That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Clare Balding

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Broadcaster and author, Clare Balding, joins Gaby for a natter about sport, her new book and all things joy! Clare has always written, mainly sports columns - but also children's books too. But her new adult novel - 'Pastures New' - was inspired by a conversation with Jilly Cooper! She tells Gaby about how the book came about, her love of writing and reading and how she was told that if she hadn't written a book by the time she was 30, it wasn't going to happen. (well, it did) They also chat about the joy of watching sport with mates and celebrate the increased popularity of women's football. Remember you can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel - where you'll also find out extra nugget of joy (our Show N Tell episodes) every Friday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Claire Moulding, so lovely to see you. Whenever I see you, I feel like we have to go, and we did, and we did. We did outside, yes. So we've done all of that, caught up. Agreed and mainly agreed on people and things. On things? And attitudes and yes.

And behaviour. Manners. Manners. We both feel very strongly about good manners and being a good team player. Being a good team player. Actually, but that's you through and through. And you were like that at school. When I got picked for the team, I tried to...

You were like that at school. Yes. How do you know that? Why do you know that? Do you remember when the head teacher got sent a gorilla-gram? Yes. Do you remember when somebody did the shape of a willy on the grass in the quadrangle? Yes.

Who was that? You? No, it wasn't me. I wasn't there at school. Just the things I know. And apparently, you were there at school. the most wonderful head girl. Oh my gosh.

Well, that's very kind. Thank you. Did you enjoy school? Because you were sporty then, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sport saved me. I got into quite a lot of trouble early on at school. And sport saved me because I suddenly was in a team where this wasn't a popularity contest or a fashion show.

It was what can you do and how can you help other people in the team? How are you the kind of link that puts together, you know, someone over there and someone over there? How do you make them better? So I was quite good at that. And is that how you were, you said, that's funny though, because the first thing you said was if I was picked for the team. Yeah, so to begin with, I was very young for my year. So I wasn't picked for the teams early on.

And then I played in the year below. And so I was constantly reserved for my year. And eventually I made the first team for lacrosse. And then pretty promptly did my knee in and had to have my cartilage removed. It was off games for quite a long time. which is very sad. But maybe that's where my love of watching other people play sport came through because I still thought I can be a good cheerleader here.

I can be a really, I can encourage other people without necessarily being on the pitch. Oh, that's interesting. Maybe. But even as a child with your parents and everything and what they were doing in the horse world and sport and everything, did you, I get that you enjoy life and you enjoy watching things and other people doing things as well as doing them yourself? I think also if you've worked with animals, and particularly horses and dogs,

but you have to, it's about your relationship with them. So making them feel they want to do things for you rather than making them do things. Do you see what I'm saying? It's about encouraging the best out of them. And therefore understanding that that in a sporting context is sort of how it works most of the time. If you're, you know, it's getting the best out of other people as well as performing yourself.

But yeah, I love watching and feeling sports. So for me, it's not just about seeing it and hearing it. It's about feeling it. And when you feel it, I think you can translate that to a listening or a watching public and make them care about it. Well, that's what actually, weirdly, that's what I was going to say, that there's sports that I don't necessarily care about. When you're there, I think, oh, and you make me interested.

And you also makes it very grand. But I feel like you're teaching me about it without patronising. Well, I'm fascinated by it. So you take a sport like swimming where, to be honest, you don't see their faces. So you can't, unlike tennis, which is like the perfect television sport, because you see and feel everything. Oh, it's so raw. We're just talking about Wimbledon, which you've just finished.

Wow. So for better or worse, you feel what they're feeling. because you see it and you see every bit of it and there's nowhere to hide and there are no teammates. Swimming is sort of the opposite extreme because you can't see it at all until they get out of the pool

when you, you know, our most decorated Olympic swimmer who's also the most successful, technically the most successful British Olympian is a guy called Duncan Scott. You wouldn't know him if he walked in right now. I think he's one of our greatest ever sporting heroes and yet no one knows what Duncan Scott looks like.

