Fearne Cotton reveals her struggle with working mum guilt and why her career is no longer ‘everything’
THESE days, Fearne Cotton is more likely to be found elbow-deep in wheat-free banana bread dough than up to her eyes in the Glastonbury mud.
Once a party-loving rock chick, she’s settled into her new role as a home-bird, cake-baking mum of two with a “non-existent” social life and a penchant for an early night.
But is there anything about the Fearne of old that she misses?
“No, because I feel like I really did it,” she says.
“I really went for it and lived every bit of it. I was working relentlessly, seven days a week, all day long doing the things I wanted to do and ticking it all off the list. I went on crazy nights out then straight to work – I did all of that. And I’ve got bloody great memories. It was a roller coaster, but now I’ve reached this new part of life and I feel ready for it to be slower and gentler.”
From the outside looking in, Fearne, 35, certainly seems to have it all sorted: two beautiful children (Rex, four, and Honey, 23 months), a rock-star husband in Jesse Wood, style-queen status and a career that is constantly evolving.
Since quitting Radio 1 two years ago, Fearne has cannily turned herself into a lucrative brand, with two healthy cookbooks, a kitchenware range due out later this year and a children’s clothing line for Boots, which launches at the end of the month, along with another book, Yoga Babies.
But life isn’t quite as simple as that. Scratch beneath the surface and things haven’t always been plain sailing.
MOST READ IN FABULOUS
“There’s a strange myth that if you work in telly you are immune to anything in life that is negative,” Fearne says.
“But fame doesn’t create barriers to bereavement, loss, heartache, stress, trauma… If anything, it can heighten it because you’ve then got other people seeing you go through it.
“I’m massively aware that I’ve got a job I love, a family, I’m able to pay my bills – I’m extremely lucky. But we’ve got it so wrong thinking that success or marriage or money or power is going to give us everlasting happiness. They can be a positive, sure. But they’re not going to solve everything.”
Earlier this year, Fearne published her well-received book Happy, opening up for the first time about her own struggles with mental health and revealing that she’d taken medication for a period – although she’s reluctant to go into the specifics about when exactly this was.
Today, she says she’s still prone to bouts of depression, but has a series of go-to strategies for managing those dips.
“Sometimes I’ll wake up and it’ll just be there,” she says.
“Never to the scale of what I have experienced in the past and not very frequent at all these days, but it’s the same feeling and I know it very well.
“It could be triggered by something that’s a reminder of my past or a moment that brings up stress. But what I’ve done since deciding I didn’t want to be on medication is spend a lot of my energy exploring alternative ways. Every now and again I’ll go and have a bit of reflexology, or I might chat to an amazing friend who’s a counsellor, and I can kind of click my head back into a better place.
“I don’t spend money on fancy clothes or cars – that’s just not our vibe. My thing is about treating myself to these little moments and tools so I can understand more and hopefully be helpful to other people.”
We meet at her local cafe – a quirky, bustling, cosy little haven in Richmond, south-west London, with mismatched furniture, comfy cushions and fabulous home-made cakes. Very Fearne.
She’s great company – articulate, funny and full of common sense – the mate you’d go to first for sound advice or a kick up the backside.
However, she admits that now is the first time since leaving Radio 1 after a decade at the station that she feels in control.
“Everything feels a bit more manageable. I can come up for air more often. The first bit [of motherhood] is absolute carnage, but I feel like I’m able to now focus a little bit more on work, because I was so nervous before. I get a lot of guilt and find it very hard to know how to balance my time.”
A big turning point, she says, was filming BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are?, which airs on Thursday, after worrying that opting out of television – and to an extent the public eye – had been to the “detriment” of her career.
“It was the first intense filming job I’d done since either of the kids were born and I was so nervous. But I came out of it thinking: ‘You know what? I actually can do this! My husband’s absolutely fine, he knows what he’s doing and the kids don’t even know I’ve gone!’
“I’ve been very picky, and sometimes that’s been my downfall because I’ve missed out on a lot and probably haven’t done as many high-profile things as I could. My career has changed so dramatically because I’ve made decisions based on family life.
“But it’s not like when I was in my 20s, where my career was everything to me and all I cared about was doing the biggest shows, being on the biggest things and having the most people watching. Now it’s just being healthy and my family being happy and life just rolling along nicely.”
Does she think women can have it all? Or is it inevitable that motherhood curtails ambition?
My career has changed so dramatically because I’ve made decisions based on family life.
