The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Gabby Logan Opens Up About Her Heartbreaking Past

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Gabby Logan has been on our screens now for thirty years, bringing us the best of the world of sport at Sky Sports, ITV, and for the last nearly 20 years, at the BBC. Whether it’s the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup or the Olympics, Gabby is part of our memories of these moments. But there’s a side to Gabby people don’t often see. After her brother suddenly died when she was a teenager, she became (in her words) ‘fearless’ in pursuit of what she wanted, knowing that nothing would ever hurt as much again. But she was also wary of loving other people again, knowing what it was like to have those you love most taken away. It took her a long time and lot of introspection and learning to get to a place where she could open herself up emotionally to other people. But it’s when we look deep inside ourselves that it’s revealed who we really are, and what we really value. Follow Gabby: Twitter - https://bit.ly/3FrWn14 Instagram - https://bit.ly/3DK00OH Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. You'd wake up just with those first thoughts of the day, which is, oh God. I did have a fear that I was going to... Gabby Logan! One of the most recognisable broadcasters. She's become synonymous with the Olympics, football and rugby. It was a very male-dominated environment and there certainly were people who exhibited kind of machismo. And there were times where I felt like I was trying to conform,

but it didn't make me feel very good. I wasn't happy. My dad was assistant manager of Bradford City when the fire there took 56 lives and we were all there at the game that day. Bodies are being dragged away from that stand. It's a seminal day of my life, really, because there is a before and there's an after.

And that day is that day that really defined so many things for me. Can you still remember when you get a phone call from your mother about your brother? It's a day that I have relived so many times in my mind. I can't express how shocking that is because he was fine, you know? In my mind, immediately created a narrative that he had been run over or he had been in a car accident. And then very quickly, my mum started to tell me actually what had happened. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler and this is The Diary of a CEO.

I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Gabby, to understand you and to understand the trajectory of your life and how you've ended up to be where you are today and the passions really closely. And she just said to me, I get so much about you from some of the stories you've told as a child, even. And we can all point to big incidents that happen in life, but actually sometimes it's just the small things that create in your mind an urgency, or they create a desire or a passion that, you know, still burns inside you and you wonder where it came from. So I think you probably would need to understand a bit about the parenting that I received and the context of our family life and where we moved around and how our lives were predicated by my dad's job and what he did and the background that he had as well.

He was a professional football player? He was a professional football player. So that means potentially moving house, moving city at the drop of a hat. This was in the 70s and 80s, the days where you could be transferred midweek, you know, it wasn't the transfer window that we have now. So he would often up sticks and move on. And then a few months later, we'd follow. What does that, what does that what does that do to a child never really asked somebody that question before when you're constantly moving around as a kid is there in hindsight any sort of character change or

psychological impact of for better or for worse i think it has uh there's a double-edged sword to it my mum and it depends i guess on the other person in the relationship. My mum has always been a very positive person. So she looked at these things for us as adventures. You know, she would say to me and my siblings, oh, we're going to move to this place and it's going to be very exciting. And you're going to go to a new school and it's a chance to meet new people. And so her sense of adventure gave us a confidence and a sense that, you know, it was going to be okay. So that was great. But then what I realized writing the book was that it probably made me a bit flighty when it came to friends when I was younger. And I look back, I was writing about a really close friend I had when I

was 13. I've got no idea where she is now. And I think because the next time I had to move on somewhere, and at that point I was actually staying within Leeds but I probably was moving schools I'd got used to going bye-bye and kind of moving on to the next place so I was probably experiencing a bit of self-preservation you know not wanting to get too close because we might be off soon so we'll have a good time for now. Were you a confident person when you were you know let's say before your 18th birthday would you describe yourself as a confident person self-esteem and yeah I would I think that is something as well that my husband I talk about this a lot the the greatest gift you can give children is self-esteem I think and he left school without self-esteem because he was dyslexic and left without any qualifications and it is his big passion that kids should always have the star within them found before they leave school,

whatever that is. You know, somebody needs to tell you you are good at something before you're on your way. And I feel like I was incredibly lucky because I left school with really good self-esteem. And I had a childhood that gave me good self-esteem, you know, and I believed that I could achieve things and I could get on in life. And I think a lot of that was my mum's positivity, certainly, but also my dad's example of really hard work and seeing him really graft and really believe that, you know, what you put in, you got out. And I think that's really rewarding. You know, that is really, that makes you feel so good when you work hard. And that's the example that he set to us. And I think that all creates a confidence because, and when I say confidence, it's not misplaced in the

sense that you think everything you do is going to be brilliant because you really need to know that you're going to fail at things, obviously, and that things are going to go wrong. And I could see that with both of them. But I think a belief that if it does go wrong, it's okay because you can move on. So I feel one of the biggest blessings I had as a child was leaving school with confidence. I was thinking then about you saying your dad had still hard work, kind of into you, by example, I guess, because he was clearly someone that was incredibly focused and focused on his career. It made me think about how we often don't get to learn how to take care of ourselves from our parents in terms of we learn how to to work hard and strive but the sort of counterbalance

to that would be learning how to slow down and learning how to um make sure you're okay and i think specifically when i talk to people when you know on this show when they talk about their fathers and their and the generations that have come before there's often little understanding of mental health or um burnout or balance or all of these kinds of things did you did you see the symptoms of that in your father did you see a lack of sort of self-preservation or self-care? Absolutely. He came from a generation of men. He came from a, well, first let's go back. He came from a really tough working class estate in Cardiff. He was 15 years old when he was plucked out of that and given an opportunity to go to Leeds United and be a footballer. 15 years old,

he'd left his home and he was living in digs with a family who kind of put footballers up. And he was, you know, that was a way out for him. His dad had been a docker and he'd owned working men's clubs. And when I say owned, he'd kind of run a working men's club. His mum had four or five different jobs. She was doing night shift cleaning and he had siblings who left school without qualifications and did working class blue collar jobs. And so this was a big opportunity. And this wasn't the day, these weren't the days when the Premier League was in existence, but this was still a glamorous route potentially, and also financially secure, as secure as you can be being a sportsperson way out of the life that

he had. And so that was an enormous responsibility, I think, for him. And this was a very renowned, hard kind of team. Leeds United was this team that, you know, these players were renowned for being very hard on the pitch. They were, you know, kind of very brutal, the way, the style of play. And he's in that environment as this little boy. You know, I look at my son now who's 17 and I think about what he would have been like at 15 moving a few hundred miles away from home. And so already you're in, you know, at that age, you're having to build up defences. And then he was, you know, told he wasn't good enough and, you know, had to keep working harder and eventually played there for 10 years and was an international captain for his country. So he did achieve incredible things in his career, but never stopped. You know, it was relentless.

Being a footballer is relentless. Being a sports person is relentless. You're never going to achieve perfection. You're always looking for it. So how do you feel satisfied? You know, when do you actually sit down and go, that was really good. And I suppose there was a sense of him always wanting, you know, keep going, keep going. And then when you turn to management, which he did straight away without a break. And then he went through a huge, huge tragedy. He was the assistant manager of Bradford City when the fire there took 56 lives and we were all there at the game that day. And he went to almost every funeral in the space of six weeks after that. You know, he did all of this and never sat down with anybody and took stock or had a counsellor or took a break from, you know, from that relentlessness. And so I think

