September 22, 2024 • 50 mins
From weather presenter to Loose Women, Andrea McLean has forged a career on television for nearly 30 years. However, behind the camera, she's weathered many storms... from dealing with divorce to struggling with mental health.
Now, with a newfound sense of freedom, she opens up to the Mile Fly Club in her most honest interview to date.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It was a really, really big decision to jump and see if I fall or if I fly.
(00:06):
And I just thought, I will never know unless I try.
Well, she jumped and she flew.
But today she's soaring high by joining me in the Mile Fly Club.
The former loose woman who has dominated daytime for nearly 30 years.
Please welcome, Andrea McClain.
I fell into television and I fell into television because I misread a job advert
(00:29):
and it ended up being for a weather presenter.
Hello, I'm Andrea McClain.
One or two rather thundery showers.
The temperatures dropped down to well below freezing.
So I ended up working for the Weather Channel.
Here's the weather with Andrea. I'll leave you to it.
So you've travelled a lot.
Professionally.
Yes.
And you have had some turbulent times.
I've experienced turbulence. That is very true. I have.
It's a bit of a rough time for you, isn't it?
(00:50):
It's been a bit rocky.
Oh my goodness. I didn't mean to cry. I'm so sorry.
Because I want to be brave.
I was so filled with grief, with pain, with all these things I tried to push down, to hide, to suppress.
I couldn't get them back in the box.
So I did what so many of us do and I tried to work harder and harder and harder until in the end I fell down.
(01:12):
All I could see was someone else's face, someone else looking at who in my life has looked at me in that way.
And he stared into my soul and it was as if he hated everything he saw.
Welcome to the Mile Fly Club, your VIP lane to first class travel tips, tell-all talk and turbulent life tales.
(01:37):
Think the Mile High Club only with more clothes, but no less revealing.
Each week I'll be inviting high-flying, globetrotting guests to bear all in my club.
So if you're searching for some tantalising travel tidbits and a good old gossip, you've arrived at the right destination.
Now sit back, relax and get ready to join me in the Mile Fly Club.
(02:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, we've now reached our cruising altitude.
We may experience some turbulence on this flight so buckle up, it could be a bumpy ride.
Today's traveller is a journalist, broadcaster, former Loose Woman, bestselling author, mother, entrepreneur and fellow podcaster.
Welcome to the Mile Fly Club, the inimitable Andrea McLean.
(02:23):
Oh, it's so great to have you with us.
It's so nice to be here and thank you for flying into the UK, especially for me.
I take it as such an honour.
I'm not here often, but I came here especially for you.
It's amazing to have you here, as I say.
Glasgow-born, but you actually grew up in the Caribbean.
(02:46):
Yeah, not a lot of people know that, as they say, in a much better accent than I just did.
That didn't sound very good.
I don't know what that was.
But yeah, most people don't know that about me.
A lot of people think my accent is either from the West Country, some people think I'm Irish,
some people think I'm American and a mixture of all sorts.
But no, my parents are Scottish, I'm Scottish, but I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago because of my dad's work.
(03:11):
As they say, how did that come about then?
So my parents, born and bred Glaswegians, never been abroad, met at 15, 16, married really young.
And then my dad was an apprentice engineer and was given the chance to go out to the Caribbean
and some equipment that he'd been working on building, help install it into a factory.
(03:33):
They just got married, they were 20 and 21, never been abroad before, and they decided to take a chance and go for it.
This was in 1966 before global travel was really a normalized thing like it is now.
It was a huge, huge leap of faith for them.
And they went out there and loved it so much that we never properly, fully returned to the UK until I was 15.
(03:56):
I was born when they came home on leave, purely because my dad wanted me born in Scotland
so that I was going to be a boy and I'd play football for Scotland.
So he wanted me to be born in Scotland.
So that was how I was born at home.
It wasn't that you were, like they were here and then you moved over,
because I was going to say, well, how was that transition of moving over?
(04:17):
But actually you did really grow up.
I did, and I was four weeks old when we flew back out, obviously, as a little baby.
My sister was born out there.
We also, I find it easier to say I grew up in Trinidad
because that's where I spent the majority of my childhood and into late teens.
But we moved house roughly every three years or so.
(04:40):
And we also moved country sometimes every four or five years,
because I also lived in the Philippines for a year.
We lived in, back in Glasgow with my granny for a little while.
Then we lived in Beckhamham in Kent for a little while.
Then the Midlands and then Cheshire.
We moved a lot.
I went to nine different schools by the time I was 17 in four different countries.
(05:03):
And when you look back on that time, you know,
do you feel like you ever like really had roots and a base
or do you feel like it was quite chaotic?
No, my base felt like it was Trinidad because I was there from a baby until I was eight.
Then we were out the country for two years, moving around all over the place.
(05:24):
Then we went back from when I was 10 until I was 15.
And then we lived in the Midlands and then in Cheshire.
So the longest period of time I ever spent anywhere was Trinidad.
So I had a, I loved it.
I had a broad Caribbean accent with a slight hint of Scottish, which is very strange.
I went to local schools.
(05:45):
All my friends were Trinidadian.
How did that affect your friendships?
Moving around so much.
It was challenging.
And I think challenging is an all encompassing word that can smooth the edges off some tough times.
But also there were some great times wrapped up in that.
(06:06):
And what I mean by that was the bits that were hard were moving so often, moving in the middle of a term.
So I would, for so many times, I was the new girl walking into the back of the class in the middle of a term,
not when most people sort of move up a year or something like that.
And having the teacher announce, we have a new student today.
(06:30):
Her name's Andrea.
And everyone turning around and looking at me, making the instant decisions.
And then that sort of thing of friendship groups have already been formed.
Where do I fit in? How do I fit in?
And then a couple of years later, it all happening again.
So that was tough.
However, when I was younger, I kind of just bounced in and I was shy.
(06:55):
But also, here we go again, sort of thing.
The toughest time for me was when I was 15 and I moved back to the UK.
Because I think I was older.
And also, I had moved back to a place where we had always called it home.
And yes, I was not at home.
I was a white girl with a black girl's accent, which no one could appreciate
(07:18):
and understand why was she talking this way.
But to me, it's perfectly normal.
This is where I grew up. This is how I talk.
I had a very Caribbean attitude to things, which was total respect for elders.
All friends of mom and dad are called auntie or uncle.
You stood up when a grownup came in the room.
You worked very, very hard.
You did your homework because education is your way out of poverty.
(07:39):
It's your way out of a situation that you don't necessarily want to find yourself in.
So you have great respect for the education system.
And suddenly, I'm in a comprehensive school in the Midlands
where people are spitting on the floor and shouting at the teachers.
And I did not know where I was and what had happened.
I found it really, really hard.
Wow. I mean, wow, what a childhood.
(08:00):
Like, what? That's incredible.
I sort of think it's incredible to hear you saying you moved around so much.
You went to so many different places, so many different schools.
But actually, I mean, travel is so educational, right?
Getting to see all those places, as you've said, what you saw would have just been magical.
Yeah, it was.
(08:21):
And also, like, for example, from the age of eight and a bit to nine and a bit,
we lived in the Philippines.
And we lived in the most southern island in the Philippines.
Mindanao is the name of the island.
We lived in a tiny place called Bukidnon.
And obviously, it was pre-internet and anything like that.
So my mum had to teach us because we lived...
(08:44):
Basically, they were building a factory, and my dad's an engineer, so he was part of that.
But they hadn't built it yet.
So they had built a handful of houses.
So my mum and sister and dad and I stayed in one.
There was a couple of other people working in the factory in another.
And there was nowhere for us, literally nowhere for us to go.
We were in the middle of the bush.
(09:05):
My mum would teach us via correspondence course.
So every now and again, a package would arrive with some books in it
and some booklets to go through.
And she was my teacher for a year.
We had no friends, no outside communication, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere.
And it's funny, a few years ago, I went on Mastermind,
(09:26):
and they asked me what my special subject would be.
And I said the sound of music.
And it was because for a year, we had two VHS videos.
And one was Star Wars and one was the sound of music.
And I got very bored of Star Wars.
So I just watched the sound of music over and over and over again for a year,
because it was the only telly we had.
And how did you get on in Mastermind?
(09:47):
I came second. I said, all right.
Well done. I got asked to do that.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not good at quizzes.
I'm failing on that one.
Oh, I love a quiz. I love a quiz.
So incredible childhood.
I mean, you know, I've traveled with my two, Rocco and Talia,
who you know, since they were three weeks old.
And it is interesting because, you know, I have had like criticism from various people
(10:09):
that sort of said, oh, well, your children have got, you know, no roots, no stability.
But actually, I see it as a real positive thing.
My parents were my roots.
Exactly.
My parents have always had the attitude, am I all right?
Are you all right? Are we all right? We're all good.
And that's how we felt. We were a real unit.
I still feel like that with my parents.
And we look around, we're like, I'm all right, you all right, we all right, we're good.
(10:31):
And that's all that matters.
You know, the fact that it was challenging when I moved back when I was 15,
that's to do with age, that's to do with the country that we had moved to.
I also had a very Americanized upbringing, as in I had a very can-do attitude.
I had a very positive attitude.
I felt that if you work hard, try hard, then good things will come.
And that is not a very British way of looking at things, especially when you're 15.
(10:55):
So people thought I was a bit weird, which is understandable because I was compared to them.
So for me, I suppose being grounded and rooted, like you say, the criticism that you get,
there are people who stay in one village their whole life and don't feel grounded and rooted
because their family life doesn't give them that.
It doesn't matter geographically where you are.
(11:16):
As long as the family unit that you're in is built with love and support
and you are there for each other, that's what counts.
Absolutely.
So moving around constantly, did that affect your relationship with your parents then?
Only when I was a teenager.
I put my wholehearted trust in mum and dad that they were doing what they knew best
because that's what you do when you're little.
So when we were told we're moving again, there was that kind of instant,
(11:39):
oh, but what about my friends?
And I remember we'd moved back to the UK and we had moved to this village in Scotland
where we'd had a house previously.
We moved back there for a little while.
And I reconnected with some kids I'd known when I was about 10.
I'd been to school there for a few months for a while and then we'd moved away.
(12:00):
Then I went back again.
And they were up to some mischief that I was not into at all.