Does he know you feel like that? I hope he does I don't know that he does I introduced him he was in the raw box on the middle Saturday of Wimbledon and I sort of gave him

an extra special bit at the air so all the swimmers were there and I can do all the swimmers and they hold that relay team but I gave Duncan extra pizzazz and I rewrote it to make sure he got that

because I just think he's the most undervalued and underrated you know sporting star that I've seen and I kind of want to elevate him he doesn't necessarily want that He's very low-key.

But I think he's amazing. So I talk about him a lot, but I make sure I know about their backstory a bit. If I can, I know the names of their family members who are there. You know, and sometimes you can do it through a family member, and I did the London Olympics with Chattler Close Dad, but because sometimes their parents or their sister or their, you know, or girlfriend, a boyfriend,

can more easily and eloquently talk about their success, It's very hard for someone to do that for themselves, I think. So give them the opportunity and then you can really connect to it. You really care. I mean, you do care. And lovely Alice, who I've met on a number of occasions, I get that she also is like you. You both, you give a lot.

I hope you feel how much that people give back to you because you're very, and you're going to hate this, but you're very loved. And you're going to get embarrassed, And you go, no, don't be ridiculous. Don't say that. Hide behind my head. But I hope you feel that.

Do you get that? Do you feel it back from the audience? I find it very easy to talk to people. So I love it. If somebody comes up and wants to talk about Wimbledon or they want to talk about the boat race or they want to talk about Gogglebox or crafts or the Olympics or the Paralympics,

I love that. So I find it very easy to just chat to people. And you get a sense that because everyone smiles at you. And what I quite enjoy is because Alice and I do Gogglebox together, the general reaction now is, oh, we love you on Gogglebox. And your wife's so funny, I said, yeah, she's much funnier than me.

Yeah, yeah, she is. I quite enjoy that. Alice is having to get used to being recognised because for years she's been on the radio, whether it's radio 4 or now Mellow Magic, but not a recognised face. So she now has to get a bit more used to that. And I have to say, you've got a smile at people,

be nice to people. But she is nice. She's lovely. She would have a much shorter, you know, attention span stroke patients than me. I would, you know, she would have had enough, you know, just like, I don't need to talk to people. I don't want to talk to people, whereas I'll talk to everybody. So when you were, when you started out as a journalist and doing sport and everything, did you foresee it as it's come round? No, not at all. Oh, you didn't?

No, because how. How can you when there's no one to see doing that? But some, oh, yes. So think about, there were literally about four or five women in sports broadcasting, and I mean in television and radio. I don't just mean one or the other. Isn't that awful, like you. Ellie Aldrode, who's a good friend of mine, was the only female voice on the radio doing sport,

the only one. How weird is that? And I've got used to all of you being there, but of course, we were around the same age. And so when we were kids, you're right. And when we were very young, absolutely not. So Helen Rollison was the first woman to present grandstand. Sue Barker came from Sky.

I was thinking of Sue. So Sky started whenever Sky started. And Sue, when she retired from tennis and was looking at going to a broadcasting career, they gave her kind of really intense training schedule. I did the same, but with BBC Radio. So I started as a sports trainee at BBC Radio in 1994. And Sue would...

Two weeks ago, then. It does feel... Yeah. And Sue would have started at BBC television around that time or just after maybe.

Right. And then Hazel Irvin, who would have been there a bit longer than me. But, you know, Gabby Logan and I

are absolute direct, you know, contemporaries. And we've, she worked at ITV first, but then... And she might have

worked at Sky before that, actually. Sky Sport changed a lot of things for giving more opportunity. In my World,

5 Live, changed a lot of things for giving opportunity because suddenly there was a sport and news network that was speech only so sports bulletins every half an hour but also sport being given a platform where if you were interested in it you could listen to more about it but isn't it i mean it's i suppose i'm now used to it because i've got uh young girls and they my my youngest daughter plays football i didn't think for a second anything of the fact that she was a girl but playing football. And thank God we live in a world. Well, not a world. So I'll take that back.