I understand him a lot better now through looking at his life through that prism almost of seeing that. And you understand, you know, I talk in the book about him drinking too much and using that to self-medicate through his life and to the point where it became you know it's been a problem and he's been hospitalized but of course now if he was that sports person now there'd be a sports psychologist at the club you know there'd be somebody saying let's have a chat let's talk about what's what's going on why you're feeling these these levels of anxiety so um it's it's definitely something that i'm much better at and um but i think that's also a product of the age that we live in that we're all so much more aware of the

need to stop and the need to process when you when you look at his life you've described a few of them there but what what in hindsight now what are the needs that you think were unmet in his life and i asked that question because I'm wondering how one avoids such an outcome. You talked about the importance of connection, not going home to a bunch of strangers, being closer to your family. Are there any needs that you think went unmet that you are making sure that your son's life and your life are full of? He was very, my dad was always a very emotional person person so I don't feel like he kept his emotions locked up you know he would in front of us he was he would cry you know he would watch something on

tv um usually sport that would make him teary so it wasn't as if he was this hard person who didn't tell you he loved you he told us he loved us but I feel like as a professional in what in his job I feel like it was it was probably very hard for him to show any weakness outside of the home and show any. And when I say weakness, it's such a pejorative term because actually it's not a weakness to say, I think I could be better if I just had this bit of time here or could speak to somebody or I could communicate better about how I'm feeling about this. And we are talking about a very different era. And when it was that it's not manly, you know, it's not manly to behave in that way. And we just wouldn't hear those terms now, even though some people still harbour those feelings, perhaps they wouldn't say that in public. So I think if he had had, and he did have the opportunity when my brother died

and after Bradford to talk to people, but he resisted that, you know, he didn't want to sit down and speak to a counsellor. And I think that was probably because of the historic kind of experiences that he'd had, you know, it just wasn't something that he felt talking to people outside of the home, he was not comfortable is that easy to to teach to your kids that idea of sort of expressing yourself and turning turning to others for support emotionally is it is it something that you think about when you when you're raising your children yeah we talk about specifically we talk about it a lot and we hope we lead by example as parents but i'm more mindful of it with my son because of the male kind of

resistance almost to have that open dialogue. But he is very much a kind of, he wears his heart on his sleeve, likes to tell you stuff. And I think that's probably because his dad is very much like that. So he sees his father being like that and feels confident that he can do that. And I think once you do that as a child and you realise the reception is good and you're not going to be judged or anybody think any less of you, you're more likely to come back and do it again. So I think it is a lot about the home and, you know, having the example of somebody doing that in front of you is really powerful. And you never, with your kids, it's never a finished job where you feel like, oh yeah, he's somebody. But I really do feel like he knows he can talk to us about anything and he can

talk to other people. And he does, you know, bring his anxieties and troubles home. I think the key thing I find as a parent that you have to remember, especially when they're kind of turned 13, that age, sometimes those things to you seem quite trivial. And you think, why are you bothered about that? And then you've got to remember what it's like to be 13 and 14 and age sometimes those things to you seem quite trivial and you think why are you bothered about that and then you've got to remember what it's like to be 13 and 14 and how huge those things are and how big they were for you and not just go that really doesn't matter you know and actually it's really important that you don't minimalize their issues and their problems it's okay for you because you've been through so many different things and you know it's going to be all right, but they don't know that right now. So it's important, I think, to just always try and take yourself back to that teenager.

You've been through so many things and many of those things, I mean, so many of those things are in this book, the first half. One of the most heart-wrenching stories you tell is when you were 19 years old and you get a phone call from your mother about your brother, Daniel. Can you still remember that day clearly? Oh, absolutely. And when I wrote that chapter, which turned out to be the first chapter in the book, because it was, I wrote it because I wanted to practice writing to get myself into the rhythm of writing the book, not knowing where that chapter would be. And when I wrote it, I realized it had to be the start of the book because it was the seminal day of my life, really, because there is a before and there's an after. And that day is that day that really defined so many things for me. And when I sat down to write, I took myself kind of right back into that day.

I could almost smell the air, you know, because it was a bank holiday Monday. I was living in a small flat in Earlsfield in London and everybody's windows were open because it was a lovely day and people were barbecuing in their little gardens and I could smell the coals and I could feel the air coming through the windows almost. And I was just taken right back into that moment the light everything that came through the window when I sat on the bed I can see the duvet cover I can you know I really was it was very visceral when I when I was there writing um probably because it's a day that I have relived so many times in my mind your mum calls you and says from what I read in the book she's very to the point about

what's happened. She says Daniel is dead. She called me and the phone rang and I sat on the bed and said hello in the kind of, you know, normal cheery way. And she said, Daniel's dead. And that was, you know, I can't express how shocking that is because you, he was fine, you know, so there was nothing wrong with Daniel. He wasn't ill. He'd never been ill. You know, he'd never had anything wrong with him. So it was so just mind blowing to hear, you know, I, I, my, in my mind immediately created a narrative that he had been run over or he had been in a car accident. I decided quickly that he was in a over or he had been in a car accident. I decided quickly that he was in a car because he was 16 nearly. He was 15 going on 16. Maybe one of

the older boys that he knew had just passed his test. Maybe he'd been taken. And I had him driving down this road that I knew in Leeds. And this is where it happened. And then very quickly, my mum started to tell me actually what had happened. That was not what happened at all. He'd, he collapsed in the garden. He was playing football with my dad and my little brother. And my little brother was six, Jordan, and he'd just gone over to get a football and he collapsed and died. And that was it. That was like, that was as much as my mum knew at that point, because by this point, she'd been to hospital and she had already kind of got home, which sounds really bizarre saying that in 2022, because now we would have been on the phone the minute he collapsed. You know, she would have rung me and said, but they didn't have mobile phones.

And if they had a mobile phone, it was very, you know, basic. I don't even know if they had a car phone. And so the immediate thing was to get him to hospital and to get an ambulance. And so to not include everybody in that process. So I was in London, she was in Leeds, and then they were at the hospital and then they came home. And it was hours later that I found out, which again, seems strange, you know, that I didn't know that this was all happening. I wasn't being given a blow by blow account of what was happening. So all I had was at that point, her information, which was very scant, that something had happened to his heart. His heart had just stopped. And the doctor who was at A&E or the emergency section of the hospital when they arrived happened to be the doctor who had given birth to me, who'd helped my mum deliver me. And he was the old the united doctor and so he'd known

the family for a very long time it was a complete coincidence he was doing a shift on a bank holiday and he just walked out of theater at an hour after my brother had gone in and you know shook his head and and it's that kind of nightmare nightmare scenario for any any family any parent that you know, they just didn't, they believed he was going into hospital because he got heat stroke or something. And they, you know, in their heads, they created what was a hot day. He must've been dehydrated. They did not expect that as the outcome. And my mum had phoned her mum who lived in Leeds. And, and so a couple of the family members were at the hospital

which was all so strange you know that they would be there and so it was a completely just it sounded fanciful to me I couldn't I couldn't get my head around the idea that this very fit young man would just collapse and I I want you know I wanted to immediately wanted to know kind of more but there was nothing you know and that's a really frustrating, and there was no internet to go and go, okay, what, how could, how can a young person die? You know, how does this happen? And we now know, of course, so much more about cardiac arrest in the young and there's a, you know, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is what he was diagnosed with. And that means basically the heart just stops without warning. And we've seen very famous incidents in football. Christian Eriksson, the Danish footballer,

at the last Euros collapsed on the pitch and his life was saved because he was in the perfect place for that to happen. There was medical resource around, you know, people knew what they were doing and Daniel was in the garden, you know, there was nothing there. So he was never going to survive that. But if you, you know, there was nothing there. So he was, he was never going to survive that.

But if you, you know, if he'd been somewhere where there was a defibrillator or he was in a hospital when it happened, you know, he may well have survived. But at the time, obviously, we just couldn't get our heads around it. I read in the book that the neighbor tried to resuscitate him. So we had a neighbor who was a, he'd worked on oil rigs offshore and he had paramedic qualifications he wasn't actually a paramedic but he'd done some qualifications so my mum thought oh morris next door he'll know what to do and my mum was when she was telling me like later and then years later when we discussed it she was she said she was so relaxed about it because because he wasn't to her he wasn't dead he just collapsed and you know nobody could think of him as being an unfit person so she wasn't relaxed in the sense he wasn't dead. He just collapsed. And, you know, nobody could think of him as being an unfit person. So she wasn't relaxed in the sense she

wasn't urgent, but she just thought Morris will sort this out. You know, Morris came around and he couldn't get him back. He couldn't get his heart going. And, but they still didn't use the word. I don't think they said his heart stopped because nobody wants to say that to a parent. So Morris obviously put him in the ambulance, I think, knowing that his heart stopped, but my parents didn't know his heart stopped. They thought he was collapsed or he was in some kind of like, you know, heat induced coma or something had happened to him that meant he just wasn't responsive. I think that was the thing. They my dad said at one point the ambulance went round a bend really quickly and his arm flew out and landed in my dad's lap. And my dad said that when his arm landed, that's when he knew he was dead because he said he just felt that there was no life. There was nothing that showed any response.