And I remember I came home and I'm a very happy girl.
I was a happy girl lucky child, happy girl lucky team.
I came home, I was raging.
And mum said, what's the matter?
And I said, you brought me back for this?
(12:21):
The stuff they are up to.
It's nasty.
I don't want any part of it.
They are so small minded and so narrow minded.
They don't understand what I'm talking about.
They think I'm the freak.
I think they're freaks.
This whole thing is messed up and I can't believe you brought me back to this country.
And I was so angry about it.
(12:42):
Then clearly calmed out.
My rages don't last very long.
And then obviously I could understand.
They did it for our education.
They wanted us to finish our schooling here.
And it was for the bigger picture and all that kind of thing.
And I understood it.
And then once I settled down and I made friends at school and that sort of thing.
That's also a really hard age.
Right.
Like 15 as a girl when your periods are starting, you're going through all those changes.
(13:06):
And I remember being 15 and being an absolute bitch to my mum.
I was a bitch for about an hour.
Probably in the hole of my teens.
I was a really good teenager.
I was a bit longer than that.
I met a boy on a campsite and I'm moving to Holland.
And I was like, you're leaving me?
I'm 15.
I can travel.
I can do what I want.
And my dad was like, you're not going to Holland.
I was like, well, I am.
(13:27):
I've met Martijn and I'm going to Holland.
Yes.
So I think it is a really difficult age to be moving and starting again.
Tough.
But you have had an amazing career.
Not many people will know you're actually a travel writer.
Yeah, that's how I started.
So my whole career started through my passion for travel.
(13:49):
And when I'd gone to, it was a polytechnic actually, I went to poly.
And I'm always really proud to say this because everywhere's a uni now.
I went to Coventry Poly.
It's now a uni.
And I did history, politics and international relations because that was supposedly a good degree to get into journalism.
I always wanted to be a writer.
I finished that degree and thought, you know what, if this is what journalists are like, don't think I want to play.
(14:14):
So I decided to try something else for a while.
So I worked in sales and marketing for a little while, realized very quickly that wasn't necessarily my bag.
So I decided to go traveling.
So I worked through the week in an office job.
I worked on Saturdays in a shop and then I worked nights in a bar.
In a pub.
(14:35):
Well, the thing is, if you want something, you put the hours in, you work out how much you need to save up.
And then how can I get there?
Work as hard as I can.
And that's it.
And so I went traveling and I went backpacking in the 90s again, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone.
And all that sort of thing with my boyfriend at the time.
I kind of dragged him by the ear when I think about it now.
But, you know, everywhere we, we jetted off from Heathrow on an air flight to India because it was the cheapest airline we could fly with.
(15:06):
And I remember looking out and thinking, I swear those wings are actually flapping.
Everything looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment.
And so we backpacked around India, Thailand, all the way down through Malaysia.
We caught a boat across to Sumatra.
We caught a local bus to where an orangutan sanctuary was.
(15:29):
And again, no one speaking any English and with no other way other than, is this a bus to Bucket Lawang?
That should be a whole chapter in a book by itself.
Eventually got there.
Then all's Bali, Indonesia, Australia and America.
And so we were away for a year.
And I kept very, very detailed diaries of every encounter, every adventure, everything that we experienced.
(15:54):
And I posted them home when they got full.
So my mom and dad kept in the loft this box of all my diaries from around the world.
And then when I managed to get in touch with them, because there were no phones, no way of, you know, every couple of months I kind of ring home and let them know I was alive.
And mom said, your dad's been offered a job in Africa.
(16:15):
So we're going.
So you'll need to come back early if you want to see us before we go.
Otherwise, we'll see you in Africa.
So I came back a little bit early, saw mom and dad for a few days before they jetted off to live in Kenya.
And dug out all my diaries and went through them and thought I can make articles out of these.
And so that was what I did.
(16:37):
So again, it was early 90s.
So to be to have articles about huge amounts of countries in the world with various different I could put different slants and themes on it in terms of, you know, value for money or adventure or whatever.
And I wrote up many different articles depending on who I was submitting them to.
And I became the travel writer for the local paper.
While I was working in a clothes shop to make money trying to get work as a writer, I was literally working.
(17:03):
I was managing a clothes store, became their travel writer.
But they wouldn't offer me a trainee junior reporters place because I didn't have a postgrad in journalism.
They did me the biggest favor.
They turned me down.
So I applied to one in London, literally packed up everything I owned onto the backseat of my mom's old car.
(17:25):
And I drove to London.
I slept on someone's floor until I found somewhere to live, went to college, worked for free until I could find somewhere to actually find paid work.
And then that was how I became a journalist.
What a story.
Oh, my word.
That's amazing.
That's the thing, though, right?
The success you've had.
It's the journey there isn't easy, is it?
(17:47):
Like if it is, we don't appreciate.
Well, I often joke that because it's true that I fell into television and I fell into television because I misheard the word.
I fell into television because I misheard a job advert and it ended up being for a weather presenter and I didn't realize.
So then I thought I'll write an article about what it's like to audition to be a weather presenter.
Hang on a minute.
Rewind rewind.
You fell into being a weather presenter.
(18:10):
Yeah, I didn't train as because there's a there's a big kind of thing, isn't there?
If you're like a meteorologist or you're aware, I feel like there's a bit.
I was trained afterwards.
Right.
OK.
But in terms of getting into television, so when I when I was doing work experience on the local paper in the Midlands, the editor at the time.
Now bear in mind, my mum's cut and permed my hair.
(18:31):
My mum trained on old ladies.
The only haircut she could do was old lady perms.
So that's me in the 80s.
I'd chronic acne and I wore jumpers that my granny knitted me.
So I hope that builds up a very accurate picture of what I look like in the 80s.
And I was doing work experience on the local paper and the editor said to me, so have you enjoyed your time?
Would you like to still pursue a career in journalism?
(18:52):
And I said, yep, one day I'm going to be the youngest editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.
And he looked at me with my perm and my acne and my jumper and went, good luck.
So when I moved down to London, my goal was I want to work for a big glossy magazine.
I was a bit like what's at Devil Wears Prada?
I was a bit like Anne Hathaway.
I'm going to work for a magazine.
It's going to be amazing.
(19:13):
And I ended up working for a features agency in Kentish town, which is not quite working for a glossy magazine.
So I was applying for other jobs.
So when this job came up, I know I can write and I can and I'm smart and I can pick things up.
So this said weather.
And I thought I did a level geography.
I'm sure I can pick up about weather.
I'll wing it.
Basically, I'll wing it.
(19:35):
And then when I got the phone call talking me through what was expected on the day and I realized it was an audition, I thought, well, this is hilarious.
So I turned up.
Did you have your curly perm and you needed to jump?
I didn't.
I think I kind of bloomed a little bit by then.
I looked a little bit better than I did.
The skin had cleared up and I had straight hair.
I had stopped perming it.
But, you know, whilst it's funny to say, oh, yeah, I miss for the job advert and then I got the job.
(20:01):
Actually, why I got the job was because I turned up and I was 100 percent authentic and myself, which is very difficult to do when you want something really badly.
So I failed on every audition I've gone for since then and work in television when I really, really wanted the job.
You give off a certain smell of desperation if I really want this.
All the jobs I've ever got is because I felt very calm about it and I've enjoyed the process.
(20:25):
So there was that.
I enjoyed the process.
I was a trained journalist so I could do shorthand.
So in the interview, we were given a weather briefing.
I wrote it all down in shorthand, translated it back, but only taking the key points.
I just thought they've over briefed us.
We don't need to know this information.
This is a story that I'm telling.
It's got a beginning, a middle and an end.
(20:46):
How do I make it interesting?
Actually, that's journalism.
And then in terms of talking to camera, I thought, just imagine I'm talking to someone I really like.
And I look straight down the camera.
I found it really easy to talk with talk back in my ear.
I visualized people really.
I didn't know that was a skill at the time.
So I ended up working for the Weather Channel.
So I trained with Carol Kirkwood, Louise Lear, a lovely lady called Tanya James.
(21:11):
We all flew out to Atlanta.
And we were trained for a good two months before we were allowed anywhere near a studio in terms of broadcasting.
We were trained by the Met Office so that we were meteorologically sound.
We were not meteorologists, but we understood what we were talking about.
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(21:33):
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(21:57):
So you've traveled a lot professionally.
Yes.
And you've traveled personally and talking about personal things.
You have had some turbulent times.
I've experienced turbulence. That is very true. I have. Yes.
And you've come out the other side.
Yes.
And I think we've got kind of we've got there's a lot similar actually between us, I think, from being grafters and loving travel, but also divorce and relationships.
(22:26):
I kind of if you're happy to talk about like I do want to, you know, touch on that because I've had quite a bit of stick of the fact that oh, well, you know, you're a 40 year old woman.
You know, why would a 40 year old woman leave a marriage?
There must be, you know, someone's having an affair.
And it's kind of like, well, actually, no, like, I'm just not happy.
I'm not going on the destination where I want to be heading to right now in this relationship.
(22:51):
And I want to change my route, my path.
And I kind of felt like that's that's enough. That's OK for that to be enough.
How you know, how how's your journey being?
Well, firstly, to pick up on what you're saying, it absolutely is enough for either side, whether male or female and whatever kind of relationship that you're in.
If you feel like it's heading towards a destination that is not where you you thought was where you were headed to, you are fully entitled to reroute.
(23:18):
Now, obviously, of course, that comes with, you know, conversations beforehand that can you reroute together?
But if it gets to a point where it's becoming very, very apparent that the destinations that you're both heading to are so polar opposite that you will never arrive together.
The best thing to do is disembark. Yeah.
Utilize that parachute. All your travel metaphors. Yeah.
(23:40):
And it is and it's actually fair on both parties because whilst people tend to think that it is easier for the one who makes the decision to leave what it what many people misunderstand is that very often with.
And I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with yours because I don't know what your your story is, but it is very often the case for the person who leaves is actually making the stronger decision for both of you because they very often is one party
(24:09):
who and this can be on either side, male or female, is too weak to make the decision to leave.
So they will behave in a way that forces a hand.
So therefore they can always say, well, I wasn't the one that made that decision.
And this has come to me through experience because I have lived this and I was the one who chose to leave.
