‘Marriage and kids? I wouldn’t rule them out’: Myleene Klass reveals how she’s met her Mr Wonderful and may settle down
AFTER recovering from heartache and getting to grips with the challenges of single parenthood, Myleene has good reason to smile again
MYLEENE Klass’ cloud-nine grin is worth a thousand words.
She’s just enjoyed a “really good” weekend (“like, really, really good”) and boy is it written all over her glowing face.
“I have never, hand on my heart, been happier,” she says.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that there’s a new man on the scene and it’s clear that Myleene has fallen hard. She’s even backtracking on her vow never to marry again.
“I know I said never, but now I’ll say not-so never. I’ll say maybe. And in future I shouldn’t make such sweeping statements.”
Myleene, 38, did not reveal her mystery man’s name or what he does for a living, although when asked whether he’s in the public eye or whether he’s a normal, she goes a bit blushy and replies dreamily: “He’s a wonderful.”
And then she immediately chastises herself for overdoing the schmaltz.
“Oh, that was such a gush line: ‘He’s a wonderful’. Gush, gush, gush! I know it’s pathetic.”
It has since been reported that Myleene's mystery man is fashion public relations guru Simon Motson.
She swerves the too-personal question of whether he’s met her daughters – Ava, eight, and five-year-old Hero (“I try to be careful, my girls are real people”) – but hints that she might soon be inclined to reveal more about his identity than she did her previous boyfriend who was, publicly at least, only ever known as The Great Dane, despite them dating for over a year.
“It’s new. I’m not gonna put any conditions on it, I’m literally gonna roll with the punches, because I’ve learned you can’t plan anything. That’s futile. It’s just nice to be fearless and that’s going to be my mode from now on.”
Being fearless might also mean having more children – another surprising U-turn.
“Maybe before [I’d have said no], but now? I don’t know. Again I think I should take a little bit of my own advice and not plan anything in that respect and just see what gets thrown up.”
She adds with a loved-up smile: “I wouldn’t rule anything out any more.”
It’s been just over four years since her happy family world was devastated when her marriage to Graham Quinn broke down irretrievably just six months after they tied the knot and after 11 years together.
Their relationship remains strained and for legal reasons he is off the agenda today.
The shock of the split left Myleene broken, and it took a long time and a lot of support from her tight-knit network of loved ones before she felt herself again.
Even now, she says the experience has changed her irrevocably and she’s a different person from the one she was before.
“I think it’s very clear that I am. I don’t recognise myself, which shows how far I’ve come. I own my choices and I own my mistakes, I don’t look backwards. I feel like I can be exceptionally honest – there are some people who don’t live a true life and I don’t want to be one of those people.
“And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I’ve had the most successful three years in business of my life. That ain’t a coincidence. I got my head down, elbows out and I got on with stuff cos I had to.”
She nods when asked if she’s surprised herself.
“Yes, very much so. I said to my friend that I feel like kryptonite some days and she told me I was more like bamboo. I bend, but I don’t break.”
Myleene Klass: Single Mums on Benefits sees her meeting lone mothers and fathers and finding out about their individual stories, which she hopes will help dispel some of the myths and stigma around single-parent families.
“To make a documentary about something I live every day, as do so many people – 2 million of us actually and who knows how many unofficially – was really important to me. I wanted to take ownership of a title [single mum] that can mean so many things, but ultimately has negative connotations,” she says.
“Actually, I couldn’t be prouder of the title. I don’t know any different now. I raise my daughters and I do that shoulder to shoulder with my single mum friends and single dad friends.
“Everyone had an incredible story to tell – there’s one father who lost his wife and it was utterly tragic. [During filming] his little boy ran in, and from his work satchel the dad pulled out some wet wipes and there –bam! – we connected.
“We met teenage mums who aren’t even eligible to claim benefits because they are still children in the eyes of the state. So all of the aspersions that people cast and all the assumptions they make are completely unfounded. It’s nice to address that with the women who haven’t even got time to pop their head above the parapet and blow the myth themselves.”
She would quite like it if this departure from her already multi-faceted career as a fashion designer for Littlewoods, Classic FM and Smooth Radio host, businesswoman and professional celebrity, led to more documentary-making.
“I’m naturally people-curious, anyway. I will always be that person at the end of the party still nattering away! I never knew I could make work out of it, but it has been fantastic. There’s no shiny Saturday-night make-up – it’s gritty, honest and real. It’s hard. And I suppose they need ballsy women to tackle those things and I don’t mind being that ballsy woman.
“Hopefully, the single parents out there watching will be like: ‘Yay! Someone is speaking up for us.’”
Myleene is on her usual buoyant form today, chatting (a lot) in between shots, asking questions and appearing interested in everyone around her.