And so his hope was crushed. You look at your life as before and after that moment what was life like after that moment the immediate aftermath like the weeks after something that is is a strange mix of um activity and energy you know because you're organizing funerals, people are kind of coming, hundreds of people descending on the house constantly, people coming in. And actually there was a kind of an energy in the house that it just kept you, you just kept going and doing things. My mom didn't, she very much stopped and she went into almost a kind of, after the funeral, she was almost catatonic and just kind of almost sat and did nothing for about a month. But I think I was the eldest child. My sister at the time was modeling in

Japan. She'd flown home for the funeral, but then went off quite quickly afterwards. My dad decided to go on tour with Wales, who was managing. So I decided my life in London was over and I was going to stay home and try and help. And my mum had a fledgling property business. So I was kind of running around doing errands for her and trying to kind of like keep this energy going that we'd experienced during the week leading up to the funeral. And then suddenly it all starts to quieten down and people stop coming round. People stop bringing food round, people stop ringing to see if you're okay. And then this kind of quietness descends on the house and the home and everybody in it. And that's when you really start facing grief

because grief didn't have room to come in, you know, in those first few weeks. There was no space for it. It was all about energy and activity and trying to do your best for everybody. And then the reality, you know, just on a daily basis of kind of, I mean, every day, even when the energy was there,

you'd wake up just with those first thoughts of the day were just, oh God, you know, it really is. It's happened. It's real. It's not a dream. And getting yourself mobilized. But then after the energy left those oh god this is real those feelings of just despair and kind of sadness it just took longer to

get yourself going and you know you do feel kind of just sometimes or you did feel immobilized with that sadness and um as a family it just kind of pushes everybody off into kind of different corners if you like it you know it's like a sledgehammer coming down and just shattering something that had been a very tight unit so it then takes a long long time I think for things to get back to any kind of normalcy or what you can now call your new normal. Are there certain days or certain memories of when things were hardest for the family do you have like um i was speaking here yesterday to um whitney from who's the founder and ceo of bumble and she went through her own version of grief sort of more it's a professional grief that she she refers to and she says there's kind there was kind of a day there

was a day when I remember being the hardest day in that period. And that represented the bottom. And from there on, it was the kind of sort of the climb out of that moment. Was there a bottom moment for you? Was there a day where you think that was the hardest day of all? I don't remember there being one day in particular, because even years afterwards, you know, a few years afterwards, I could find myself sobbing, you know, over something that I'd seen or I'd read or when I started working in telly, I remember I used to be obsessed when I started working in football with the dates of players births, because they would be his age. And I knew that he might be playing

in that match or he could have, you know, and so there would be his age. And I knew that he might be playing in that match or he could have, you know, and so there would be something that would just kind of throw me or I wasn't necessarily looking for it, but then it would just occur to me that they were the same age. And you do that thing where you wonder, well, first of all, would he be playing in this match? What kind of play would he have been? I wonder if he'd have had a girlfriend by now. I wonder if he'd have met somebody he wanted to marry. Oh, now I wonder if he'd have children, you know, and you do that through the life of the person that, you know, is no longer with you because you want to keep their, you know, kind of their memory alive. But also I think you wonder then if everything would have been

different in the family because ultimately my parents divorced and my dad was using alcohol to, know to medicate himself and you know it's a lot to put on Daniel's shoulders but you think would if he hadn't died would would we all still be together with this you know with the family unit have survived and so there are those days you know where just years later you could be floored so I don't think there was one day but what happens is you start to notice oh a few weeks have gone by now and life's been quite good and I've been able to find joy in you could be floored. So I don't think there was one day, but what happens is you start to notice, oh, a few weeks have gone by now and life's been quite good. And I've been able to find joy in things. And I've done something and not thought, but would it have been better if Daniel had been here? And you go through all those anniversaries, you know, so the first year of the first Christmas, the first birthdays, all of those things, that's, that's the, you know, getting through those

anniversaries is always tough for anybody who loses anybody of significance in their lives. But with him, it was things like the 16th birthday, the 18th birthday, the 20th, you know, there's all these big kind of landmark occasions. And then you have your own children and you start to look at his life differently because when my son got to 15 and was nearly 16, my kid's birthday is only a few days away from his birthday, I realised when my son turned 16, I realised that I'd been worried about him not being 16 because Daniel never got there. So I did have a fear that I was going to repeat history.

We're never taught how to grieve. Nobody ever teaches us that and I and it's it's it's a shame because it going through your life and not experiencing grief in some form is would be it's almost impossible to do that and I think sometimes I I worry about grief because you haven't had enough because I haven't had enough? Because I haven't had enough. And I also have this sort of impending feeling that it's coming. But when you look back at that moment post Daniel's passing, what do you think, what advice would you give to someone on how to properly grieve in hindsight with your wisdom now

about that situation and how it transpired and how it stayed with you is there anything you can say about how how one grieves properly it's such a personal thing grief isn't it because it depends on your relation your own relationship with death you know what what you feel about mortality how you feel about that person obviously is hugely significant. Also what they did in their life. You know, I find myself, I've had lots of relatives, I think four who've lived to be 100, four or five. So I've been to funerals of people at 105 and that was a joyous life, you know, and that was a great celebration. So I think it always depends on all those factors, those relationships. I think the one thing that I would say from our experience with Daniel which

was a life cut very short and very sudden I think it's and it doesn't matter if it isn't sudden and I've wrestled with that as well we all did about Daniel like would it have been better if we'd known what if he'd been ill and we had time to to get our heads around it would it have made any difference and there's no right or wrong way you know know, to lose a child. There is no easy way to lose a child. But I think counselling and talking to people is really, really helpful. For me, I found having somebody to process what was going on was really helpful. And finding kindred spirits as well, you know, people who've been through similar experiences. And you find them, without wanting to sound kind of too kind of woo-woo spiritual, but I think those people come into your life as well at the time that you need them. And then you've got to be

open to them being there. But when I met my husband, that was something we immediately connected on because he lost a cousin who was like a brother to him who was um he was in his 30s but had two small children and my my husband was only 19 when that happened and um that you know that was a tragic accident and again a sudden death and that devastated his his young world and i think if you have people in your world who you can talk to like that, I think it's really, really helpful. When you were talking about the week after Daniel's passing and the energy in the house and how it almost hadn't set in because you had this almost distraction. There was things to do. There was other things to keep the brain on. So many of us, I mean, we distract ourselves after moments of trauma and grief in a number of different ways.

But distraction doesn't solve the problem, does it? No. It just kind of kicks the can down the road. Yeah. And I think although I did experience after that immediate kind of rush of energy, there was a silence and a time for sadness to come in. I did default back into that kind of frenetic energy when I went to university, which was only a few months later. I became the queen of joining in, you know, so I would join every club that I could. I was in the

drama society, the union society, I would, you know, can I join this netball team? Can I do this? Can I do that? Can I've got my degree, I'm going to get a job. You know, I was working at weekends, I filled every hour. And I love being busy. But there was definitely a sense of running away from from what was going on I think in the background of my life on top of that sort of you know workaholism um how did Daniel's passing change your perspective of life generally and you know I think what I'll be honest when I read um about the passing of Daniel there was this real moment of pause when I was reading there alone. There was this moment of pause at the prospect that he was half my age and he suddenly, suddenly his heart stopped. And it made me think, honestly, when I was reading it, my brain went,

so anyone's heart can stop at any time. They can be perfectly healthy. They can be an athlete and their heart can just stop at any time. And you sit there feeling my own heart and I'm wearing this band that I wear, been wearing for the last couple of weeks. Checking your heartbeat. Tells me everything about my heart. And this morning, it's funny because it said my heart,

my heart variability score is like way, way down. Typically means you've been doing something stressful or exerting yourself too much. And as I saw, it was like like there was like a five minute difference between this heart warning that's flashing on my band and reading that in the book yeah how did how did the fragility of life um and your experience of the fragility of life change your perspective on life itself I think it's two things one and it took me a while to correct this. I, in my head thought, although I was busy getting, you know, getting busy and doing things and doing my degree and everything else, there was part of me that thought, okay, now terrible things can happen