But I know that I've been married every night three times.
(24:32):
So I'm now in my third marriage, touchwood, all going very well.
I got to be honest. Yeah.
I hold my hands up to you because I've done it once. Yeah.
And I'm not sure I would do it again.
I and I think that's wise.
I am I you know, there's been a lot of a lot of growth and a lot of learning through my experiences and I don't I don't regret any of them.
(24:56):
I would have maybe made some different choices, but I appreciate the learnings that I've had through all of them.
I didn't rush into anything second or third time around.
Sorry. How long was your first marriage?
So we were together for 17 years.
I met him at school.
He was my first boyfriend.
I was so happy after all the traveling that someone actually asked me out.
So I kind of I kind of did the equivalent of hanging on to his ankles and he wouldn't let you.
(25:21):
He couldn't kick me off.
So I hung on way too long than I should have done.
And I can see now with with hindsight and a bit of fondness that God love you girl.
You didn't know any better.
And actually with hindsight, we should never have got married.
I can see that now really, really clearly.
However, I was a long time.
It is. But we were no we were together that long.
(25:42):
We were only married for five.
But I believe in serendipity.
We were together so my son could be born.
He's an amazing young man.
I have a 22 or 23 year old young man as a son.
He's he was meant to be in this world.
So that's why that relationship happened.
My second marriage again, the way I see it was my amazing daughter was meant to be born.
(26:05):
So whilst it didn't work between me and her dad.
And again, I I kind of repeated the same mistakes that I did the first time around.
And I and I do believe that the universe keeps giving you the lessons and the learnings until you have the lesson.
I made the same mistake.
Tried to make something work that clearly wasn't ever going to work.
But it wasn't a mistake because my daughter was meant to be born.
(26:28):
And I have amazing children.
That's why I had that.
I feel very much the same as that.
I feel like I was in a marriage.
I've got two beautiful children and I wouldn't want anyone else to be their dad because if anyone else is their dad, they wouldn't be who they are.
And just touching back on what you said about, you know, my my separation, my divorce.
I did take the decision not to discuss like why out of wanting to protect the children.
(26:54):
And it is very difficult.
And I'm sure you'll appreciate this, too, that when you are in the public eye, you do put an element of yourself out there.
You want to be authentic, but also you are allowed a private life, too.
And sometimes it's really difficult because people do try and dig for things and you want to protect your family and all the things.
How do you how do you cope with that?
(27:16):
So, like I said, I've been I've been married and married and divorced twice each time.
I took the full hit in terms of publicly for the ending of both of those relationships.
I took it in terms of people making things up about me, people deciding their own truths.
So, you know, anyone listening to this or watching this, imagine what it feels like when you're standing at the school gate and you can see people whispering about you.
(27:44):
And you know they're making up any old nonsense that fits their narrative.
And no one is actually asking you the truth about it because for them, one, it's way more exciting to gossip about someone else.
Two, it is way more distracting to gossip about something else that's happened to someone else because no one's looking at your life terribly hard or terribly closely.
(28:07):
So it's absolutely suiting your narrative to point the finger somewhere else.
And thirdly, I just feel that, yes, there have been lies, untruths, half truths, exaggerated truths, all of it told about me in my personal life and about my relationship.
And I haven't addressed any of it because the people who know know.
And if anyone gets to re-quote Christian Bale, there's a brilliant quote that he did many years ago, which I totally absorbed and used in my own life.
(28:36):
Whereas if you have a problem with me, text me or ring me. And if you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me because you're basing your problem with me on something that you haven't heard from me.
You've heard it about me. And if you have heard something about me, think about where you heard it from. What was the agenda?
You know, I discovered many years after my second marriage ended and I found this out in my local nail shop, which is hilarious.
(29:01):
I found out that my ex-husband had been spreading not just half truths, but total lies about me and about our relationship and our marriage.
And clearly I wasn't coming out very well in these lies. And it was because one day the really nice lady in the nail shop said, you seem so nice and you've been coming here for years and I feel really bad that I've been hearing all these women talking about you behind your back.
(29:24):
And yet you sit here and you're nothing but lovely. And I think you need to know what people are saying about you and what your husband's been saying about you.
And I really appreciated her telling me the truth. So I told her the truth and said, next time someone starts gossiping about me, I'm leaving you to be my mouthpiece.
Just tell them the truth. Let them know what happened and let it filter out. I don't need to get involved with any of that stuff.
(29:50):
In terms of how do I cope with it as a family, there were truths also that I hid from my children in terms of what my relationship and the difficulties and challenges that I faced behind closed doors, that the public are still not aware of,
but that I also protected my children from until my daughter was in her early teens. And then it became really clear to her that I needed to explain some truths.
(30:17):
And I told her and she said to me, she's 17 now, Amy, and I can remember she was about 13 at the time.
And she said to me, oh, my goodness, mummy, all this time you've been stretched over the top of us like Mrs. Incredible.
And the bullets have been bouncing off your back and we've been playing underneath, not even knowing that this is happening.
(30:39):
And I cried because that's what being a mum is. And you give them enough information that they can handle at the time.
And then you gradually start to feed them more and more when they're emotionally mature enough and robust enough to handle truths that they're hearing about people that they love.
You know, and that that means people within their family, their relations, even their own dads, behaviors that I've had to deal with, this kind of thing.
(31:08):
But you kind of filter it. It's like a rope that you're feeding out as you're giving them freedom, you're feeding out this rope.
And so for me, it was a matter of to the outside world. I do what you like. I know who I am and I know what I am.
And I hold my head up high with every decision that I've ever made. And you can have your judgments, but they don't impact me.
(31:31):
And in terms of my children, as long as it goes back to my family's roots and we were traveling, am I all right? Are you all right? Are we all right? We're all good.
So that's all I've ever tried to do. I think there's that saying that those that matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter.
100 percent, 100 percent. And, you know, divorce is a very, very challenging situation for all involved.
(31:53):
However, it is also extremely challenging to live in a house that is dysfunctional. And I think you can cause more long term damage by staying together in a pretense.
Because children pick up on undercurrents that even if you're smiling and saying everything's fine, darling, what they pick up on is that relationships are a lie,
(32:17):
that mom and dad are saying everything's fine, but they're clearly not fine. So then they'll internalize that and then they'll think, is it something that I'm doing?
You know, there are there are so many more worries that you're putting on your children when you're trying to pretend that everything is fine.
So actually, I think it's healthier to show, do you know what? This isn't working for us, but we love you to the ends of the earth.
(32:38):
And we are a team when it comes to you, but we're not working anymore.
So we need to be a part so that we can both be brilliant parents separately to you because we love you so much.
I think that's absolutely spot on and an inspiration to actually anyone that's listening that is kind of in that situation and not sure on like what what to do or what's what's right.
And also don't listen to anyone else who had if you haven't been where I am, don't send me directions.
(33:03):
Don't try and direct me into what you think I should do, because you've never been where I am.
And also, if anyone is in a challenging situation now, don't ask directions from someone who isn't where you are, because they don't get it and they don't understand.
You know, I remember many years ago before I had I've written four books now.
I'm in the process of writing my fifth and I know right. I love writing.
(33:27):
You know, you've got this girl is on fire. Yeah.
All the things going on. But I remember I was before I wrote this girl's on fire and obviously that led to a whole other thing.
I remember I was listening to a lot of motivational podcasts and I'm very into and always have been personal growth, motivation and all of that.
So this is like the listening to the Tony Robbins, the Ed Milets, all of that.
(33:51):
And I've I've always been that way. It's always kind of been part of my DNA.
But I remember I was listening to this podcast and it was Ed Milet that said it and I was running on the running machine at work and I was it was shortly before I had a breakdown in 2019 because I pushed myself so hard, so hard, so hard.
Was that around the essay? It was it was after I had done essay.
(34:12):
Basically, a load of as I call it, a load of bats had flown out the box and I couldn't get back in again because I relived a lot of trauma through being on essay.
So I was pushing myself harder and harder and I was listening to this podcast and Ed Milet said he was talking about asking for advice from people and he said, Why would I ask for advice from someone who's been divorced time and time again?
(34:35):
If I want marriage advice, I want someone who has stuck together through thick and thin and been together forever.
I'm not taking advice from someone like that.
And I remember I almost choked on the running machine and I had to switch the machine off because I was going to cry because I couldn't believe this person who I'd so admired and respected could be so narrow minded when it came to this particular thing.
(34:59):
Because actually, unless you have walked a mile in someone's shoes, you do not understand what they're going through.
So absolutely. Yes, you can take counsel from whoever you like, but if you discount someone who has been through an experience, you're not getting fully rounded counsel.
So therefore, and I went off him. I couldn't I couldn't listen to any more of his podcast after that.
(35:20):
So for me now, when I get invited to do anything like you've just asked me these questions, I'll happily answer them because it's not that anyone needs to listen to what I've got to say.
But at least they've heard a different perspective from someone who has experienced what they're going through rather than just someone giving an opinion on it.
Amazing. Amazing. So when you did SAS, amazing show to do. Have you done it?
(35:43):
No, but they've sort of asked, you know, I've had chats about it. Okay.
And I would be intrigued because I'd love to test myself and see how far I could be pushed.
But what was it that pushed you over the edge?
Well, so the reason I did it was because I wanted to see what I was capable of, because I've always known I'm a very resilient woman.
I might be quiet. I might be a little bit introverted, a little bit nerdy and all the things.
(36:05):
But I'm also quite robust.
But I wanted to see how far I could push myself when someone else was was setting those boundaries rather than me setting my own boundaries.
And I think we're quite similar in that we will we'll push ourselves to see what our capabilities are.
And we're curious about what those boundaries are. So at the time when I did it, I was the oldest woman to take part at that's now been beaten.
(36:30):
And I was also the first series of women were allowed to take part.
So they were they were feeling even even more angry, I suppose, that they were normally about this whole idea of celebrities taking part in something that they felt very passionate about civilians taking part in.
It was the first celebrity series. So they were extra hard on us.
So for me, the bit that pushed me over the edge was we were taken to Chile.
(36:55):
We're taken up high into the Andes mountains. So there's this altitude, the snow is cold, there's all the things.
It's quite quite already quite brutal terrain.
It wasn't the physicality of it.