Fearne Cotton
“Women can have it all, but you have to follow your own inner barometer of what’s right for you. And if that’s not going back to work then that’s perfect. If it’s returning full-time and you’ve got the support network to do it, then absolutely do it. And if you’re in the middle like me, trying to do a bit of both, then brilliant.
“You can have it all, but do you really want it? And I don’t think men ever have to deal with that. We’re one of the first generations of women to be back at work full-time after children, so I think we’re the ones left to kind of rummage through the wreckage, trying to figure it all out.”
Which brings us rather neatly to the BBC gender pay gap row. If Fearne had still been at the corporation, one suspects she would have been on that list of its highest earners published last month.
Yet the disparity between the salaries of the male and female stars would very likely have infuriated her enough to join more than 40 high-profile BBC women in signing the letter to director-general Tony Hall demanding he addresses the issue.
“I think I would have been reticent because I don’t like getting drawn into drama,” she says a little cautiously.
“Secondly, because there’s a bit of me that feels very lucky to just be able to pay my mortgage off, I wouldn’t want to make too much of a deal about how much I was getting. But I am massively for equality, and [equal pay] should be a given, so I think I would have got involved because I so vehemently believe that this is wrong.
“I mean, it’s bonkers – it’s prehistoric that this happens in any work arena. It shouldn’t matter where people come from or what their background is, where they were educated or what their sex is.”
Amen.
One significant element in building Brand Fearne (“I’m weirdly uncomfortable with being known as that because I’m just sort of being me… bumbling along, being a mum”) has been her social media presence.
Her Instagram feed gives followers snapshots into a happy, chaotic family life. She posts domestic-goddess-esque pictures of beetroot falafel or veg-pulp muffins that – voila! – she’s just whipped up in her kitchen.
But equally we see her make-up-free, hair piled into a “mum bun” and the washing hanging up in the background.
“I’d rather people actually see that there is crap all over the floor because I think there’s already enough fantasy in social media,” she says.
“If I can dilute that even slightly, then I feel like I’m having a genuine transaction with people. If we don’t remember the reality then it can play havoc with your mental space.
“At 9.30pm I turn the phone off and I don’t turn it on until the next morning. We’ve got to a point where if you don’t reply instantly to emails or texts, it’s like: ‘What’s happened to her? Is she dead?’”
She says she worries about what our reliance on mobiles is doing to society.
“I remember when mobiles were like bricks and you certainly wouldn’t ever look at it unless you were going to call someone. These days because everyone is doing this [she picks up her phone and stoops over it], it’s cutting off something cognitively about how we interact with each other. And that scares me, because I don’t want my kids to lose that connection with other humans. Part of me wishes for a time when everyone goes: ‘Let’s not have mobiles any more and just live our lives.’”
Juggling childcare is a constant battle, and she and Reef guitarist Jesse, 40, who also has children Arthur, 15, and Lola, 11, from his first marriage to Tilly Wood, can often be found working out who can do what and when – which doesn’t leave many opportunities to enjoy time as a couple.
“It’s really hard, especially when we’ve got the older kids because they like to stay up later than we do! We’ll make a real effort to go to a gig now and again, but because our schedules are unknown each week it’s really hard to plan anything. So Jesse’s like: ‘Oh I was going to be here but now I’m rehearsing at Glastonbury for four days, so bye!’ It’s quite ad hoc.”
Rex starts school next month, and Fearne’s face crumples with emotion at the mere thought.
“I’m absolutely terrified about it,” she admits.
“He’s just this little guy walking into school on his own, making friends and eating lunch that someone else has cooked. It’s just a really massive moment that I’m letting go.
“Rex is a real explosion of energy, funny and engaging. Honey’s very happy to sit on the sidelines. If you say: ‘Please don’t do that,’ she goes: ‘OK,’ whereas Rex will give you 10 reasons why you’re wrong.”
Fearne admits that Rex is unlikely to wear anything from her new kids’ clothing range (“he’ll only wear a Chelsea football kit”). The project has been a while in the making, and Fearne has overseen every part of the process.
“I like it when kids’ clothes look a bit like adult clothes but shrunk,” she says.
“So there’s a little faux-fur jacket because I always wear them. Everything is comfortable and easy.”
On the way out of the cafe, she stops to chat to a couple of neighbours and buys a freshly baked loaf, and seems as content as it’s possible to be.
“I used to think that success is big and loud. Now it’s enjoying what I do. I feel very successful right now because I’m loving everything I’m doing, and that’s all I can ask for.”
Fearne by Fearne Cotton is available online and in 100 Boots stores across the UK from August 30.