Thank God we live in a country now that women's football, everybody's out there getting excited. And somebody was saying to me that the bikes that you can hire are going to change if they, hopefully they get through to where hey, which I think is fantastic, that we live in a society where same-sex marriage happens, that all of these things, that people who who have lost limbs can walk through the streets and nobody bats an eyelid. And I sort of forget that it wasn't like that recently.

And that women's football was banned for 50 years by the FA. I mean that's amazing. And I say that while absolutely crediting the FA with the growth of it to now a situation where not only have we got a competitive England team, but we've got a Wales team

that qualified for the Euros. Scotland, I think, is growing in terms of its investment in women's football. that it's a career option for girls. Yes. And that's the difference. And so is cricket. And golf and tennis and those ones have been for a long time as professional sports.

But cricket has been a while for Rachel. Well, cricket, funnily enough, Rachel Hayho Flint, exactly, was the beginning of the women's world cup. The women's cricket world cup existed before the men's because she started it. But she would go and play and then write a column for about three different newspapers under three different names about women's cricket because that's the other thing unless a sport is talked about unless you've got

information about it you're not there is no conversation around it so women's sport I think was very much at the beck and call of editors

of whether they thought it was worth the space on the page social media changed that because everyone could become their own editor and they could put content out there so the lionesses

are a really good example of that, the way they embrace social media to tell their own story, the way they connect with fans and still do today and all the WSL teams. And then you get the investors come into it. So when the women's boat race came onto the Tideway

onto the Thames and I have presented it for a long time, but you know, that was 10 years ago. And that was driven by the sponsor. So Helena Morrissey, who was running Newton investment, said, yes, I will sponsor you, but only if it comes onto the tideway.

and you do it on the same day under the same conditions, same TV coverage. Sponsors make it happen. Barclays have done it with football. They're doing it with tennis. Those things really matter. Money talks. You know, and for example, Queens this year for the first time having a women's and a men's tournament, hugely helped by the sponsorship situation of being able to afford it.

It's important. Makes all the difference. Coverage, information, money. So when the coverage of sport seems to... to be better now a day's, that it's accessible for most people. And what do you mean by that? The coverage

on... Well, I was thinking of football particularly because people who can't afford to buy any of the streamers and it is expensive and the football clubs get paid a lot of money. But I feel like everything is a bit more, that sport is a bit more accessible. Is that mean, because I don't know

much about it? I think the cost of... I'm the other gabby. If you love, if you love sports, It's a very expensive thing to follow everything. So it's not more accessible. I would say it's fragmenting more and it's interesting to see what the big stream is. So whether Netflix, they've done the odd thing in boxing,

whether Apple get involved. Obviously with the Olympics, there's less of it on the BBC now because a deal with both Warner Brothers Discovery and the BBC. So the BBC doesn't get the chance to show more than two things live at any one time. And that limits people's access. If they want to watch, you know, the final of the tennis, which was Djokovic Al-Karraf, if that's not live on the BBC while it's happening,

they've got to go to discovery and they have to pay for that. See, I mean, maybe it's just because women's football feels more accessible. That feels more accessible. Maybe I was thinking of that and the Olympic, and then, sorry, Wimbledon on the BBC. Oh, gosh, yes.

And there are still listed, that have to be free to air. And I, you know, I love that we live in a society that believes that sport is a positive force. Oh, yes. You know, and that watching sport together is a shared experience that is not just about the outcome of that event. It's about everything we go through, you know.

But going to see it live is expensive, though. Oh, hugely. That's the shape. But that's why it matters to be in a group that can watch it together. And people do. And they, and I love that. You know, I want to watch, I want to watch with mates. We're watching something we all care about.

I want to watch it with friends. I want to cheer it on. For you as growing up with your parents and involved in horses and everything, was it inevitable then for you to end up doing what you do? I know everybody asks you that. No, not at all. Not at all. There isn't a single broadcaster in the family.

There's no one who's worked in journalism. There's no one who's written. No. And there was no absolutely no inevitability about it. And I think also no, there was, no, that I think what might have been inevitable was I stayed at home and rode horses for the rest of my life. And I wanted to go out and make my own life. So away from school and the willie on the grass and the gorilla gram, I will explain. I promise that I'll explain.