It was the moment where we first met the S.A.S. commanders, if you like the the DSAs.
And we were we were introduced to them by being kidnapped, if you like, where we were taken to a place we had black hoods put over our heads.
(37:23):
We had microphones put on. So then we knew, right. OK, this is starting. This is real.
We were put on a boat across the lake. You didn't know when it was going to end.
Then we were really roughly taken off this boat. And it's like you've been taken hostage.
It's really, really scary. Even though you think it's a TV show, it's a TV show. It's not real.
It feels very real. And for me, the moment was when the bag was ripped off my head and there's a man standing staring at me and he stared into my soul.
(37:51):
And it was as if he hated everything he saw.
And in that moment, all I could see was someone else's face, someone else looking at who in my life has looked at me in that way,
someone else looking at me like they hate every part about me and want to destroy me.
And it was like a flashback and everything I had tried to push down to hide, to suppress and think I'm not there anymore.
(38:18):
I don't need to look at that anymore. I'm out of that now. It was like bats coming out of a box.
And this is like referring back to a relationship. Yes.
And I couldn't get them back in again. It was like feelings. It just exploded out of me.
What's interesting when I look on the TV show now, I have no expression on my face. You would not know that's what's happening.
(38:40):
Then we as part of the program, there's there's a fighting part to it where you have to be together.
Yeah, I'm not so sure on that.
I fell apart during it and the DS is saw that and they hold me in for interrogation and basically really intensely interrogated me over my reaction to what had happened.
(39:05):
Now, what I ended up talking to them about, I made it really clear this is not for public viewing.
So they've been very good and they never showed it. But I explained what my situation had been.
And to be fair to all of them, they're actually very kind and very supportive.
And my experience after that, whilst it was brutal and it was tough and all the things and I ended up getting hypothermia and I had to leave the show.
(39:29):
Actually, they're incredibly kind and supportive to me whilst shouting, whilst screaming, whilst doing all the things.
I could see their reasoning behind it.
And it was that Middleton and Ollie Oliton said to me, look, every time we scream at you, we want you to understand that we're pushing you because we want to see what you're made of.
(39:50):
But because we understand your situation, every time we shout at you, all that fear, all that rage, all that hurt and pain that you weren't able to show, we want to see it in you.
Use it. Get angry. Push through. Shout. Squirt. Shirt. Swear. Scream. All the things. We want to see it.
The rage and pain coming out of you when we're putting you through our paces.
(40:14):
So that's all fine, kind of in theory. But then I literally got on the plane home from Chile and this was going to sound like a weird kind of addition to it all.
But when I rang home to say, I'm out, I've survived this SAS thing, my dog died while I was on the phone home.
Now, my dog had been my right hand boy. He was a big dog. He had seen me through my divorce when my kids went off, you know, and I was on my own every other weekend.
(40:41):
It was my, my dog was my, he was my guy because I stayed single for a long time. I did not want any money.
My dog died while I was on the phone. So I got home and there's no clattering of paws.
There's no nose being, you know, thrust into my hand to welcome home. There's no tail thudding against your legs.
There's no one sleeping outside my bedroom door, you know, protecting me. My dog had gone.
(41:07):
And I got back and I was so filled with, with grief, with pain, with all these things I tried to push down.
I couldn't get them back in the box. So I did what so many of us do and I tried to work harder and harder and harder and not think about it.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it until India. And I was exercising really hard. I was training harder.
I was I looked like an athlete. I looked amazing, but it was purely distraction, distraction, distraction until in the end I fell down.
(41:35):
And in a nutshell, I just fell down and couldn't, couldn't keep pushing it away. I had to go and address it.
So it was a good thing. I fell down and it was a literal thing as in a friend stood in front of me and said,
whatever you think you are trying to deal with, you're not dealing with it very well. You need to just stop.
It's like you're worrying. And so I went and got therapy and sorted it all out and then realized actually therapy is great because it helps me understand everything I've been through.
(42:05):
But to use your travel analogy and now understand what's got me to this place. But now I need to know what I how I move on.
And I realized that was coaching and therapy gets you to understand your past.
Coaching gets you to really understand how you can shape your future.
And that was when I started getting really interested in coaching through my own personal experience.
(42:27):
I could literally listen. I know my life is very varied.
It's fascinating. It really is. And you are now married again.
Yep.
You are. We've lovely Nick.
And you have this, what can I say, blended family. You've both got children and I'm guessing you travel together.
(42:48):
You've traveled to.
Yeah, we're not doing that again.
Why?
Because there's four of them and it's a lot and it costs so much money.
No, no, I'm joking.
Yeah, we do have a blended family and it comes with its own rewards and it comes with its own challenges because you you when you bring together two different family dynamics and hope that, you know, the word blended is is a powerful one.
(43:17):
But it's also a kind of a misnomer in that you just think, oh, well, it'll just all mix together and it'll all be fine.
But there are some parts of blended families that are like oil and water.
They will never mix. It will never blend together to make what you think it's going to make.
It will be a whole different set of ingredients.
But actually what it will make is something that is of its own.
And I think the biggest mistake we tend to make when we when we try and put two families together and think, oh, we're just going to create this amazing family unit.
(43:45):
And it's going to be like a whole different Disney thing.
That's actually not what happens.
What you create is a whole different entity.
And even if it is like water and oil and doesn't always mix, it can still be beautiful in its own way.
But the biggest part of this is accepting what you have and loving the children and the situation that you have, not the children in the situation that you wish you had or that you foresaw or that you're trying to create.
(44:12):
You have to be really grounded in reality and then going, right, OK, this is where we are.
This is a situation. There's so many different energies coming together here.
I can't force a creation that I think is going to be the solution for.
I have to now let it actually become what it's going to become.
And once you get to that point and it takes a while because the children are adapting, no matter what ages they are.
(44:35):
My children are now the four children are aged between 17 and nearly 23.
But they were aged six to 14 at the time.
There's all sorts of different things happening right now.
It's a challenging time for everybody.
But, yeah, we've now got to a place where, you know, you won't go on holiday together again because, oh, my gosh, no.
(45:02):
But now everyone wants to bring boyfriends and girlfriends and this and that.
And it becomes like a traveling circus when we go away.
So do you have a favorite family destination that you like to go to?
France. Yeah.
I know you'd think I'd say somewhere much more further afield and what have you.
But the best holiday we ever had was we hired a house in the south of France and we drove down and we all fitted in the car with a roof rack.
(45:32):
We had a Land Rover at the time. Love those cars.
They're just they're like they're just robust machines.
They're my favorite.
We fitted everybody in and we stayed there for three weeks and just loved it.
My parents came to visit us. People came to visit us.
We were in one space.
That's been my favorite because I I just love kind of cooking for everyone.
(45:55):
Everyone's sitting around and disappearing and going off doing their own things.
We also invented we didn't invent it.
Actually, Jane Moore from Lou Swimmin told me about this game, but we now play every holiday and it's called Real Life Cluedo.
Oh my gosh. Top tip for travelers everywhere.
Love it. We love a top travel tip.
So basically it's Real Life Cluedo.
(46:16):
And what you do is and we the kids still talk about this game to this day.
We played it on every holiday that we go on.
So basically what you do is all of you will write down you everyone's names ripped up folded bits of paper in one bowl.
Then you write down implements.
So that's your merit.
So it's like Cluedo. So it could be a coffee cup, a bag, whatever.
(46:39):
Put in a bowl all folded up.
And then the other one, obviously, it's a place.
So it's somewhere around the villa or wherever you are.
And then you have to pick it out and then you have to murder someone by you get that person in that room and you have to hand them that thing and they have to take it off.
I love it.
You can't throw it at them and they have to catch you.
(47:00):
You literally just hand. So if it's like you and me, a coffee cup in the bathroom in this place and I would call you upstairs or whatever.
And we'd be chatting away and I go, oh, can you just take this a minute?
Just for then I go.
Then I scream at the top of my voice.
You're dead.
And then everyone hears it comes running.
How did it happen in the coffee cup in the bathroom?
I got murdered by my son by a floating pizza slice on the roof of the villa.
(47:27):
Just say that again.
I know, right?
Basically, his murder weapon, I said the roof.
It wasn't the roof. Sorry.
It was a bench underneath the roof.
It was this massive inflatable, you know, like you have.
It was a pizza slice.
It was the size of me.
It was like over six feet long.
And he had to murder me with a pizza slice over by this low roof by the villa.
And he called me over and he went.
(47:49):
He was so smart.
My son, Finley, and he said, Mom, I need to murder Nick with this pizza slice, but my place to do it is he needs to get it from this roof up this shallow roof up here.
But I can't quite get it.
So can you can you just stand on the bench and can you just do it for me?
The boy is six foot tall.
Why am I taking the pizza slice?
(48:11):
I'm so stupid because I'm his mother.
I went, oh, yeah, of course.
So I stood on this bench.
He handed me the pizza slice and then shouted, you're dead.
And that was it.
That's how I got murdered by a pizza slice.
But it's a top game.
It's brilliant.
And it's been absolutely amazing having you on the podcast.
Thank you so much.
A real pleasure to talk to you.
But the question everyone really wants to know is, are you a member of the mile high club?
(48:34):
Oh, gosh, no, but it has crossed my mind.
Tell me more.
It has crossed.
I think it's crossed everybody's mind at some point, especially if you're if it's I mean, clearly couldn't do you flying out with all the kids because I'd just just be really weird.
But, you know, if you're flying out somewhere lovely and you've had a few glasses of bubbles and you kind of look at each other and you think, could we?
(48:55):
My answer is always no, because it just too small to uncomfortable.
Everyone would know.
I'd feel terrible.
Doesn't it depend how many people on the flight?
How empty the flight?
Oh, no, someone would know.
And I couldn't handle that at all.
So no, I've never even been up to any shenanigans under a blanket.
Never mind.
Whatever under a blanket.
(49:16):
Oh, not on a plane.
No, no, no, clearly my own blanket maybe at home, but not like an airplane blanket.
No, I just couldn't.
Well, you know, it doesn't matter that you're not a member of the mile high club.
You are now officially a member of the mile fly club.
So thank you so much.
Which is so much better.
And actually, I would happily do this again.
Thank you so much.
(49:38):
Thank you.