at any time. So my, so tomorrow another terrible thing could happen. And I was almost waiting for that next thing, because if he can die, and he's that healthy looking, and he'd never complained about any chest pains, he was an athlete, like a proper athlete, you know, he just he could run and run and run. If he can die like that, well, terrible things can happen all the time. But I didn't express this, but it was my kind of there was a feeling inside me that that was possible. So, so there was that, that part of the kind of the process, you know, was going on inside me, even though I was busy, I was expecting a terrible thing. And I had this therapist a few years later who she just looked at me one day and she went, cause I was obviously manifesting this or talking

about it again. And she said, your shit things happened. And now then she, and that was such a powerful thing to say, because although another shit thing can happen, of course, you know, it just, it stopped me. It kind of really stopped me in my tracks. And I thought, I've got to reframe this and stop thinking or stop believing that something else is coming down the tracks that I'm going to have to deal with. And I'm not a natural worrier. So to be in that kind of state, so it wasn't worry, you know, it wasn't me sitting there thinking, oh, I'm not going to cross the road because the car's going to come. It wasn't about taking risks. It was just a self-defense mechanism ready for it. I'm ready for it. Something's going to happen and I'm ready. I can see, you know, and so it wasn't, I wanted to stop

my life. So I didn't, I didn't get hurt or, you know, people I love didn't get hurt, but I wanted to be ready next time because I wasn't ready the last time. What are the symptoms of that, of kind of expecting the worst? A terrible thing to happen? Yeah. What are the symptoms in relationships? So not hanging. At the time I was single and I was definitely not attracting the right people into my life, you know. And I was not going out with people who were enhancing me as a person all my life because why would I want to have any kind of long-term commitment with anybody who were enhancing me as a person all my life because why would I want to have any

kind of long-term commitment with anybody who'd treat me well or be nice to me because I was you know I wasn't going to commit to something so I may as well be with somebody who wasn't that nice to me who didn't make me feel good about myself because because it was all it was all very you know transient so um I wasn't I wasn't giving, I wasn't giving myself any kind of chance of, of that happening because of my kind of charging through, you know, and, um, and actually, okay, if you're horrible to me, that's fine. I've dealt with this. I can, you know, but that's not really good for your kind of deep self-esteem. You know, we talk about, uh, you talked about how I had good self-esteem leaving, leaving school and

feeling good about myself. But that wasn't, that wasn't very productive in terms of, you know, good self-esteem. So I suppose that's, that's how it kind of manifested itself. And again, there's that commitment thing to, to, you know, to people and things. And I suppose a feeling that I was losing empathy. And that's a really important thing to hang on to. And while I wouldn't have expressed it as losing empathy at the time, it was losing patience, you know, kind of, oh, that's so trivial, but it's not trivial to that person. And having an understanding of that is really important. And actually using what you've learned about loss and grief in a more positive way and not such a destructive way. Age 19, Metro FM.

That's your sort of first step into broadcasting. Yeah. Very few people in this world will ever reach the heights that you've reached in broadcasting, but so many of them would want to. I've met many, many young people that want to get to where you are in your career. There's not a lot of seats at the table at the very top. So I'm trying to understand, in hindsight, how you got to that table. And nobody ever likes asking me answering these

questions because at some point you're gonna have to compliment yourself to some degree you're gonna have to highlight something that's a good characteristic in yourself and people don't people feel uncomfortable with but we're doing that for some reason but um because we're not American yeah yeah oh my god Americans if I ask them that question not only do they they tell me but they the story sounds amazing it's so like chance and they're a hero in the story. But when I ask British people, they're like, well, you know, ask someone else. Well, how often do you say the word, I was very lucky because I was very lucky and we shroud it in this luck, you know, luck happened to us.

And there is always an element of timing with things, isn't there? And I got my break at Metro through meeting a guy at a New Year's Eve party the winter before I went to university. And I said to him, I really want to work in broadcasting. And he ran a radio station. And he said, when you come to Durham, which was nine months later, make sure you come and see me and I'll give you some work experience. And I'd already done work experience on radio stations and newspapers. So I thought of that. So I waited about 10 minutes after arriving in Durham. And I went to a phone box because we didn't have mobiles and filled it with my 10 pence pieces and had to wait for the receptionist to put me through.

And I remember standing in the rain in Durham, kind of waiting for him. And he said, oh, hello, because he was quite surprised. First of all, I was calling before Freshers Week had even started. But secondly, he was probably going, hang on a minute, where did I meet you? What? And he said, okay, come and see me, you know, next week or the week after and we'll have a chat about what it is you want to do. And that was it. That was my kind of the person I could just cling on to and get into somewhere that was a professional outfit. It wasn't student radio. This was a commercial radio station with real people living real lives you know and and with mortgages so their work was important and um i got there and he he gave me a chance he trained me up for about four or five months and then by the christmas of my first term i got my first paid shift on the radio station and that was the start eventually you got the

breakfast show right when i graduated when you graduated. So you must have been at Metro for what, three to four years by the time? So I was three years, yeah. Three years. Even at that early stage in your broadcasting career, what were you, because we all know what we're good at often by like comparison of peers. This is like where comparison can sometimes be quite helpful. Did you have an indication of what you were good at as a broadcaster versus your peers? What was your USP? I wasn't necessarily comparing myself to anybody else. But what I felt I was getting good at when

I was doing The Breakfast Show was being responsive and being able to ad lib situations and find the funny or find the quirk. Because on A Breakfast Show, you know, you're kind of, you're riffing backwards and forwards with your co-host, you're responding to the day's news, you're talking about things that are going on in people's lives. And I realized that I, I could do that quite well without feeling self-conscious about what I was saying. You know, I was, I was able to, to kind of match my co-host quite well on those things. He's had a lot more experience than me. The other stuff, there's a lot of stuff that you can learn to be good at. You know, you can learn to read the news well, which I initially started out doing the news. And you can learn to edit a story because I was technically having to do those kinds of things. But I think that was something that was a little bit more ethereal and difficult to nebulous and difficult to kind of hone and train somebody to do. So I felt like that was something that I wanted to expand on. And that was something that I could certainly take forwards as a quality, you know, and it certainly is

something that is good in live broadcasting to be able to think on your feet and be, you know, able to turn a story into something else and talk to somebody on the spot who's just walked onto set, you know, and fill five minutes of time, all those things that live broadcasting needs, you know, those qualities that it needs. And then eventually Sky Call. And you end up going to work for Sky Sports at 25 years old. I was younger than that. Yeah, because that was a year after I joined Metro,

which I would have been 22, 23. So I was 23 when I joined Sky Sports. So my dream had been to work in London. I wanted to leave, you know, the Northeast and find a job in London. So when Sky Sports saw me doing touchline interviews at St. James's Park, because by this point I got a Saturday job because the boss at the station could see I loved sport. And he was like, why don't you do touchline interviews at St. James's Park for us on a Saturday? Then Sky had seen me on the touchline and decided that they needed more women in front of camera and asked me if I'd be interested in going down for a screen test. So I had basically

a month where my life just turned because I had this sliding doors moment where I made the call straight away. And as you've discovered with the call to Giles, I wasn't shy of picking up the phone and making the call. I made the call the next morning to the person I've been told to phone. And then within a couple of days, I was on a flight to London to go and see the boss at Sky and do the screen test. And then within a few hours, I think, of getting home that night, I got a phone call asking me if I'd go and work there and negotiating a package to go and work there. So it was a really, really exciting kind of period of my life that I, you know, hadn't really planned. I didn't know how I was going to get to London. I

was looking for adverts in kind of broadcast and various places, you know, trying to find something that could get me there. And I rang up an agency, a talent agency. I looked at people whose careers I liked and thought, oh, I wonder who they're managed by. I'll ring them. And they were very sweet and said, oh, well, do come back to us when you've got some experience. Because I had no experience. I had this little TV job in the Northeast. And I just didn't know how I was going to get there. But I knew I had to for things to progress. For anyone that's listening to this that has big dreams of, you know, going into certain industries, especially industries where there's seems to be quite um at the very top it seems to be quite a small table when you look back