You then, obviously, we said that you were a journalist and you've been a broadcast for many, many years. But also then you started to write and the kids' books that you started to write. Oh, they're so lovely. Well, I said... It's a book. I mean, we're going to talk about your new one, Pastures New.

But the kids' books, how you started. Just lovely. Well, it's interesting. I read English at university. And at school my favourite teacher was our English teacher, Miss Healy, she was brilliant. And it was her first job straight out of Oxford. And she was really young, really bright, really different.

You wanted to write essays that she read and went, that's good. Oh, lovely. So I started writing, actually. Before even I got the job with Five Live, I was writing columns for newspapers in those days of the sporting life and then the racing post and sticking to what I knew, which was racing, horse racing. Then I got a column on the observer.

I think I worked for the observer first. And then I worked for the evening standard. So I was always writing and filing copy. And I believe in the skill of writing is very good for your broadcasting as well. It's good for your vocabulary. It's good for finding a way to express yourself. Absolutely, absolutely.

Fluently too. And it makes you think about how are you going to describe this? So for radio, it's really good training because you're having to describe something in print and what's you picking up and what are you zooming in on? And I think that's helped me hugely with doing ramblings, actually. What am I, how am I going to describe this landscape?

And it's quite difficult to do it large scale. So I zoom in on one particular element. It might be a pebble on the beach. It might be a, you know, a petal or a leaf on a tree and then zoom out. But that's why you bring it to life. That's why you bring it to life for us. Hopefully. But I always wanted to write.

And then you kind of get yourself into a state where, because I read English, you're thinking, gee if I can't write like Jane Austen or Henry James what's the point did you really think like that? Panicked yeah and thought I can't write a book I remember I remember meeting a quite a well-known literary agent years and years and years ago and he said well if you haven't written a book by the time you're 30 you never will get 30 hadn't written a book and then I had um

What a crazy thing to say well I could see his point because loads of people must say you know I want to write a book yeah yeah sure and you know the classic everyone goes I've got a book in me well write it because actually the skill and the discipline of writing is not about having one idea. Having an idea is easy. Lots of people have good ideas. Lots of people can imagine conversations. Can you sit and write a 70 to 80,000-word book?

Well, my word, that's going to take you a lot of hours. And there are days when you really don't feel like it when you're going to have to just knuckle down to it. So I eventually, the first book I ever wrote was called My Animals and Other Family, which was a memoir about my child. And that came out in, well, It came out, I was very lucky on the timing, it came out in 2012 in September,

the day after the Paralympics finished. So literally the day after, or the week after London 2012, ended. And I remember going straight from the victory parade to the book launch party. Oh, my. So, I mean, timing-wise, it was perfect.

What a year, though, as well. And that book, which ended, you know, which ends when I go to university or when I'm leaving university, I think. So it doesn't even get to my, a working life. But I mentally, I broke it into short stories around animals. So every chapter has a different animal as it's heading.

I've read it. I know. I could deal with that because it was bite-sized pieces. A big book. So even the children's books, you know, they're novels. But at least I could think of them as manageable because they're shorter. Pastures new is a whole new challenge. That's a big, proper bookbook.

And actually originally, I'd written, it took me, gosh, I was a year over when I was meant to deliver. So it took me two years to write. And I was at 100,000 words and then cut down, actually. You got to 100,000? Yeah, and then cut it back. Because I knew there was a lot of stuff that didn't need to be in there. So I hope it's a better read because it has been...

It's a great read. I rewrote quite forensically in terms of, right, do I need that? Have I done too much there? Have I over-egged that pudding? Okay, take it out. Come back. So you're quite critical on yourself? Oh, very.