And enjoy your travels.
Thank you.
And thanks to all the listeners out there.
We love having you all as members of the mile fly club.
So stay tuned for more fantastic episodes coming soon.
It was a really, really big decision to jump and see if I fall or if I fly.
(00:06):
And I just thought, I will never know unless I try.
Well, she jumped and she flew.
But today she's soaring high by joining me in the Mile Fly Club.
The former loose woman who has dominated daytime for nearly 30 years.
Please welcome, Andrea McClain.
I fell into television and I fell into television because I misread a job advert
(00:29):
and it ended up being for a weather presenter.
Hello, I'm Andrea McClain.
One or two rather thundery showers.
The temperatures dropped down to well below freezing.
So I ended up working for the Weather Channel.
Here's the weather with Andrea. I'll leave you to it.
So you've travelled a lot.
Professionally.
Yes.
And you have had some turbulent times.
I've experienced turbulence. That is very true. I have.
It's a bit of a rough time for you, isn't it?
(00:50):
It's been a bit rocky.
Oh my goodness. I didn't mean to cry. I'm so sorry.
Because I want to be brave.
I was so filled with grief, with pain, with all these things I tried to push down, to hide, to suppress.
I couldn't get them back in the box.
So I did what so many of us do and I tried to work harder and harder and harder until in the end I fell down.
(01:12):
All I could see was someone else's face, someone else looking at who in my life has looked at me in that way.
And he stared into my soul and it was as if he hated everything he saw.
Welcome to the Mile Fly Club, your VIP lane to first class travel tips, tell-all talk and turbulent life tales.
(01:37):
Think the Mile High Club only with more clothes, but no less revealing.
Each week I'll be inviting high-flying, globetrotting guests to bear all in my club.
So if you're searching for some tantalising travel tidbits and a good old gossip, you've arrived at the right destination.
Now sit back, relax and get ready to join me in the Mile Fly Club.
(02:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, we've now reached our cruising altitude.
We may experience some turbulence on this flight so buckle up, it could be a bumpy ride.
Today's traveller is a journalist, broadcaster, former Loose Woman, bestselling author, mother, entrepreneur and fellow podcaster.
Welcome to the Mile Fly Club, the inimitable Andrea McLean.
(02:23):
Oh, it's so great to have you with us.
It's so nice to be here and thank you for flying into the UK, especially for me.
I take it as such an honour.
I'm not here often, but I came here especially for you.
It's amazing to have you here, as I say.
Glasgow-born, but you actually grew up in the Caribbean.
(02:46):
Yeah, not a lot of people know that, as they say, in a much better accent than I just did.
That didn't sound very good.
I don't know what that was.
But yeah, most people don't know that about me.
A lot of people think my accent is either from the West Country, some people think I'm Irish,
some people think I'm American and a mixture of all sorts.
But no, my parents are Scottish, I'm Scottish, but I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago because of my dad's work.
(03:11):
As they say, how did that come about then?
So my parents, born and bred Glaswegians, never been abroad, met at 15, 16, married really young.
And then my dad was an apprentice engineer and was given the chance to go out to the Caribbean
and some equipment that he'd been working on building, help install it into a factory.
(03:33):
They just got married, they were 20 and 21, never been abroad before, and they decided to take a chance and go for it.
This was in 1966 before global travel was really a normalized thing like it is now.
It was a huge, huge leap of faith for them.
And they went out there and loved it so much that we never properly, fully returned to the UK until I was 15.
(03:56):
I was born when they came home on leave, purely because my dad wanted me born in Scotland
so that I was going to be a boy and I'd play football for Scotland.
So he wanted me to be born in Scotland.
So that was how I was born at home.
It wasn't that you were, like they were here and then you moved over,
because I was going to say, well, how was that transition of moving over?
(04:17):
But actually you did really grow up.
I did, and I was four weeks old when we flew back out, obviously, as a little baby.
My sister was born out there.
We also, I find it easier to say I grew up in Trinidad
because that's where I spent the majority of my childhood and into late teens.
But we moved house roughly every three years or so.
(04:40):
And we also moved country sometimes every four or five years,
because I also lived in the Philippines for a year.
We lived in, back in Glasgow with my granny for a little while.
Then we lived in Beckhamham in Kent for a little while.
Then the Midlands and then Cheshire.
We moved a lot.
I went to nine different schools by the time I was 17 in four different countries.
(05:03):
And when you look back on that time, you know,
do you feel like you ever like really had roots and a base
or do you feel like it was quite chaotic?
No, my base felt like it was Trinidad because I was there from a baby until I was eight.
Then we were out the country for two years, moving around all over the place.
(05:24):
Then we went back from when I was 10 until I was 15.
And then we lived in the Midlands and then in Cheshire.
So the longest period of time I ever spent anywhere was Trinidad.
So I had a, I loved it.
I had a broad Caribbean accent with a slight hint of Scottish, which is very strange.
I went to local schools.
(05:45):
All my friends were Trinidadian.
How did that affect your friendships?
Moving around so much.
It was challenging.
And I think challenging is an all encompassing word that can smooth the edges off some tough times.
But also there were some great times wrapped up in that.
(06:06):
And what I mean by that was the bits that were hard were moving so often, moving in the middle of a term.
So I would, for so many times, I was the new girl walking into the back of the class in the middle of a term,
not when most people sort of move up a year or something like that.
And having the teacher announce, we have a new student today.
(06:30):
Her name's Andrea.
And everyone turning around and looking at me, making the instant decisions.
And then that sort of thing of friendship groups have already been formed.
Where do I fit in? How do I fit in?
And then a couple of years later, it all happening again.
So that was tough.
However, when I was younger, I kind of just bounced in and I was shy.
(06:55):
But also, here we go again, sort of thing.
The toughest time for me was when I was 15 and I moved back to the UK.
Because I think I was older.
And also, I had moved back to a place where we had always called it home.
And yes, I was not at home.
I was a white girl with a black girl's accent, which no one could appreciate
(07:18):
and understand why was she talking this way.
But to me, it's perfectly normal.
This is where I grew up. This is how I talk.
I had a very Caribbean attitude to things, which was total respect for elders.
All friends of mom and dad are called auntie or uncle.
You stood up when a grownup came in the room.
You worked very, very hard.
You did your homework because education is your way out of poverty.
(07:39):
It's your way out of a situation that you don't necessarily want to find yourself in.
So you have great respect for the education system.
And suddenly, I'm in a comprehensive school in the Midlands
where people are spitting on the floor and shouting at the teachers.
And I did not know where I was and what had happened.
I found it really, really hard.
Wow. I mean, wow, what a childhood.
(08:00):
Like, what? That's incredible.
I sort of think it's incredible to hear you saying you moved around so much.
You went to so many different places, so many different schools.
But actually, I mean, travel is so educational, right?
Getting to see all those places, as you've said, what you saw would have just been magical.
Yeah, it was.
(08:21):
And also, like, for example, from the age of eight and a bit to nine and a bit,
we lived in the Philippines.
And we lived in the most southern island in the Philippines.
Mindanao is the name of the island.
We lived in a tiny place called Bukidnon.
And obviously, it was pre-internet and anything like that.
So my mum had to teach us because we lived...
(08:44):
Basically, they were building a factory, and my dad's an engineer, so he was part of that.
But they hadn't built it yet.
So they had built a handful of houses.
So my mum and sister and dad and I stayed in one.
There was a couple of other people working in the factory in another.
And there was nowhere for us, literally nowhere for us to go.
We were in the middle of the bush.
(09:05):
My mum would teach us via correspondence course.
So every now and again, a package would arrive with some books in it
and some booklets to go through.
And she was my teacher for a year.
We had no friends, no outside communication, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere.
And it's funny, a few years ago, I went on Mastermind,
(09:26):
and they asked me what my special subject would be.
And I said the sound of music.
And it was because for a year, we had two VHS videos.
And one was Star Wars and one was the sound of music.
And I got very bored of Star Wars.
So I just watched the sound of music over and over and over again for a year,
because it was the only telly we had.
And how did you get on in Mastermind?
(09:47):
I came second. I said, all right.
Well done. I got asked to do that.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not good at quizzes.
I'm failing on that one.
Oh, I love a quiz. I love a quiz.
So incredible childhood.
I mean, you know, I've traveled with my two, Rocco and Talia,
who you know, since they were three weeks old.
And it is interesting because, you know, I have had like criticism from various people
(10:09):
that sort of said, oh, well, your children have got, you know, no roots, no stability.
But actually, I see it as a real positive thing.
My parents were my roots.
Exactly.
My parents have always had the attitude, am I all right?
Are you all right? Are we all right? We're all good.
And that's how we felt. We were a real unit.
I still feel like that with my parents.
And we look around, we're like, I'm all right, you all right, we all right, we're good.
(10:31):
And that's all that matters.
You know, the fact that it was challenging when I moved back when I was 15,
that's to do with age, that's to do with the country that we had moved to.
I also had a very Americanized upbringing, as in I had a very can-do attitude.
I had a very positive attitude.
I felt that if you work hard, try hard, then good things will come.
And that is not a very British way of looking at things, especially when you're 15.
(10:55):
So people thought I was a bit weird, which is understandable because I was compared to them.
So for me, I suppose being grounded and rooted, like you say, the criticism that you get,
there are people who stay in one village their whole life and don't feel grounded and rooted
because their family life doesn't give them that.
It doesn't matter geographically where you are.
(11:16):
As long as the family unit that you're in is built with love and support
and you are there for each other, that's what counts.
Absolutely.
So moving around constantly, did that affect your relationship with your parents then?
Only when I was a teenager.
I put my wholehearted trust in mum and dad that they were doing what they knew best
because that's what you do when you're little.
So when we were told we're moving again, there was that kind of instant,
(11:39):
oh, but what about my friends?
And I remember we'd moved back to the UK and we had moved to this village in Scotland
where we'd had a house previously.
We moved back there for a little while.
And I reconnected with some kids I'd known when I was about 10.
I'd been to school there for a few months for a while and then we'd moved away.
(12:00):
Then I went back again.
And they were up to some mischief that I was not into at all.
And I remember I came home and I'm a very happy girl.
I was a happy girl lucky child, happy girl lucky team.
I came home, I was raging.
And mum said, what's the matter?