at your own journey and the decisions you made the small things in hindsight the moments of sort of serendipity um what advice would you give to someone who is trying to get somewhere high where at the very top of that tree is a is quite a small table what are the things that you did right maybe accidentally or intentionally I think what I did through university and that could be it could have been post-university I worked so hard to I did shifts that were very unsociable I was doing three o'clock four o'clock in the morning get ups to go and do new shifts. And I did late night love shows. I did all the kind of things that, you know, are the unglamorous end of that job because I was being offered the shifts and I took them and I had to juggle that with my law degree. But I innately felt that it was almost like I was doing an apprenticeship in what I wanted to do

at the same time. And as well as earning me, you know, some cash as a student is always handy, but I was getting this experience. And the hours and hours and hours of doing that meant that when I did get the opportunity at Sky and I felt confident about picking the phone up because I knew I'd had all these hours. I wasn't just somebody who'd done a few shows. And, you know, even if I just had the one year working there at postgrad, I don't think I would have felt as confident. But I knew I'd put those, those hours in and I felt I wasn't going to be, um, I mean, we've all got an element of imposter syndrome, but I didn't feel I was going to be out of place because I knew I'd had all that, that experience, those hours. So I think you've got to, you've got

to put the groundwork in, you know, and not expect things to happen too quickly in the sense of, you know, don't, don't overforce those, those things that you'll feel the time's right. You know, you feel like, okay, I knew I was ready to move on about around that time, but in that year of post working full time, it wasn't towards the end until towards the end that I really felt I was ready. I knew that all that stuff I was doing was really important in building the, you know, the building blocks of your, of your career. So I think it's really important to, to put those foundations down and you'll always benefit from that. You know, it's never a waste of time taking an opportunity from somebody saying yes to something. I said yes to things. I talk about them in the book that I was nowhere near in that year that I was working in a local radio. I didn't know how to do it, but I said yes to stuff because I knew it was going

to give me experience. And then obviously when you find yourself somewhere like Sky, which is, I was at the very much at the bottom of the rung, you know, the ladder, and I was learning again, I was starting to, a whole new set of experiences. Then you have to have that, hopefully, I had a little bit of kind of humility and says, okay, I need to learn. I don't know what I'm doing here. And then people will, you'll find people who will be your teacher in that environment. So I think it's really important to, I always say to my kids about, you know, it's expression your mum would have said to you kind of like, you know, don't run before you can walk, right? And it sounds really boring, because

everybody wants to run. Everybody wants to get there quicker and, and you can get there quickly, but you've just got to put some hours in first. And I think you'll stay there longer. Your next period of life was at Sky, um, which was, as you write about it in the book, a very sort of male dominated egotistical environment. How that shape you how did that impact you go walking into sky back in those days i mean everybody in football was a man right you say in the book i think you say 90 of the like people behind the camera were men um it was a very male dominated environment and it was obviously very early in the infancy of sky sky was only a few years old at that point the premier league was only a few years old at that point. The Premier League was only a few years old.

So a lot of Sky's early recruits, if you like, were from Fleet Street, the hard-nosed journalists who kind of pounded the shifts and gone to all the matches over the years and from, again, a very male-dominated environment. But it was tough. And I've talked a lot recently to people about the 90s, not to do with my book, but just about how it was tough and I've talked to a lot recently to people about the 90s not to do in my book but just about how it was there was this thing happening in the 90s that you you've kind of went along with a bit and I don't really feel comfortable I'm not a ladette you know I'm not

there was this ladette culture and there was a drinking culture and um it was all about the music of the time and everything else and I think football was in this centre of all of this as well because of the newness of Sky and the newness of the Premier League. And it would have been easy, I think, to lose yourself. And there were times where I felt like I was trying to conform and, you know, be the person that, you know, was able to banter with the lads and have that kind of, you know, riffing and all of that. But it didn't make me feel very good. You know, I didn't really like

that person. So I wasn't completely at ease with myself, I would say there. You write in the book that you didn't like yourself very much during that period. I didn't like myself very much, but I always seemed to forget that the next time I was drinking. The anger, disappointment and self-doubt that such destructive behavior brings was coming home to roost. Yeah, I think I wasn't very healthy. I'd gone from being somebody who had run half marathons when I was in Newcastle, ate a really brilliant diet to suddenly I was doing late shifts, eating badly, drinking more alcohol than I'd ever drunk when I was in Newcastle, ate a really brilliant diet to suddenly I was doing late shifts, eating badly, drinking more alcohol than I'd ever drunk when I was at university. You know,

I wasn't a massive drinker. And suddenly it was a bar culture, you know, it was kind of after a shift, go for a drink, shifts would finish at 10, you shouldn't start drinking at 10. It's not a good time of day to start drinking. Weekends, I knew nobody when I first arrived in London. So it was, you know, what's everybody doing? How do I get a social life? You know, where do I go? What might, you know, so you'd be invited somewhere that would involve being in a bar or being involved in a club.

And so I, yeah, I was slipping into kind of bad habits. And I think there's part of me feeling like, oh, this, this is what it is to be an adult, you know, is this how I, you know, is this how I behave now? Um, and I was, there was a good 18 months really where I was putting on weight, didn't feel good about myself at all. And then that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy almost, you know, and you kind of go, oh, well, I've put on weight now. I may as well just carry on eating the Magnum. So I may as well carry on eating the, um, you know, you kind of go oh well I've I'll put on weight now I may as well just carry on eating the magnum so I may as well carry on eating the um you know drinking the chardonnay and um I wasn't yeah I wasn't I wasn't happy you know I didn't enjoy that but um

but it just it kind of became a habit I guess you know in the talk about the 90s and it's quite hard for us for someone like myself to imagine the culture in an office and in a working environment at that time when i was reading some of the um the quotes from the book about how you would walk through the office and someone would shout at you about which football player you've been sleeping with or someone comes up to you in the office and makes a comment about your ass and tell you tells you that it's going to drop by the time you're 30 those things seem quite unthinkable in the modern world especially somebody of your age and when I told my daughter who's 17 she just you know it defies belief for her and yet when I speak to people my age they reminisce almost about I spoke to an actress the

other day who's the same age as me and she was talking about things that people would say in auditions even. And I think it's really positive that you think that is so unthinkable, because that means things have changed. And I think it's amazing, actually, that for me, it doesn't seem that long ago, but actually, it's a few decades ago, and society has changed. Our expectation of each other has changed. Our expectation of how we're to be treated in the workplace has changed. And that comes through representation as well, because those offices were very male dominated. And I think there were very, there were probably a lot of men in there that weren't comfortable with that, but they didn't feel they could speak up because of that culture that was there. And that's not healthy for any business or any environment. You know, I always

quote, I made a documentary on women in football. And I remember Karen Brady saying to me that, who's the CEO of West Ham and her saying to me, I never invest my own money in a company that doesn't have a woman on the board. This was about 14 years ago, 13 years ago, I made this documentary. And she said, not because I think that's going to, you know, that I'm trying to make a point, but I know that that board is going to be more representative in terms of how it views its business, how it views its future and its budgets and everything else that it plans for the business. So I always remember that because when I look at that office, I think, well, how could this, how could that environment ever really have different voices and different opinions? And because the big loud ones, the big loud,

kind of more misogynistic ones were dominating everybody else. And, and people didn't feel they could speak up, you know, and didn't feel they could, they could talk. And it didn't look like society. It didn't look like a football terrace or it didn't look like, or how we perceive a football terrace to look now, which is people from different ethnicities and people from different backgrounds and different sexual orientation, all those different things that that office didn't represent. And that office was, as I say, not unusual. That would have been across many industries,

how things looked. So I think it's really important that we have now more representation, diversity in everything that we do because of that. But at the time, that was really normal so you know that wasn't um I didn't feel like I was in an unusual place I didn't feel like oh I wish I wish I went somewhere else where it was a bit you know people were a bit kinder your podcast is called midpoint your book is called the first half there's a theme going on yeah what why um midpoint came about uh as a lockdown project something i've been intending to do for ages and had the time and

