll just you know we're not going to need it for the like quarantine we're going to use it for households uh budgets and um look if you don't

show your children what is it they say it's 90 of% of what you do, 10% what you say. And I really believe that. No, it's definitely true. If I say to the girls, you know, I did this at work, I did this at work, I did this at work, it's just me chatting. But when they see stylists coming in and out, to anybody else, a stylist is someone that just has to pick a dress. It's hardly a hard job. Put it on you and off they go but the girls last week I did an award ceremony that I was hosting and I really loved I got them involved because I got them to they got three pounds to carry all of the dresses

up and down the stairs pack them away make sure the hangers went with the corresponding bag make sure they were labeled to go back to the right courier then I mean it was it was carnage outside because there were couriers all standing outside waiting because the girls didn't realize they had to bring the clothes out to the couriers it's just not something they'd done before so Sim came up he went there's some motorcycles outside and it was just they were realizing actually being a stylist isn't just you're a stylist yeah wear this dress I choose green for you. You know that, but they didn't know that. And I think you can take so much for granted.

I think anyone that comes into this house, I want them to speak to them, find out what they do, find out how they do it. Because that could be the key to unlocking your passion. Yeah, I agree with that. And a child without a passion, to me, is such a tragic, it's a tragic story. Because it's the potential that never was realised. Yeah, well, I think you've hit on two things I totally wholeheartedly agree with. One is always have a trade.

And for all the kids, that's the thing. Like have something you can be employed for when you finish your education. That's the number one goal. But also, yes, every little tiny shoot that shows from, you know, the soil with them, it's like, right, let's water that. Where does that go?

Anything they show a tiny little bit of interest in like okay well let's do let's do animation lessons or let's learn Japanese or all the things they might be interested in because I think that as you say the passion that's my big big hope for them actually is just that they find something that makes them get out of bed in the morning and never feel like they work because it's yeah you know we we're both so lucky to love our jobs and actually there is sometimes a little bit of a I mean they say don't they everything casts a shadow and sometimes having parents that adore I thought how brilliant my kids have got parents where they we both do what we love and we're musicians and it's all you know we've chosen our own path but actually that can be quite intimidating for kids as well because you think

what if I don't find that thing that makes me feel so happy and satisfied with my work that's true but then if you live in that fear they'll never find it because I've had the same thing with Ava the amount of times where Ava's about to do her grade eight she's 12 wow but I did my grade at 14 now she's always saying to me but what if this what if I went Ava you know I never had anyone who could show me nobody could tell me what you know if this bar was right. So if you want me to, I will do those things. But she's so worried that she's not going to do it in the way that I've done it. And I've said to her, already you've broken the mould.

You've already broken the mould. And if you don't want to play, you've seen what it takes. You don't have to play. But what if you do and I don't help you? That will be the saddest thing here because I can help you. And I don't want her? Yeah. That would be the saddest thing here, because I can help you. Yeah. And I don't want her, I really don't want her to feel any pressure from me. You know, she's fiercely independent and so bright.

She wants to be a scientist and she, you know, she's got her own ideas. But I think if I was to keep on either knocking them down or these ideas that she has or not enveloping her or developing her then you wouldn't get anywhere anyway so there is the fear there is the fear that the shadow is long but there's also the fear that actually you know she could go off and do something completely left of field I thought I was going to be a conductor before that I thought I was going to be a conductor. Before that, I thought I was going to be an astronaut. And ultimately, our jobs are just to guide them, you know, and if we can, you know, just to grease the wheels a little bit, I suppose.

You know, there's something she asks me. I don't have a clue. I look at her homework. It's that line from The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible. They changed maths. Here it goes to me. Could you just do the bus stop method? I'm like, what?

I know, I feel like that regularly. What's the bus stop method? It turns out it's division, but then I can't do that anyway. Why is it division? Because it looks like a bus stop when you do the little line. Everyone stands in the bus stop.

Oh, I see. People can move around the bus stop and I'm like, I get it. You're like long division. I still don't, well, yeah, but I still don't get it. I haven't really got many doing well actually ones are doing that long division don't really ask me anymore i think they're left me for dust at the moment yeah so but i think as well it's also good for the children to see the things that i can't do yeah it's very important i never

used to think that by the way that was pointed out to me yeah that's quite a tricky one that well i thought if i show them things i can't do it's going to make them feel unsteady and I've built so much up on trying to show them that I'm running a steady ship here so they feel safe within it but then I think what happens then if you don't show that it's safe to fail or that this is the right environment that you can fail in then actually then they'll have the most ridiculous ideas about themselves and not know how to then actually combat that failure and then maybe address it and then overcome it yeah no it's pretty vital actually and I know I did the same thing with I was talking to someone once um and say oh I'm you know I keep on getting it wrong

I'm sure I keep getting it wrong I'm a bad mum and she's like actually it's really important that getting it wrong is just as valuable sometimes because otherwise they don't know how to fail they think you've never failed and that's actually a really hard burden so you know get your mistakes it's like I failed my driving test three times oh I'm saying three times yeah the car kept rolling backwards and I mean Norfolk's the flattest place in the world yeah I'm saying yeah we laugh about that but nobody ever wants to get in the car with me. No, I think the failure thing is important, but I also think that you are in no danger of raising some very capable

and pretty exciting young people, actually. I think they're going to grow up. I think the work ethic thing is vital, but also just... It's so, so important. It is. Look, the other day, Ava lost some money that I gave to her to go out for lunch with her girlfriends.