And I said, you brought me back for this?
(12:21):
The stuff they are up to.
It's nasty.
I don't want any part of it.
They are so small minded and so narrow minded.
They don't understand what I'm talking about.
They think I'm the freak.
I think they're freaks.
This whole thing is messed up and I can't believe you brought me back to this country.
And I was so angry about it.
(12:42):
Then clearly calmed out.
My rages don't last very long.
And then obviously I could understand.
They did it for our education.
They wanted us to finish our schooling here.
And it was for the bigger picture and all that kind of thing.
And I understood it.
And then once I settled down and I made friends at school and that sort of thing.
That's also a really hard age.
Right.
Like 15 as a girl when your periods are starting, you're going through all those changes.
(13:06):
And I remember being 15 and being an absolute bitch to my mum.
I was a bitch for about an hour.
Probably in the hole of my teens.
I was a really good teenager.
I was a bit longer than that.
I met a boy on a campsite and I'm moving to Holland.
And I was like, you're leaving me?
I'm 15.
I can travel.
I can do what I want.
And my dad was like, you're not going to Holland.
I was like, well, I am.
(13:27):
I've met Martijn and I'm going to Holland.
Yes.
So I think it is a really difficult age to be moving and starting again.
Tough.
But you have had an amazing career.
Not many people will know you're actually a travel writer.
Yeah, that's how I started.
So my whole career started through my passion for travel.
(13:49):
And when I'd gone to, it was a polytechnic actually, I went to poly.
And I'm always really proud to say this because everywhere's a uni now.
I went to Coventry Poly.
It's now a uni.
And I did history, politics and international relations because that was supposedly a good degree to get into journalism.
I always wanted to be a writer.
I finished that degree and thought, you know what, if this is what journalists are like, don't think I want to play.
(14:14):
So I decided to try something else for a while.
So I worked in sales and marketing for a little while, realized very quickly that wasn't necessarily my bag.
So I decided to go traveling.
So I worked through the week in an office job.
I worked on Saturdays in a shop and then I worked nights in a bar.
In a pub.
(14:35):
Well, the thing is, if you want something, you put the hours in, you work out how much you need to save up.
And then how can I get there?
Work as hard as I can.
And that's it.
And so I went traveling and I went backpacking in the 90s again, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone.
And all that sort of thing with my boyfriend at the time.
I kind of dragged him by the ear when I think about it now.
But, you know, everywhere we, we jetted off from Heathrow on an air flight to India because it was the cheapest airline we could fly with.
(15:06):
And I remember looking out and thinking, I swear those wings are actually flapping.
Everything looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment.
And so we backpacked around India, Thailand, all the way down through Malaysia.
We caught a boat across to Sumatra.
We caught a local bus to where an orangutan sanctuary was.
(15:29):
And again, no one speaking any English and with no other way other than, is this a bus to Bucket Lawang?
That should be a whole chapter in a book by itself.
Eventually got there.
Then all's Bali, Indonesia, Australia and America.
And so we were away for a year.
And I kept very, very detailed diaries of every encounter, every adventure, everything that we experienced.
(15:54):
And I posted them home when they got full.
So my mom and dad kept in the loft this box of all my diaries from around the world.
And then when I managed to get in touch with them, because there were no phones, no way of, you know, every couple of months I kind of ring home and let them know I was alive.
And mom said, your dad's been offered a job in Africa.
(16:15):
So we're going.
So you'll need to come back early if you want to see us before we go.
Otherwise, we'll see you in Africa.
So I came back a little bit early, saw mom and dad for a few days before they jetted off to live in Kenya.
And dug out all my diaries and went through them and thought I can make articles out of these.
And so that was what I did.
(16:37):
So again, it was early 90s.
So to be to have articles about huge amounts of countries in the world with various different I could put different slants and themes on it in terms of, you know, value for money or adventure or whatever.
And I wrote up many different articles depending on who I was submitting them to.
And I became the travel writer for the local paper.
While I was working in a clothes shop to make money trying to get work as a writer, I was literally working.
(17:03):
I was managing a clothes store, became their travel writer.
But they wouldn't offer me a trainee junior reporters place because I didn't have a postgrad in journalism.
They did me the biggest favor.
They turned me down.
So I applied to one in London, literally packed up everything I owned onto the backseat of my mom's old car.
(17:25):
And I drove to London.
I slept on someone's floor until I found somewhere to live, went to college, worked for free until I could find somewhere to actually find paid work.
And then that was how I became a journalist.
What a story.
Oh, my word.
That's amazing.
That's the thing, though, right?
The success you've had.
It's the journey there isn't easy, is it?
(17:47):
Like if it is, we don't appreciate.
Well, I often joke that because it's true that I fell into television and I fell into television because I misheard the word.
I fell into television because I misheard a job advert and it ended up being for a weather presenter and I didn't realize.
So then I thought I'll write an article about what it's like to audition to be a weather presenter.
Hang on a minute.
Rewind rewind.
You fell into being a weather presenter.
(18:10):
Yeah, I didn't train as because there's a there's a big kind of thing, isn't there?
If you're like a meteorologist or you're aware, I feel like there's a bit.
I was trained afterwards.
Right.
OK.
But in terms of getting into television, so when I when I was doing work experience on the local paper in the Midlands, the editor at the time.
Now bear in mind, my mum's cut and permed my hair.
(18:31):
My mum trained on old ladies.
The only haircut she could do was old lady perms.
So that's me in the 80s.
I'd chronic acne and I wore jumpers that my granny knitted me.
So I hope that builds up a very accurate picture of what I look like in the 80s.
And I was doing work experience on the local paper and the editor said to me, so have you enjoyed your time?
Would you like to still pursue a career in journalism?
(18:52):
And I said, yep, one day I'm going to be the youngest editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.
And he looked at me with my perm and my acne and my jumper and went, good luck.
So when I moved down to London, my goal was I want to work for a big glossy magazine.
I was a bit like what's at Devil Wears Prada?
I was a bit like Anne Hathaway.
I'm going to work for a magazine.
It's going to be amazing.
(19:13):
And I ended up working for a features agency in Kentish town, which is not quite working for a glossy magazine.
So I was applying for other jobs.
So when this job came up, I know I can write and I can and I'm smart and I can pick things up.
So this said weather.
And I thought I did a level geography.
I'm sure I can pick up about weather.
I'll wing it.
Basically, I'll wing it.
(19:35):
And then when I got the phone call talking me through what was expected on the day and I realized it was an audition, I thought, well, this is hilarious.
So I turned up.
Did you have your curly perm and you needed to jump?
I didn't.
I think I kind of bloomed a little bit by then.
I looked a little bit better than I did.
The skin had cleared up and I had straight hair.
I had stopped perming it.
But, you know, whilst it's funny to say, oh, yeah, I miss for the job advert and then I got the job.
(20:01):
Actually, why I got the job was because I turned up and I was 100 percent authentic and myself, which is very difficult to do when you want something really badly.
So I failed on every audition I've gone for since then and work in television when I really, really wanted the job.
You give off a certain smell of desperation if I really want this.
All the jobs I've ever got is because I felt very calm about it and I've enjoyed the process.
(20:25):
So there was that.
I enjoyed the process.
I was a trained journalist so I could do shorthand.
So in the interview, we were given a weather briefing.
I wrote it all down in shorthand, translated it back, but only taking the key points.
I just thought they've over briefed us.
We don't need to know this information.
This is a story that I'm telling.
It's got a beginning, a middle and an end.
(20:46):
How do I make it interesting?
Actually, that's journalism.
And then in terms of talking to camera, I thought, just imagine I'm talking to someone I really like.
And I look straight down the camera.
I found it really easy to talk with talk back in my ear.
I visualized people really.
I didn't know that was a skill at the time.
So I ended up working for the Weather Channel.
So I trained with Carol Kirkwood, Louise Lear, a lovely lady called Tanya James.
(21:11):
We all flew out to Atlanta.
And we were trained for a good two months before we were allowed anywhere near a studio in terms of broadcasting.
We were trained by the Met Office so that we were meteorologically sound.
We were not meteorologists, but we understood what we were talking about.
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(21:33):
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(21:57):
So you've traveled a lot professionally.
Yes.
And you've traveled personally and talking about personal things.
You have had some turbulent times.
I've experienced turbulence. That is very true. I have. Yes.
And you've come out the other side.
Yes.
And I think we've got kind of we've got there's a lot similar actually between us, I think, from being grafters and loving travel, but also divorce and relationships.
(22:26):
I kind of if you're happy to talk about like I do want to, you know, touch on that because I've had quite a bit of stick of the fact that oh, well, you know, you're a 40 year old woman.
You know, why would a 40 year old woman leave a marriage?
There must be, you know, someone's having an affair.
And it's kind of like, well, actually, no, like, I'm just not happy.
I'm not going on the destination where I want to be heading to right now in this relationship.
(22:51):
And I want to change my route, my path.
And I kind of felt like that's that's enough. That's OK for that to be enough.
How you know, how how's your journey being?
Well, firstly, to pick up on what you're saying, it absolutely is enough for either side, whether male or female and whatever kind of relationship that you're in.
If you feel like it's heading towards a destination that is not where you you thought was where you were headed to, you are fully entitled to reroute.
(23:18):
Now, obviously, of course, that comes with, you know, conversations beforehand that can you reroute together?
But if it gets to a point where it's becoming very, very apparent that the destinations that you're both heading to are so polar opposite that you will never arrive together.
The best thing to do is disembark. Yeah.
Utilize that parachute. All your travel metaphors. Yeah.
(23:40):
And it is and it's actually fair on both parties because whilst people tend to think that it is easier for the one who makes the decision to leave what it what many people misunderstand is that very often with.
And I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with yours because I don't know what your your story is, but it is very often the case for the person who leaves is actually making the stronger decision for both of you because they very often is one party
(24:09):
who and this can be on either side, male or female, is too weak to make the decision to leave.
So they will behave in a way that forces a hand.
So therefore they can always say, well, I wasn't the one that made that decision.
And this has come to me through experience because I have lived this and I was the one who chose to leave.
But I know that I've been married every night three times.
(24:32):
So I'm now in my third marriage, touchwood, all going very well.
I got to be honest. Yeah.