Oh, very. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A mutual friend of ours, when I was writing my mutual friend said, you have to write a certain, if you give yourself a thousand words a day or something. Yeah. And I just, that, that helped. But I imagine you doing much more. I imagine you sitting down. If I have a good day, if I'm focused, if I have a really good day, I can absolutely get it up to three, four thousand. Wow. But then you, the trouble is you then think, oh, I can do four thousand words in a day. and then you've left yourself 10 days to do 40,000 words,

and that's not clever. Yes. Because you can't do 4,000 words every day. You're much better off doing 1,000 words a day. But you're, so this book, so let's talk about it. It is full of all the things that we know you for. So I want to use, gosh, it's an overused word, and it's a very old-fashioned word, so please take this in the right way.

It's really charming. Oh, thank you. And I like that one, so I hope you don't. Oh, God, I do. It's a really charming book. Well, I wanted to create characters that people like. Yes, they're really likable. That's what I mean about charming.

But don't you find you read a lot of books these days? And I read a lot. I read a lot of books where I don't like anyone in it. But there's also, it's full of nasty stuff. And damaged, and I'm really, what I really didn't want was an unreliable female lead. I didn't want somebody who was, had an issue that would affect their behaviour because I've read a lot of that

and I'm just thinking don't give me an unreliable witness please I need someone whose truth is true and that I can believe in and that might be vulnerable and might be confused and might have avoided responsibility their whole life fine those are things I can handle but I don't want her I don't want her to have a really serious problem that is the root of her undoing

I don't want that. But that's why it's so charming. Oh, good. It's a really, really lovely book. For you, though, is this the book then that you wanted to write if you hadn't written a book by that literary agent? Yeah. No, because I think then I was so young I would have written a different story

and a different and had a... But there are a lot... Yeah, there's a strength in it that I think I always wanted to put in my heroin, for sure. And there's a really lovely tension between her and her mother, which I think is very true of a lot of people. And I don't know what your relationship with your mum is like, but that, you know, when they're, and I've seen it in other people's mothers, and they constantly treat you like, you're 15, and you're like, come on, I'm 54.

Like, yes, I am wearing this to go out. Has your, so your family, have they all written? No. Have they read? No one's read it. Alice has read it. And my friend Sue, whose farm, it was based on in terms of geography, and she's in Montmouthshire, and I needed to check the things I was saying.

And her friends, who are sheep farmers, were really helpful to me. And I needed them to read those bits to make sure I hadn't made massive factual errors. Aren't you thorough? I suppose, but that you've explained now why we care so much about the people in sports, that even the sports that, like I said, that I'm not interested in it, that I care about the people, that you've done exactly that with this book because you're so thorough on the tiny, tiny place. Are you like that in life with everything, or is it just work?

Are you like that with Alice at home? No, she would say no. If I paid attention to the tiny details, I wouldn't have assembled so much clutter. No, I think I am, when I'm in, I'm all in. So like if I, so for example, during any major event, it's almost impossible to have a conversation with me about anything else. So during Wimbledon, I'm all in on Wimbledon. During the Olympics, I'm all in on the Olympics.

So with the book, though. But with the book, I had to therefore fit it into days when I could be all in. Right. And when I was down in Wales and doing the research for it and in Montmouthshire and the surrounding area, you know, I'm walking up to the scurid because I needed to do that walk to then put the walk into the book. And thinking while I'm there, what are the bits of the elements of this I want to describe and how do I make it feel like we're really there? Yeah, I was, and having conversations with locals and going into pubs and, you know,

just seeing that, feeling that community, that sense of everyone wanting to help each other. And I really love that and bringing that alive. So yeah, I did, I put a lot of time and love into it and I hope that has paid off. So for Pastures New, for people who haven't picked up a copy yet, give us the premise. So give us the blurb that you'd have on the back of the book. Okay, so the heroine Alex is left. She's living and working in London and she works for an online magazine. And you will know this feeling, and this is very true, especially when I was writing as a journalist.