She jokes that she’s constantly in mum mode, and at one point fights the urge to track down a tool kit to nail down an accident-waiting-to-happen wobbly step at our location house.
But she’s also got a not-insignificant devil-may-care streak to her.
The last time we did a photo shoot with her was the day she tweeted those infamous emails from some fellow school mums, who were requesting money in lieu of gifts to buy a Kindle and desk for their children’s birthdays.
Myleene also tweeted her response, in which she suggested that instead people should make donations towards a “real, live unicorn”, that could be purchased at “Getwhatyouregivenandendthismadness.com.”
“You know that went global?” she says of the story.
Yup.
“But what actually ended up happening was that it opened every floodgate that everyone has ever felt about weddings, christenings and baby showers.
“I’d just got back from Nepal [with Save The Children] where we’d been burying babies in the hills dying of pneumonia, and 20p would have saved them, and you want £20 for a desk?”
So did this exchange change the atmosphere at the school gate?
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“I should hope it did!” she fires back. “I had a lot of people who secretly wrote me emails of support. There was a lot of: ‘I wish I could say that, but I’d get in a lot of trouble...’
“If there’s any awkwardness at the school gates, it’s not from me, I guess it’s people who feel guilty or embarrassed. Mortally embarrassed.
“It was so clinical, greedy, almost prescriptive. While you’re filing that one off the list, you’re totally missing the daisies, the living in the now. You’re missing the kids just running around eating jelly. They don’t need to have some epic gift.
“I have a job, I’m a working mum, I don’t ask for 20 quid off my hedge-fund husband to put in the pot – it’s about teaching the youth to be appreciative and live in the real world, for f**k sake.”
Myleene very clearly didn’t, and still doesn’t, care about any ramifications for her personally, although she does flinch a little when reminded that the head teacher sent out a letter to all parents warning them: “If you can’t tweet anything nice, don’t tweet anything at all,” which inevitably also ended up in the papers.
“If I’d said something wrong then, yeah, I would care, but I didn’t. And that’s why I walk around just fine. It was funny because it had obviously been brewing and nobody could say it. Do I have any regrets? Really? None. Zero. Less than zero!”
Ava and Hero will always know the value of money, she says. They are aware their mum is successful and that they have a comfortable life as a result of her hard work.
“I don’t want them to think work is just some cloud that I float around on. I tell them what I do, and they understand that’s what pays their school fees and that their favourite dress didn’t just land in their wardrobe.
“Everything I have, I grafted for, and it’s something that I want to teach my children. I sound like my dad, but I want them to have that gratification at the end of the day when they’ve made something, done something or achieved something.
“I live in the real world, despite what people may think. I’m raising two girls and I know I’m privileged now, but I wasn’t born into that – I created everything myself and I maintain it for myself as well.”
One of the ways the girls reap the benefits of Myleene’s achievements (she’s thought to be worth £13million) are the incredible holidays they enjoy as a family. In fact, one look at Myleene’s sun-drenched social media photos and you’d be forgiven for thinking the trio were permanently gallivanting around the globe.
“It looks that way,” agrees Myleene, “and I definitely have more [holidays] than most. But I’m unapologetic for it. I work hard and I play hard.
“I ask my girls what adventure they want to go on. They say elephants – OK, let’s go! Dolphins? Let’s go find some dolphins. Cos why not? What am I doing all this for otherwise?
“So we go and have adventures and make loads of memories in, as we say, the DVD in our heads. People think I’m just sitting on my sun lounger – which if I wanted to, again, would be none of their business – but I’m not. We’re out there having experiences.”
She worries “100%” about the terrifyingly fast-paced digital age in which she’s bringing up her girls, and deadpans that they can have a phone only “when they’re 42 and living in a nunnery.”
But, she adds: “You can hide from it or you can run with it, so we’ll tackle it head-on. I’m as honest as I can be with them about everything.
“I don’t mean I’m going to turn out two perfect civilians that the rest of the world haven’t figured out how to make yet. I’m certainly gonna make mistakes, but we’ll deal with those as well.
“I want to raise strong, happy, confident women. But equally, I know some small-minded little twerp can pull them down with one comment.”
She says the fact it’s just the three of them has strengthened the mother-daughter bond immeasurably. They are a team and she briefly wells up when talking about how close they are.
“They’re my unit and I think I needed to make this documentary for them as well, just to normalise all the situations that are like ours.
“Life isn’t like the fairy tales, and not every family is the 2.4 children configuration. That’s quite a big lesson to learn for anybody.
“They’ll find themselves. And I’ll make them fine. I don’t care about failing anywhere else, but I will not fail them. No way.”
Watch Myleene Klass: Single Mums on Benefits, Tuesday, 9pm, ITV.