I hold my hands up to you because I've done it once. Yeah.
And I'm not sure I would do it again.
I and I think that's wise.
I am I you know, there's been a lot of a lot of growth and a lot of learning through my experiences and I don't I don't regret any of them.
(24:56):
I would have maybe made some different choices, but I appreciate the learnings that I've had through all of them.
I didn't rush into anything second or third time around.
Sorry. How long was your first marriage?
So we were together for 17 years.
I met him at school.
He was my first boyfriend.
I was so happy after all the traveling that someone actually asked me out.
So I kind of I kind of did the equivalent of hanging on to his ankles and he wouldn't let you.
(25:21):
He couldn't kick me off.
So I hung on way too long than I should have done.
And I can see now with with hindsight and a bit of fondness that God love you girl.
You didn't know any better.
And actually with hindsight, we should never have got married.
I can see that now really, really clearly.
However, I was a long time.
It is. But we were no we were together that long.
(25:42):
We were only married for five.
But I believe in serendipity.
We were together so my son could be born.
He's an amazing young man.
I have a 22 or 23 year old young man as a son.
He's he was meant to be in this world.
So that's why that relationship happened.
My second marriage again, the way I see it was my amazing daughter was meant to be born.
(26:05):
So whilst it didn't work between me and her dad.
And again, I I kind of repeated the same mistakes that I did the first time around.
And I and I do believe that the universe keeps giving you the lessons and the learnings until you have the lesson.
I made the same mistake.
Tried to make something work that clearly wasn't ever going to work.
But it wasn't a mistake because my daughter was meant to be born.
(26:28):
And I have amazing children.
That's why I had that.
I feel very much the same as that.
I feel like I was in a marriage.
I've got two beautiful children and I wouldn't want anyone else to be their dad because if anyone else is their dad, they wouldn't be who they are.
And just touching back on what you said about, you know, my my separation, my divorce.
I did take the decision not to discuss like why out of wanting to protect the children.
(26:54):
And it is very difficult.
And I'm sure you'll appreciate this, too, that when you are in the public eye, you do put an element of yourself out there.
You want to be authentic, but also you are allowed a private life, too.
And sometimes it's really difficult because people do try and dig for things and you want to protect your family and all the things.
How do you how do you cope with that?
(27:16):
So, like I said, I've been I've been married and married and divorced twice each time.
I took the full hit in terms of publicly for the ending of both of those relationships.
I took it in terms of people making things up about me, people deciding their own truths.
So, you know, anyone listening to this or watching this, imagine what it feels like when you're standing at the school gate and you can see people whispering about you.
(27:44):
And you know they're making up any old nonsense that fits their narrative.
And no one is actually asking you the truth about it because for them, one, it's way more exciting to gossip about someone else.
Two, it is way more distracting to gossip about something else that's happened to someone else because no one's looking at your life terribly hard or terribly closely.
(28:07):
So it's absolutely suiting your narrative to point the finger somewhere else.
And thirdly, I just feel that, yes, there have been lies, untruths, half truths, exaggerated truths, all of it told about me in my personal life and about my relationship.
And I haven't addressed any of it because the people who know know.
And if anyone gets to re-quote Christian Bale, there's a brilliant quote that he did many years ago, which I totally absorbed and used in my own life.
(28:36):
Whereas if you have a problem with me, text me or ring me. And if you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me because you're basing your problem with me on something that you haven't heard from me.
You've heard it about me. And if you have heard something about me, think about where you heard it from. What was the agenda?
You know, I discovered many years after my second marriage ended and I found this out in my local nail shop, which is hilarious.
(29:01):
I found out that my ex-husband had been spreading not just half truths, but total lies about me and about our relationship and our marriage.
And clearly I wasn't coming out very well in these lies. And it was because one day the really nice lady in the nail shop said, you seem so nice and you've been coming here for years and I feel really bad that I've been hearing all these women talking about you behind your back.
(29:24):
And yet you sit here and you're nothing but lovely. And I think you need to know what people are saying about you and what your husband's been saying about you.
And I really appreciated her telling me the truth. So I told her the truth and said, next time someone starts gossiping about me, I'm leaving you to be my mouthpiece.
Just tell them the truth. Let them know what happened and let it filter out. I don't need to get involved with any of that stuff.
(29:50):
In terms of how do I cope with it as a family, there were truths also that I hid from my children in terms of what my relationship and the difficulties and challenges that I faced behind closed doors, that the public are still not aware of,
but that I also protected my children from until my daughter was in her early teens. And then it became really clear to her that I needed to explain some truths.
(30:17):
And I told her and she said to me, she's 17 now, Amy, and I can remember she was about 13 at the time.
And she said to me, oh, my goodness, mummy, all this time you've been stretched over the top of us like Mrs. Incredible.
And the bullets have been bouncing off your back and we've been playing underneath, not even knowing that this is happening.
(30:39):
And I cried because that's what being a mum is. And you give them enough information that they can handle at the time.
And then you gradually start to feed them more and more when they're emotionally mature enough and robust enough to handle truths that they're hearing about people that they love.
You know, and that that means people within their family, their relations, even their own dads, behaviors that I've had to deal with, this kind of thing.
(31:08):
But you kind of filter it. It's like a rope that you're feeding out as you're giving them freedom, you're feeding out this rope.
And so for me, it was a matter of to the outside world. I do what you like. I know who I am and I know what I am.
And I hold my head up high with every decision that I've ever made. And you can have your judgments, but they don't impact me.
(31:31):
And in terms of my children, as long as it goes back to my family's roots and we were traveling, am I all right? Are you all right? Are we all right? We're all good.
So that's all I've ever tried to do. I think there's that saying that those that matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter.
100 percent, 100 percent. And, you know, divorce is a very, very challenging situation for all involved.
(31:53):
However, it is also extremely challenging to live in a house that is dysfunctional. And I think you can cause more long term damage by staying together in a pretense.
Because children pick up on undercurrents that even if you're smiling and saying everything's fine, darling, what they pick up on is that relationships are a lie,
(32:17):
that mom and dad are saying everything's fine, but they're clearly not fine. So then they'll internalize that and then they'll think, is it something that I'm doing?
You know, there are there are so many more worries that you're putting on your children when you're trying to pretend that everything is fine.
So actually, I think it's healthier to show, do you know what? This isn't working for us, but we love you to the ends of the earth.
(32:38):
And we are a team when it comes to you, but we're not working anymore.
So we need to be a part so that we can both be brilliant parents separately to you because we love you so much.
I think that's absolutely spot on and an inspiration to actually anyone that's listening that is kind of in that situation and not sure on like what what to do or what's what's right.
And also don't listen to anyone else who had if you haven't been where I am, don't send me directions.
(33:03):
Don't try and direct me into what you think I should do, because you've never been where I am.
And also, if anyone is in a challenging situation now, don't ask directions from someone who isn't where you are, because they don't get it and they don't understand.
You know, I remember many years ago before I had I've written four books now.
I'm in the process of writing my fifth and I know right. I love writing.
(33:27):
You know, you've got this girl is on fire. Yeah.
All the things going on. But I remember I was before I wrote this girl's on fire and obviously that led to a whole other thing.
I remember I was listening to a lot of motivational podcasts and I'm very into and always have been personal growth, motivation and all of that.
So this is like the listening to the Tony Robbins, the Ed Milets, all of that.
(33:51):
And I've I've always been that way. It's always kind of been part of my DNA.
But I remember I was listening to this podcast and it was Ed Milet that said it and I was running on the running machine at work and I was it was shortly before I had a breakdown in 2019 because I pushed myself so hard, so hard, so hard.
Was that around the essay? It was it was after I had done essay.
(34:12):
Basically, a load of as I call it, a load of bats had flown out the box and I couldn't get back in again because I relived a lot of trauma through being on essay.
So I was pushing myself harder and harder and I was listening to this podcast and Ed Milet said he was talking about asking for advice from people and he said, Why would I ask for advice from someone who's been divorced time and time again?
(34:35):
If I want marriage advice, I want someone who has stuck together through thick and thin and been together forever.
I'm not taking advice from someone like that.
And I remember I almost choked on the running machine and I had to switch the machine off because I was going to cry because I couldn't believe this person who I'd so admired and respected could be so narrow minded when it came to this particular thing.
(34:59):
Because actually, unless you have walked a mile in someone's shoes, you do not understand what they're going through.
So absolutely. Yes, you can take counsel from whoever you like, but if you discount someone who has been through an experience, you're not getting fully rounded counsel.
So therefore, and I went off him. I couldn't I couldn't listen to any more of his podcast after that.
(35:20):
So for me now, when I get invited to do anything like you've just asked me these questions, I'll happily answer them because it's not that anyone needs to listen to what I've got to say.
But at least they've heard a different perspective from someone who has experienced what they're going through rather than just someone giving an opinion on it.
Amazing. Amazing. So when you did SAS, amazing show to do. Have you done it?
(35:43):
No, but they've sort of asked, you know, I've had chats about it. Okay.
And I would be intrigued because I'd love to test myself and see how far I could be pushed.
But what was it that pushed you over the edge?
Well, so the reason I did it was because I wanted to see what I was capable of, because I've always known I'm a very resilient woman.
I might be quiet. I might be a little bit introverted, a little bit nerdy and all the things.
(36:05):
But I'm also quite robust.
But I wanted to see how far I could push myself when someone else was was setting those boundaries rather than me setting my own boundaries.
And I think we're quite similar in that we will we'll push ourselves to see what our capabilities are.
And we're curious about what those boundaries are. So at the time when I did it, I was the oldest woman to take part at that's now been beaten.
(36:30):
And I was also the first series of women were allowed to take part.
So they were they were feeling even even more angry, I suppose, that they were normally about this whole idea of celebrities taking part in something that they felt very passionate about civilians taking part in.
It was the first celebrity series. So they were extra hard on us.
So for me, the bit that pushed me over the edge was we were taken to Chile.
(36:55):
We're taken up high into the Andes mountains. So there's this altitude, the snow is cold, there's all the things.
It's quite quite already quite brutal terrain.
It wasn't the physicality of it.
It was the moment where we first met the S.A.S. commanders, if you like the the DSAs.
And we were we were introduced to them by being kidnapped, if you like, where we were taken to a place we had black hoods put over our heads.