When you're made to start writing things that you don't like and you're having to be a bit of a bitch, you start to really fall out of love. your job and she's got this conflict at that time with her editor who's making her do stuff she doesn't feel comfortable with. Anyway, out of the blue, she suddenly gets left in a will a farm in Monmouthshire and she didn't know anything about farming and she doesn't want and has never wanted any responsibility over animals, people. She doesn't even have a house plant because, you know, it would die. So it's about the mystery of who's left it to her and why and what's going to do with it? And as we know, farming is really hard to make a living from. How do you rescue a business that is going under? And how do you keep the people who depend upon you,

because they depend upon that farm, how do you keep them afloat? So it's that. And also, her relationship with a neighbour who's a racehorse trainer and he's very, very angry and miserable, he's called Dickon. And that's quite fun. And I'm just to say, I really like their relationship. Yeah. And I think that's quite, I've seen, you know, training racehorses, not every racehorse trainer is miserable. So I don't want to paint that picture. But I wanted to show that when it's not a big successful yard, and my brother has 250 horses, you know, it's stressful. But financially, he's doing really well because it's a, you know, he's got big numbers. When, and there are a lot of trainers like Dickon, who've only got a few, a handful of horses, how do you make that work?

and if you've got one that's but you can be really good with difficult horses and that's his skill and finding a way with a very difficult, very sensitive horse so there's stuff in there that you know, Jilly Cooper who's the one that told me to go and write a book for adults she said, write what you know, write what you know.

Dogs and horses, so there's a lot of dogs There's a lot of dogs and horses. Jiffie the Welsh Terrier is a very central character but it's very you it sounds like you're telling the story and... Well, funny enough she's not me, Alex is not me at all.

I'm not, no, but it feels like it's you. I could hear you write, I can hear you talking if that makes sense. Yeah, and I think because I write and I've always written, I remember years ago doing a writing for radio course, and the way you speak on radio is very different to the way you construct sentences on a page. But I write more like someone who's on the radio than a writer, which makes it very easy to listen to as an audio book, but also makes it really easy to read. lot of people said about my animals and other family that even, you know, even if they weren't keen

readers, they could read it because they could hear my voice. Yes, we can with this as well. You absolutely can. I think that's good. And I have no idea whether that's a style choice or just the way I am. It's you. Well, it's absolutely is you through and through. When I was reading it and I was reading it on my laptop because I got sent the PDF and I was reading it through and I just, I actually was smiling. I was thinking, it's like I could hear you telling me the story. So Thank you for that. Do you think TV film off the back of it? Gosh, I don't know.

Television, anything involving horses is notoriously difficult, less difficult with dogs, and obviously it's a human story at the heart of it. Less difficult with dogs. Sorry, dogs. I mean, you've done... Because dogs can be trained for film and TV horses. You want a dog to do something on live television.

Yeah, but you know sheep are. quite important in this as well, so I've no idea how you do that on... But sheep... Have you got? No, I haven't got sheep. No, no. Would you have a pet sheep? No.

Would you not? No, absolutely not. I like sheep. Yes, I know, but they're not meant to be on their own. No, no, no, you have a few sheep. They're a flock. In your new place, you could get some sheep. Do you think?

Go and have a flock of sheep. And your old cats, and then when you get your new dog, there we go. Dog's the main thing. And some alpacres. Yeah, that might be easier than you. sheep. Alpacres, okay. And some chickens?

Yeah, sure. Okay. I'll come and tend your chickens. Claire, thank you so much. And what's next sporting wise for you then? Oh, next thing will be the Winter Olympics in February. Oh, gosh. But I guess the next big telly thing will be celebrity traitors will come out in the autumn.

Did you enjoy it? It was intense. It's a super intense experience. You can't believe how immersed you get in it and how. how, yeah, you feel very cut off. But funny enough, while I was there, the one thing we were allowed, so we weren't allowed phones or live TV,

but we had, and I don't know whether Stephen asked for this, somebody who was writing asked for it, but we were allowed laptops without internet connections. So I took up the memory stick with the book and I did the final edit up there. So you were doing traitors? Yeah. Oh, that's fabulous.

So, yeah, I thank them for that in terms of being able to sit and work. Do you know everybody's already talking about their favourites for traitors and who to win? And do you know that everybody says you and Stephen? So don't give anything away. Don't give anything. She's, oh, poker face. Okay.

I so want to find out. Claire, thank you. It's always such a pleasure chatting to you. Thank you very much.