it felt like i was in the middle of my life and it happened while i was in a pandemic and it felt very much like a time of introspection and, you know, asking yourself questions about what next, what does it mean to go through this period where a lot of people start to experience, you know, the midlife crisis, a lot of people refer to, which, you know, obviously in the sitcom, that's where the bloke gets, you know, some leather jeans and a Harley Davidson and runs off into the sunset with somebody 25 years younger than him, or, you know, or Shirley Valentine flies off to Greece and finds a lover, you know, so you get these kind of very caricatured ideas of what midlife is. But for most people, you know, they stay with their families and they, you know, they work through something that happens to them. And what I

discovered with women is menopause, I didn't really know anything about it going into lockdown. And then I learned a lot about it and then I was having one. And, and that is a huge topic of conversation that, you know, rightly has grown and become something that people are more aware of. But also, it's for me, it was more about the, I started off wanting to talk to people who'd done something different in midlife. So my first guest was John Bishop, who at 39 was selling pharmaceutical drugs and at 40 was a standup comedian, which was a massive career change. And I like the idea of doing something really different in the middle of your life and not feeling you have to keep going until the end with the thing that you've gone on the path to do. And it's obviously fanciful to say that anybody can change their trajectory in midlife because

circumstances will dictate that you have to keep paying your mortgage or you have to keep food on the table. So it's not possible just to stop and start something else. But I do like the idea that you can, you can make a change because we're all going to work so much longer than our parents, you know, had to, or our grandparents had to just the way society's going. And you may as well do something that you really love and feel nourished by. So Midpoint came about really because of all those kind of things that I was thinking about. It was a self-serving project, you know, it was like, I want to talk to people who are doing interesting things. And it's been really a joy to do, you know, and to kind of, you know what

this environment's like, it's a brilliant way to have a conversation. And you get to talk about things that you find interesting. And then the person you're talking to sparks interest in you as well so um i'm about six series in so i'm nowhere near as prolific as you steven but obviously it's um it's a kind of side hustle yeah well this started as a side hustle in my bedroom so it's crazy it's crazy um you know now we've got all these cameras which is mad yeah on that point of um the midlife crisis thing is there any truth in that are there regrets that show up in you know that you've seen from your conversations in midlife that that were maybe not as obvious beforehand priorities change values become clearer there is definitely something in it in in the midlife um change you know i think the physical changes that all women

go through it shouldn't underestimate kind of how that can affect them and their families. And that's why a greater understanding of that is really important, especially, you know, women who've worked so hard in their careers. And then, you know, the stories and the anecdotes you hear about women just pulling themselves away from it because of the physical effects of menopause. And I have a really high powered friend who's one of the top, she's one of the top hedge funders in the country, sits on the board of one of the biggest. And she said to me, well, I'm going on testosterone because there's no way I'm working this hard and letting a bloke come and take my job. So testosterone is one of the hormones

that depletes in midlife for women. So if you go on HRT, you could take progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. People don't realize that women have testosterone, you go on HRT, you could take progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. People don't realize that women have testosterone, you know, and that they need it. And I was laughing because she was like, as if I'm going to kind of give up this, but actually a lot of women do give up that career because of the feelings that they have of anxiety and low self-esteem and you get brain fog. There's so many things physically that happened to women at that time. So I think that has an impact, obviously, on lives. But also, and then what I realized when I started looking into it, how many relationships break up, but not because actually those two people don't love each other anymore, but because if the woman's going through all of that, and the man's feeling kind of like,

she doesn't love me anymore, what's going on, you know, and the relationship breaks down because of a lack of understanding and communication. But also, I think because you've done the same thing, a lot of people have done the same thing for nearly 30 years, you know, if they've been on a traditional career trajectory, and then they feel bored or they need something to kind of, you know, give them a kick. And then there's the mortality question as well, because you suddenly look at your parents and a lot of people in that age, their parents are, you know, in their 70s or maybe 80s and, and looking like they're nearing the end of their lives. And that makes you question, you know, the rest of your life. So there are so many issues that come up and time

to think as well, because your kids are getting to an age where they're not the same kind of demands on your time through them. So they're, they're flying, you know, they're doing their own thing. So you have time to think and space to think so it is definitely it's a thing that's why i think think why i'm so intrigued by the topic is how do i design my life now at 30 to try and um limit the effects of that mid midpoint um confusion or dissatisfaction that people often experience and that you've kind of accounted there one of the things that i suspect is going to help is for me to stay really in touch with the things that i enjoy doing that i know um in no way pay me or provide for me professionally just like djing and so for your fulfillment yeah you know in life is not just from the things that earn you

cash you know and i think the the older you get you realize how important those other things are the hobbies if that you know if that is a hobby or if it's volunteering you know and i don't mean that just kind of working in a you know help the ages shop but giving your talents to other people mentoring people um we do a lot, Kenny and I do a lot of stuff with various charities that we feel, you know, very passionate about or giving your time up to people. I think those things are really important because as you become more financially secure, it's your time, isn't it? That's the most valuable, you know, kind of thing that you have. And if you can give your time to other people like that, it's, it's very, very rewarding.

And, and then you find, you know, kind of passion projects as well, that the things that you've felt in the past, you haven't had time to commit to. And I want to, you know, Kenny, my husband is really into being outside, you know, he's, he's loves making things like building things and doing things. So he will literally be on a zoom doing his business call. And then he'll realize he's got half an hour and he'll go out and he'll be on his tractor kind of raking something and building something. And, you know, that for him is how he is just loving his kind of midlife balance, you know, but he couldn't have done that 10 years ago when he was first really building his business. He wouldn't have, you know, he just wouldn't have worked. So I think you get to a stage where you also give yourself that time to do those things and allow yourself, you know, and you'll be, you know, you'll have so many other interests, business interests and things that have along the way have,

you know, kind of given you great satisfaction. So I'm not worried about you having any kind of midlife crisis. You said you discovered you had, you were going through menopause at the age of 47. Yeah. I realized I had perimenopausal symptoms because I didn't really know what it was. I just felt this sense of like, oh, nothing feels as exciting anymore. Nothing feels as joyous. I'm not getting the same satisfaction out of stuff. And that was so not me. And then I did one of my podcasts. I was with Mariela Frostrop and she started talking about the menopause. She's a bit older than me. And I was like, oh my God, these things, these things you talk of, I recognize them. And afterwards she recommended, you know, I go speak to this doctor that she had seen. And sure enough, I was bang in the middle of,

you know, what was a physical, the physical manifestation, obviously the menopause is eventually you stop menstruating. But before then you have all these other things going on, low self-esteem, anxiety, brain fog, you know, and this is all to do with your hormones dropping off. All the jobs that these hormones did before they no longer can do and that includes also your immune system going down and you know and this is in the middle of a pandemic so at that point you my immune system's low i don't want my immune system to be you know any weaker than anybody else's so it was a good time to find out and uh and i you know knowing that i could rebalance my hormones as well and um i was so relieved when i did take hrt to feel myself again because i had been feeling like

i remember one day having this absolute kind of family meeting crisis meeting pulling everybody to the table saying right nobody around here is putting their weight and really reading the to everybody and i was and the point where i got to, I thought, they're not taking me seriously. So I said, if this carries on, I'm getting a flat in Beckinsfield, right? Which is a little town near where we live. And they all looked at me like I'd gone mad because this had come from nowhere. And of course the kids were like close to tears. And I was like, because I'm not going to be, and I realized now I look back and I was, I was just totally, you know, sad about kind of how I was feeling. And I just didn't feel I was, you know, as, I didn't have as much fight and tenacity and energy and, you know, and this was all menopausal symptoms, really.