(37:23):
We had microphones put on. So then we knew, right. OK, this is starting. This is real.
We were put on a boat across the lake. You didn't know when it was going to end.
Then we were really roughly taken off this boat. And it's like you've been taken hostage.
It's really, really scary. Even though you think it's a TV show, it's a TV show. It's not real.
It feels very real. And for me, the moment was when the bag was ripped off my head and there's a man standing staring at me and he stared into my soul.
(37:51):
And it was as if he hated everything he saw.
And in that moment, all I could see was someone else's face, someone else looking at who in my life has looked at me in that way,
someone else looking at me like they hate every part about me and want to destroy me.
And it was like a flashback and everything I had tried to push down to hide, to suppress and think I'm not there anymore.
(38:18):
I don't need to look at that anymore. I'm out of that now. It was like bats coming out of a box.
And this is like referring back to a relationship. Yes.
And I couldn't get them back in again. It was like feelings. It just exploded out of me.
What's interesting when I look on the TV show now, I have no expression on my face. You would not know that's what's happening.
(38:40):
Then we as part of the program, there's there's a fighting part to it where you have to be together.
Yeah, I'm not so sure on that.
I fell apart during it and the DS is saw that and they hold me in for interrogation and basically really intensely interrogated me over my reaction to what had happened.
(39:05):
Now, what I ended up talking to them about, I made it really clear this is not for public viewing.
So they've been very good and they never showed it. But I explained what my situation had been.
And to be fair to all of them, they're actually very kind and very supportive.
And my experience after that, whilst it was brutal and it was tough and all the things and I ended up getting hypothermia and I had to leave the show.
(39:29):
Actually, they're incredibly kind and supportive to me whilst shouting, whilst screaming, whilst doing all the things.
I could see their reasoning behind it.
And it was that Middleton and Ollie Oliton said to me, look, every time we scream at you, we want you to understand that we're pushing you because we want to see what you're made of.
(39:50):
But because we understand your situation, every time we shout at you, all that fear, all that rage, all that hurt and pain that you weren't able to show, we want to see it in you.
Use it. Get angry. Push through. Shout. Squirt. Shirt. Swear. Scream. All the things. We want to see it.
The rage and pain coming out of you when we're putting you through our paces.
(40:14):
So that's all fine, kind of in theory. But then I literally got on the plane home from Chile and this was going to sound like a weird kind of addition to it all.
But when I rang home to say, I'm out, I've survived this SAS thing, my dog died while I was on the phone home.
Now, my dog had been my right hand boy. He was a big dog. He had seen me through my divorce when my kids went off, you know, and I was on my own every other weekend.
(40:41):
It was my, my dog was my, he was my guy because I stayed single for a long time. I did not want any money.
My dog died while I was on the phone. So I got home and there's no clattering of paws.
There's no nose being, you know, thrust into my hand to welcome home. There's no tail thudding against your legs.
There's no one sleeping outside my bedroom door, you know, protecting me. My dog had gone.
(41:07):
And I got back and I was so filled with, with grief, with pain, with all these things I tried to push down.
I couldn't get them back in the box. So I did what so many of us do and I tried to work harder and harder and harder and not think about it.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it until India. And I was exercising really hard. I was training harder.
I was I looked like an athlete. I looked amazing, but it was purely distraction, distraction, distraction until in the end I fell down.
(41:35):
And in a nutshell, I just fell down and couldn't, couldn't keep pushing it away. I had to go and address it.
So it was a good thing. I fell down and it was a literal thing as in a friend stood in front of me and said,
whatever you think you are trying to deal with, you're not dealing with it very well. You need to just stop.
It's like you're worrying. And so I went and got therapy and sorted it all out and then realized actually therapy is great because it helps me understand everything I've been through.
(42:05):
But to use your travel analogy and now understand what's got me to this place. But now I need to know what I how I move on.
And I realized that was coaching and therapy gets you to understand your past.
Coaching gets you to really understand how you can shape your future.
And that was when I started getting really interested in coaching through my own personal experience.
(42:27):
I could literally listen. I know my life is very varied.
It's fascinating. It really is. And you are now married again.
Yep.
You are. We've lovely Nick.
And you have this, what can I say, blended family. You've both got children and I'm guessing you travel together.
(42:48):
You've traveled to.
Yeah, we're not doing that again.
Why?
Because there's four of them and it's a lot and it costs so much money.
No, no, I'm joking.
Yeah, we do have a blended family and it comes with its own rewards and it comes with its own challenges because you you when you bring together two different family dynamics and hope that, you know, the word blended is is a powerful one.
(43:17):
But it's also a kind of a misnomer in that you just think, oh, well, it'll just all mix together and it'll all be fine.
But there are some parts of blended families that are like oil and water.
They will never mix. It will never blend together to make what you think it's going to make.
It will be a whole different set of ingredients.
But actually what it will make is something that is of its own.
And I think the biggest mistake we tend to make when we when we try and put two families together and think, oh, we're just going to create this amazing family unit.
(43:45):
And it's going to be like a whole different Disney thing.
That's actually not what happens.
What you create is a whole different entity.
And even if it is like water and oil and doesn't always mix, it can still be beautiful in its own way.
But the biggest part of this is accepting what you have and loving the children and the situation that you have, not the children in the situation that you wish you had or that you foresaw or that you're trying to create.
(44:12):
You have to be really grounded in reality and then going, right, OK, this is where we are.
This is a situation. There's so many different energies coming together here.
I can't force a creation that I think is going to be the solution for.
I have to now let it actually become what it's going to become.
And once you get to that point and it takes a while because the children are adapting, no matter what ages they are.
(44:35):
My children are now the four children are aged between 17 and nearly 23.
But they were aged six to 14 at the time.
There's all sorts of different things happening right now.
It's a challenging time for everybody.
But, yeah, we've now got to a place where, you know, you won't go on holiday together again because, oh, my gosh, no.
(45:02):
But now everyone wants to bring boyfriends and girlfriends and this and that.
And it becomes like a traveling circus when we go away.
So do you have a favorite family destination that you like to go to?
France. Yeah.
I know you'd think I'd say somewhere much more further afield and what have you.
But the best holiday we ever had was we hired a house in the south of France and we drove down and we all fitted in the car with a roof rack.
(45:32):
We had a Land Rover at the time. Love those cars.
They're just they're like they're just robust machines.
They're my favorite.
We fitted everybody in and we stayed there for three weeks and just loved it.
My parents came to visit us. People came to visit us.
We were in one space.
That's been my favorite because I I just love kind of cooking for everyone.
(45:55):
Everyone's sitting around and disappearing and going off doing their own things.
We also invented we didn't invent it.
Actually, Jane Moore from Lou Swimmin told me about this game, but we now play every holiday and it's called Real Life Cluedo.
Oh my gosh. Top tip for travelers everywhere.
Love it. We love a top travel tip.
So basically it's Real Life Cluedo.
(46:16):
And what you do is and we the kids still talk about this game to this day.
We played it on every holiday that we go on.
So basically what you do is all of you will write down you everyone's names ripped up folded bits of paper in one bowl.
Then you write down implements.
So that's your merit.
So it's like Cluedo. So it could be a coffee cup, a bag, whatever.
(46:39):
Put in a bowl all folded up.
And then the other one, obviously, it's a place.
So it's somewhere around the villa or wherever you are.
And then you have to pick it out and then you have to murder someone by you get that person in that room and you have to hand them that thing and they have to take it off.
I love it.
You can't throw it at them and they have to catch you.
(47:00):
You literally just hand. So if it's like you and me, a coffee cup in the bathroom in this place and I would call you upstairs or whatever.
And we'd be chatting away and I go, oh, can you just take this a minute?
Just for then I go.
Then I scream at the top of my voice.
You're dead.
And then everyone hears it comes running.
How did it happen in the coffee cup in the bathroom?
I got murdered by my son by a floating pizza slice on the roof of the villa.
(47:27):
Just say that again.
I know, right?
Basically, his murder weapon, I said the roof.
It wasn't the roof. Sorry.
It was a bench underneath the roof.
It was this massive inflatable, you know, like you have.
It was a pizza slice.
It was the size of me.
It was like over six feet long.
And he had to murder me with a pizza slice over by this low roof by the villa.
And he called me over and he went.
(47:49):
He was so smart.
My son, Finley, and he said, Mom, I need to murder Nick with this pizza slice, but my place to do it is he needs to get it from this roof up this shallow roof up here.
But I can't quite get it.
So can you can you just stand on the bench and can you just do it for me?
The boy is six foot tall.
Why am I taking the pizza slice?
(48:11):
I'm so stupid because I'm his mother.
I went, oh, yeah, of course.
So I stood on this bench.
He handed me the pizza slice and then shouted, you're dead.
And that was it.
That's how I got murdered by a pizza slice.
But it's a top game.
It's brilliant.
And it's been absolutely amazing having you on the podcast.
Thank you so much.
A real pleasure to talk to you.
But the question everyone really wants to know is, are you a member of the mile high club?
(48:34):
Oh, gosh, no, but it has crossed my mind.
Tell me more.
It has crossed.
I think it's crossed everybody's mind at some point, especially if you're if it's I mean, clearly couldn't do you flying out with all the kids because I'd just just be really weird.
But, you know, if you're flying out somewhere lovely and you've had a few glasses of bubbles and you kind of look at each other and you think, could we?
(48:55):
My answer is always no, because it just too small to uncomfortable.
Everyone would know.
I'd feel terrible.
Doesn't it depend how many people on the flight?
How empty the flight?
Oh, no, someone would know.
And I couldn't handle that at all.
So no, I've never even been up to any shenanigans under a blanket.
Never mind.
Whatever under a blanket.
(49:16):
Oh, not on a plane.
No, no, no, clearly my own blanket maybe at home, but not like an airplane blanket.
No, I just couldn't.
Well, you know, it doesn't matter that you're not a member of the mile high club.
You are now officially a member of the mile fly club.
So thank you so much.
Which is so much better.
And actually, I would happily do this again.
Thank you so much.
(49:38):
Thank you.
And enjoy your travels.
Thank you.
And thanks to all the listeners out there.
We love having you all as members of the mile fly club.
So stay tuned for more fantastic episodes coming soon.
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