And she said she'd put it in a pocket. And I thought long and hard about this. And I said to her, right, I want you to pay me back. And the reason I did that, she said to me, but that's three piano lessons that she teaches piano. And she'd done the maths and she said, but that's worth three piano lessons to me. And I said, you to feel it because the next time you go out you will zip your pocket up or you'll have it in a handbag or you will look after it and I and I did I really

felt for her because it was it was three piano lessons but I thought actually it's got to hurt her for her to feel it and so maybe she won't lose as much now yeah yeah because I really want her to value that every penny and I said to her you know what here's the thing now I went out to work and you're getting it for free supposedly yeah so I need you to have a bit of an understanding here that we're all grafting you know and and whether you're working as a nurse whether you're working as a record producer whatever you're you know that remuneration is that you get, it's like you still have to budget it and it has to go towards how to budget. And, you know...

I know a lot of adults who missed out on all of this. It's funny you say that. Sim watched this and he sat down and he went, I wish my parents had done this for me. Because Sim's upbringing is very different to mine. Yeah. And I said to him, do you feel like I go on a bit too much at the kids?

Do you feel like I'm just ranting on about things? And he just said, I wish someone had done this with me. So I know loads of adults who don't know where water is to turn it off, and I know loads of adults who don't do household budget. Yeah, exactly. No, so do I. I can think of loads. And just off the top of my head,

there's people who still struggle massively with just the very notion of living within your means actually um but you do you learn it different ways I think I learned it a bit from my folks and then probably a lot from having you know things be very up and down when I was sort of in my late teens early 20s and then you think I don't like the way this feels I want to not really feel like this anymore yeah and when you do have children you think don't want them to be thinking about any of that either because it's a big worry. And I want them to understand the value of it,

but I don't want them to be feeling like I'm not thinking about all of it. Well, that's where pasta comes in because it's still far enough removed to understand the value of it without feeling the fear of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, actually. That's a good idea. I definitely feel like I need to do a bit more of that with my kids,

especially as they get older. Sometimes it's quite tricky there's a lot quite big age range so i don't know but making it all like age appropriate to them but i do i mean i like you i do lots of communicating and talking yeah regardless i mean everyone can you can all be taught the same lesson and take different things from it that's true so you know i don't say right now we'll do the eight-year-olds now we'll do the 12-year-olds no i sit everybody around the table and everyone asks their own you know their own questions about it i'll just pick a subject you know you know whether it's brexit or whether it's donald trump or have you seen everyone's talking about hashtag be kind i want them to know what's going on in the world otherwise they're just going to be it's going to be quite you know two-dimensional whatever

is taught from the school and then whatever they hear on the radio yeah and they all talk they all talk at school. So, you know, they're not, it actually breeds a lot more fear and uncertainty in their minds than if you just face things head on, have those chats. If they've got different influences coming in, Ava did her interview for school

and she talked about in her interview, Dolly Parton, Beyonce and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And I was like, that's awesome. I'd let you in. Yeah, that is awesome. I'd let you in yeah I'd let you in she didn't go in saying well you know Alan Turing's machine she she talked about things that are relevant to her as a woman living in you know 2020 yeah and I just thought that's badass that is and I'm not surprised to hear that your daughter's better see i told you there were words of wisdom in there

isn't that amazing um it's funny with someone like mylene because um i i don't think i'd realized until we had our proper chat um for for spinning plates i don't think I'd realized until we had our proper chat um for for spinning plates I don't think I'd realized quite how um quite how capable she was really so it puts me to shame I can't I don't think I can change a plug and I thought after that I went home and I did do the thing with the pastor where I sat down with the kids and talked to them about money. I thought, actually, I really need to make sure that my kids are equipped and capable people too. I think being capable is a really good trait to have. I mean, obviously she's also lovely and warm and loving and talented,

but how impressive to have that sort of steel. And I think those daughters and her, that triangle of strength that they have, I think that's a pretty unbreakable thing, actually. So thank you, Mylene, for sharing your words of wisdom and your time with me. I really enjoyed that chat and thank you for listening to us to Chatting Away.

And I will see you next week. Next week, I'm going to be putting up a conversation I had with my mum, which was very special to me, obviously the most personal one. So join me next week. And in the meantime, have a lovely time. And let's hope the sun keeps on shining. All right, lots of love. See you soon.

Bye. Thank you. you