I mean, now with the hindsight and the distances between, you know, they laugh about that whole day. That was, that was the day where we realized mum was having a menopause. But thank God I found out, right? And I didn't actually go and look at renting a flat in Beaconsfield to serve them all right. And, you know, it's a real perfect confluence when you have a woman in her late forties and her kids are teenagers because their hormones are going crazy in the other direction and they're going through puberty and everything's happening the other way, you know? And so Kenny was very, really wanted to know what was going on with me. So he'd listened to my podcasts and he'd learned so much about the menopause from the female guest, Davina McColl, who's the, you know, doing so much great work in this space. And she was talking

about it and he came in one day and he sat down and he said to me, I've just listened, I've been out on a dog walk and I've just listened to Davina. And he said, okay, so if you start taking HRT and your hormones kind of start going back again, you know, what happens to me? Are my hormones dropping off a cliff? How, you know, am I going to, I said, no, no, no, men are different. And, and he kept going on about it. I said, look, just go and do a well-man test or something because you need to satisfy yourself that you're okay. You know and um it was through doing this wellman test that he found out he had prostate cancer so um his his his kind of um his motivation for doing it was to see if his testosterone was still kind of you know functioning at a high level

and they said to him listen don't worry about your hormones they're fine you've got to worry about your psa to cut a long story short he ended up having his prostate removed and had prostate cancer. So yeah, in terms of a midlife journey and a midlife experience, there was a lot going on there, obviously, with regard to my journey kind of bled into him finding out something that he otherwise wouldn't have known because unfortunately prostate cancer is a cancer that you don't always get symptoms until it's too late and as his urologist said to him if you'd had symptoms we might be having a very different conversation wow so um i'm forever grateful that i started my podcast i think because he wouldn't have we wouldn't have had that conversation. It's a really scary thing to think about in hindsight if those dots hadn't

sort of connected. Because like most blokes, this is the thing, and this is why he did a podcast episode talking about it. Like most blokes, and especially when he played international rugby, right? You know, he played 70 times for his country. He was used to giving his body a battering and giving his body, putting his body through it. And so he's living with some of the ramifications of that. You know, he has to really look after his back and his core. He's very lucky he didn't really break too many bones, but you know, he knows he has to look after his body because he put it through a lot. So when he does have aches and pains and things, he often, like a lot of men, just ignores them because he thinks that's part of, you know, what he'd done to himself before. And that's part of, you know, his sporting life. And this year,

he lost one of his very best friends who played for Scotland with who'd done just that, who'd ignored a lot of those things, thinking it was old injuries. And it turned out he had bowel cancer and he died. And that was for him just, you know, a huge sense of gratitude that he had found out, but also a reason for him wanting to talk about it because men can be really rubbish at that, you know, and it's something that I think we talked about masculine kind of identity and earlier on about, you know, my dad when he was younger and how he, the self-preservation and wanting to, you know, keep things in in public. And actually that's a lot of that is, is men not always sharing those things. So, and not having

those conversations candidly. And when he did that on the podcast, the response from men has been amazing to him, you know, and I think it's partly because he's perceived to be somebody who is a tough rugby player. So if he can talk about it, okay, I can go to the doctor and I can ask him a few questions. Am I right in thinking prostate cancer is the cancer that takes the life of most men? Yeah, 12,000 men a year. It's the cancer, the biggest cancer killer of men.

He does that well-man test. He eventually goes and has a test done for prostate cancer, I guess. And then he gets the verdict back. You've been through grief before. You've been through loss before. In fact, when we talked about, you know, your earlier years, you kind of had that sense of impending doom. When he makes that phone call to you,

when you have that conversation with him, what is that like? What's going on in your head? So he had a Zoom set up with his urologist because it was the early part of this year when we were still not really, you know, there was that COVID surge. And he said, OK, don't come in. I'll do a Zoom with you and Gabby together. And I had made an appointment or a meeting, rather, with the head of a production company I was going to be working with to come to the house at 11. So Kenny said he's calling at 10.30. I said, yeah, great, fine, 10.30.

I was not expecting anything other than you're absolutely fine. You know, I did not expect negative news, didn't expect him to hear anything other than come back to me in a year, we'll keep an eye on it, you know. And otherwise I wouldn't have made an appointment with somebody at 11 o'clock. And when his urologist told him, I think we both were just, I think Kenny was more expecting it than me. I very much was like, you're going to be absolutely fine. You know, you look at your picture of health and you're on your watt bike pushing

out massive watts yesterday, you know, and you're great. And we were shocked, stunned, because then you don't know what that means. You know, how bad is it? Where's it gone? All those things. And, and I think Kenny was really very sad, you know, he's just like, I feel sadness because he said, I feel so well, I feel sad that inside me, this is happening and I don't know about it. And he, you know, it was a very confusing and also it's very tied in with your masculinity and, you know, kind of the prostate. And so he was, he was really, really upset. And as you can imagine, and I, I just thought, right, no, this is, we're going to sort this. This is going to be absolutely fine. And you know, how, what do we do? You know,

I kind of, what are the answers here? And his urologist was very, was brilliant. He's a brilliant communicator and told us what the options were. And I said, we just got to get a plan. You've got to get a plan together because you need, you need to know what you're doing and, and then we'll be positive and we'll just kind of keep being positive about it. And that's what we did, really. You know, once he got over the initial shock, we just really kind of focused on it as a project that we had to deal with. And it's a bloody awful operation. You know, you get basically six stab wounds in your torso. And it is really invasive and it's a horrible thing to see him and, you know, the pain he was afterwards. It's a horrible thing to go through, but he's doing really, really well now. And, you know, he's, he just said to me last night, actually, when we were about to go to sleep, he said, we've done really well, haven't we? Because he said, people keep saying to me, like, how are you all? How's it, you know? And he said,

we've done well. I said, we've done well, you know, cause he's, he's good. The kids have been great throughout it. We've been through, you know, something that kind of unifies you, I think as a family, you know, can really solidify you as a family. So, um, we're very lucky. He's your like, you know, throughout this conversation, I've really got a sense that this person is your rock. Totally. I was trying to think of a bigger superlative than the rock. But yeah, he is. He's, I remember once years ago doing a podcast

called Walking the Dog with Emily Dean. And at the end of it, she said to me, you've got Kenny-itis. I said, sorry. She said, you can't stop mentioning him. And he's just great. I'm very lucky. I knew I wasn't going to lose him. He's a great he's a great man and I couldn't I couldn't have ever I couldn't have ever wished for anybody to share my life with you know who's better I used to you know when I was having my kind of negative phase with men um and I perhaps didn't think I deserved somebody

like Kenny and I'm glad that I decided I did because you know timing's everything isn't it and when I met him if I'd been that person before I wouldn't have called him you know because he would have been too too good for me too nice for me. And yeah, he's been the most brilliant supporter. He's so positive. He's so encouraging. And, you know, he just really believes in me and gives me such enormous strength. And, you know, but he's also a vulnerable and sensitive person, you know, he's so as a role role model for our son you know i feel like i've got this great person who's alongside me what what advice could you give me because you know you've been in this relationship with with kenny i'm gonna guess i'm gonna say 22 years 21 23 yeah

99 so yeah twin coming up for um 24 years when we met we met january 99 if you were to give me a piece of advice on how my relationship could last for so long what would that advice be i think it's and we always and we don't always but we often will have those conversations with each other actually about why we are still going strong and what it is that, because we've been through like normal marriages, you know, we've been through rough patches and periods where you're kind of, you know, not, never before we got married, you know, it was, but marriage and children and the commitments, they do test you and they do put you in positions where you feel uncomfortable. And this is not kind of what I expected things to be and how, and I think the one thing is communication. We always talk those things through. Kenny is very much like, you don't go to bed on a disagreement or an argument,

you know, you sort, sit down and discuss. And that's metaphorically, you know, it doesn't have to be at bedtime, but you know, you don't just let something fester. He always says that he nips it in the bud before it's a bud, you know, so if he can see something's a problem and, but also it's okay to have disagreements. You know, we have robust disagreements about things. We're not aligned on every single thing because that's not real either. And I think it's, it's important to know how to disagree. My parents sometimes had really screaming rows when I was little, and that's really horrible to hear as a child because you don't want that you know and screaming rows are one thing but actually being able to disagree is is really important having your shared kind of passions and goals in life and things you want to do together is also but also having your differences

and having your like you know his his things that he likes to do separate to me is really important because you can't live in each other's pockets all the time so I suppose those things I'm saying to you through hindsight looking back I think you know I wouldn't have sat out at the beginning and said okay Kenny these are the things that we have to and I was talking to um we have to do I was talking to somebody younger a lot younger the other day about relationships and the kind of young people now and kind of how relationships you know start is so different and how relationships even come to be and expectations of relationships. And, and the, the worry for me is that it's all about perfection and it, it's never going to be perfect. You know, there are always going to be things that go wrong,

but I think if you're, if you're in tune and you're kind of aligned on, on the really important things, the values that you have, then you can you know bumps in the road so and also you've got to laugh you know having fun is really really important so yeah I've always I've always resisted talking too much about Kenny because I've always felt like I'm going to jinx it you know if I say something but I feel now with nearly a quarter of a century gone that we're okay we're definitely not going to jinx it, you know, if I say something, but I feel now with nearly a quarter of a century gone that we're okay. We're definitely not going to break up tomorrow. No. Yeah. So I used to, at the beginning, I always used to think I'm not going to talk about it because you know, it's, it feels too good. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make it go wrong if I talk about it. So do you schedule Kenny time? I say this because I've been sort of dealing with this

recently where I'm so busy with work and work is all scheduled. The only thing that's not scheduled is time with my partner so that can sometimes fall by the wayside so then you don't want it to feel too formulaic do you yeah which is it scheduling like what tab has she got she read well it's funny because I've sat here with someone who said you should be scheduling that time and then I can't the prospect of going to my girlfriend be like let me put you into the schedule I think she she would be very happy. So I wanted to figure out what you do to make sure, you know, you told me you're doing the World Cup, you've got all of these incredible things coming up. How do you make sure, is there a practical way you make sure your relationship doesn't fall by the wayside? I think we always have, we're lucky because most mornings, you know, we're having

breakfast together. We're kind of aware of which other days are, we have, you know, we're having breakfast together. We're kind of aware of which other days are. We have, you know, dinners and things, schedules, and we've got things we might do at the weekend. So I think there are weeks where we don't see a lot of each other, you know, if our schedules aren't really aligning. But we know it's okay because we'll pick up, you know, pick up some time at the weekend or something.

I think through our relationship early on, Kenny was away a lot with his rugby, and he'd be traveling and then coming home. And that was really hard when you had weeks away from each other. But it did make, I think, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder and you really kind of want to be with that person. You know, you want to be with that person, but I wouldn't so much schedule it as just make sure that you've got something nice coming up or you've got something you're going to do together. Or, you know, you've got an afternoon. Yesterday I took a break for about half an hour, I was back to back recording podcasts and it was a gorgeous day. And I knew he was outside, he'd done something

outside. So I just went out in the garden, just walked around with him for half an hour because I knew he wanted to show me things that he'd been doing and that made him feel good showing me these things. So, and it made me feel good as well because I was getting a bit of vitamin D and I was kind of having a nice chat with him. And I think spontaneity actually is really important in a relationship and not always, you know, planning, trying to be more spontaneous in your personal life to your, yeah, your business life, you know, you've got to be, you've got to be on it. But I think, yeah, the spontaneity is quite good. And he gets, you know, like, he'll be like, oh, are you coming to that? You know, if he was doing something, a charity event or something or business or something. And I say,

oh, I'm going to come along to that, you know? Oh, great. It's great that you're there. And I really love it when he says that because he wants me to be there, you know? So I'll make the effort then to go along to something or, you know, maybe even, I've even picked up golf again because he loves golf. I think, right, we're heading into a period of our life. We're going to have more time. I can play golf again. So I've started playing golf again. Oh, wow. That that'll teach me we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question to the next guest they don't know who they're asking it for they just write it in this book and I don't get to see the question

until I open the book so the question that's been left for you not knowing that it was for you is oh interesting what would you do if you absolutely weren't afraid? If I had no fear, I would, when my kids have left home, I jump on a plane, I go and try and work in LA for a year. I go and work in America. I've always wanted to work in American TV. So I would go, right, I'm going to just go bang on the doors of execs. And if you could write the job role, what would the job role be in America? It would be pretty much Oprah Winfrey.

Yeah, I think that if I had no fear, that's what I'd do. I could see you doing that. In fact, that's been rattling around in the back of my head for a long time. When you said earlier that you wanted your own talk show, I was like, I could 100 you doing that. In fact, that's, that's been rattling around in the back of my head for a long time. When you said earlier that you wanted your own talk show, I was like, I could a hundred percent see that. You have all the attributes, you know, even in your writing, I see, I see that. I see the huge potential of like great conversation, the openness, the vulnerability, the way that you make people feel calm. Um, and you create a bridge for them to be open to your elocution.

Is that the word? Your ability to articulate yourself in such a wonderful, apparently way with such ease. I could 100% see that. Oh, wow. Thank you. I'm very excited to watch the show. Oh, thank you so much. When I grew up, I wanted to be Oprah.

You know, as a kid, I wanted to be Oprah. And that was the person, I think, that I thought, wow, that's amazing. But then, of course, you're in this country, and you look around, and you know, a kid I wanted to be Oprah and that was the person I think that I thought wow that's amazing but then of course you're in this country and you look around and you know kind of who your role models yeah yeah I got to meet her once um by accident uh we were in a lovely restaurant in London and she was dining a few tables away and I would never go up to somebody and you know do that thing and Kenny was going to me we were with some other people who worked in telly they were kind of execs. And they, everybody knew she was there, you know, and Kenny said, Oh my God, he knowing she's my hero. And he said, Oprah's there. I said, I know, I know. And he's saying, are you

going to? And I said, no, of course I'm not. And she just walked past the table and he just got hold of her hand. And she looked down at him and he said, and she was so warm. And he said, I'm so sorry. I know you're leaving, but he said, my wife absolutely adores you. And she just got hold of my hand and she put it on her heart. And she looked me in the eye and said, and I adore you. And I was like, thank you. She hadn't got a clue who the hell we all were. But she was so warm and lovely.

And actually, I said to Kenny afterwards, I hate you for doing that. But I love you for doing that. Because I have like, I have a, I oprah winfrey's hand and um yeah so um i think you know the way she's created her her whole broadcasting empire as well is just amazing she's such an incredible role model and has a battle through you imagine being oprah winfrey at the beginning of her career you know kind of let alone you know she was an actress but also what she'd gone through as a child and then to forge her way as a news broadcaster in in that environment in america i think she is yeah she's such a she's a good role model i think yeah she's a role model to me too she's a huge role model to me in so many ways um her grace her class her struggle you know

exactly all the things you've described there um but so are you you're a role model to me as well and that that became clearer and clearer throughout your book and you know I'm someone that's just stepped a foot into the tv world over the last like year or two with Dragon's Den but people like you that I've watched um on my screen um your skill there's a real skill to what you do and I don't think it's it's always appreciated to its full extent the level of skill the research the diligence the diligence, the hard work, the talent to do what you do is really astounding. Having been on camera a little bit, I really, really appreciate that. And I really also appreciate you writing a book like this because the vulnerability of this book is going to unlock a lot for a lot of people. It's going to liberate them from a lot of their

own concerns. And really also, you know, I'm not someone that understands menopause, but it's important that I do. And the lens that I read about menopause through isn't from an experience that I might have someday, but it's the women in my life that matter to me. That's so important. And having empathy for them. Yeah. And one of those is my mother and her own journey with that. And it gave me a huge sense of empathy that I didn't have before, a huge understanding that I didn't have before from reading you talk about that in this book and so openly previously. So thank you, because this is a very important book that I think everybody should read regardless of their age, race or gender. I think there's something really important there for everybody. And thank you for coming here today and being so open and

honest with me. It's a huge honour to meet you. It feels like I freak out a little bit when I see people that I've looked up to for so long on the TV screen. I'm absolutely overwhelmed by everything you just said there. So thank you so much, because you are obviously, just what you're doing at the age that you've done, you know, is phenomenal. And to have that kind of wisdom to, you know, to be able to read a book like mine, I feel like we're actually very different in lots of ways, but very similar in other ways. And so that really means so much.

Thank you. I really, really appreciate that. And best of luck with all the incredible things that you're doing too. Thank you.