Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I mean, if it's something, you know, I guess you had like a soft launch with your stepchildren. But then you had your two, Rex and Honey. What's that meant to you? Oh, my God. It's been the whole thing has just been, you know, I've got to start with my stepkids because I have the most beautiful relationship with them. I love the bones of them.
And they've brought me so much joy and so much happiness. And I still think there's a long way to go when we talk about blended families. And how amazing it can be. Yes, it's complicated. Yes, it requires an insane amount of communication and compromise and everything that we all go through. But the joy those adults now have brought me...
is insane and now they're at such a fun age we have such a laugh and I've you know I've known Lola my stepdaughter's 19 now when she was when I met her she was five wow teeny teeny tiny kid so I've seen her go through all of this you know go through puberty and then become a woman and now we're out having a laugh together at dinner and what a joy it's been a blessing to have this
inexplicable relationship with someone is not the same as having my own kids. It has a different tone to it, a different flavor, but it's so enjoyable and so beautiful. And I certainly wouldn't be who I am today without my stepkids. There's no way. They've helped inform who I am as a person. They fast-tracked me to being a responsible adult. They've made me accountable for my reactions to things.
They're amazing. And I just, I love them. I feel so lucky they're in my life. And then having my own kids, I mean, how do you even describe the feeling of bringing life into the world, what a privilege it is? How do you describe how insanely difficult it is? how challenging it can be, how confronting it is, how you have to learn so much overnight and continue to forever.
Like you think there's a bit where you just stop learning and it's all like, oh, we're in the rhythm of it now. We're just parents. It's every bloody day. It's exhausting, but absolutely life-affirming experience. And I don't even, I don't have the words. Like, I don't have the words to sum it up. It's all too big and all too overwhelming. And I just bloody love them so much.
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Chapter 2: How does motherhood transform one's perspective?
She was weekly, you know, she was in our living rooms weekly on Blue Peter. Janet, mega woman. And then you have gone on to become a famous parent yourself. That is such a unique...
situation there's there aren't that many women I don't think that have done that and I'd be very because it's been a real worry for me as a famous mother on how will this affect my children yeah how can I keep them safe how can I not I mean I spend a I spent a lot of time when I was younger trying not to embarrass them I don't care anymore no me neither um but Sorry, kids. Sorry, kids.
Sorry about that. But I would love to hear your take because that's so unique, having Janet as a mum. What was life like being the child of a famous mother? Right. Well, firstly, I'd say...
you know objectively us worrying is is a bit pointless because whoever whatever family you're boiling into the family dynamic affects who you are so it doesn't matter yes you don't get away no there's no further but your family oh that's yes okay yeah so don't worry it's it's good it's like just how it works isn't it um and sorry that's actually kind of brilliant like if i was famous or not yeah the family be free from that worry because like your family dynamic is 100 what affects you
You know when you say that, you're like, oh my God, that is literally the first time I've thought about that. That is mega. Yes. God, thank you. Well, no, not at all. It doesn't matter whether you're famous or not or who you are, your family dynamic will be affected. Yes. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. Well... I'm going to be thinking about that tonight. That's brilliant. Thank you. Wow. Okay. Yes. Yes.
And also, I realized as soon as you started talking about my parents, I started smiling a lot because I'm very close to my parents. And with my mum, geographically, we live about 10 minutes away from each other. The dreamers. Because I really hope some of my kids do that with me. Please. They will. They definitely will. Or I'm going to them. No, I reckon you have a similar vibe to with your kids.
I bet as my mum had with me, which is like the same way I'm going to do it, by the way. Strong matriarch vibes of just stay close, stay in touch, keep communicating with each other, check in. It's so important. So, yes, I see my mum. Sometimes I'll be walking the kids to school and the bit of park we walk through, I'll see my mum walking her dog. So it's all pretty wholesome.
We bump into grandma quite a lot. Oh, that's so nice. Yes, I love it. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I love that. And I think with my mum, look, I mean, it would be... I can see that there must be some seeds that were sown from what my mum did that somehow worked into what I was going to do, for sure. What sort of seeds? One of them's really embarrassing.
But this is really not going to put me in good light. This is great. I can't wait. No, go on, tell me. Well... I would love to say it was all to do with work ethic, but I just remember when I was, I think it must have been my seventh birthday, and we went to Madame Tussauds. And because my mom was on Blue Peter, we got to go straight in the front. And I think I was a bit like, that's pretty cool.
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Chapter 3: What role does a mother's influence play in shaping a loving relationship?
Holly, my oldest. And it was a joy. That is really nice. I actually think because my kids are still quite little, that is actually one of the biggest privileges of having such amazing support. Because I've got brilliant support with...
people who help me look after the kids when I'm working but it also means I can sometimes do things with them one-on-one and I actually think that is that's invaluable being able to do that if you've got you know lots of children um what are we talking about my mum so the other seeds I mean yeah my mum absolutely loves what she did so she uh
adored presenting blue peter and blue peter was it's very strange for me to even talk about it now because it's almost i think of it like a sibling which sounds really odd and maybe a little sad no you shared your life with it i did but particularly a bit of my childhood because my mum was presenting the show while she was a single mother um so i would spend most of my time with her i go to my dad every other weekend and she finished the show when she was having my brother so this chapter it was it was like my
yeah, the sibling I had during that time when it was a lot of time just me and her. And I think, yeah, I could see how much they love what they did. I like the fact that it opened my eyes to having a job that wasn't a traditional job.
So when the opportunity came to go on tour with my band, my parents, even though it was a slightly different world to theirs in music, that suited me too because it felt like my thing. But I also didn't have any sort of
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Chapter 4: How does step-parenting create joy and complexity in family dynamics?
dreamy world around it. I could see the sort of nuts and bolts of what I do. The reality of it. The reality, exactly. And I think that's a privilege too because it had been around me so I could think in those terms.
And I am aware that, you know, it's funny because when you're young and starting out, you don't want to think anything's been easier for you because it's hard for everybody when you've got out. But looking back, I'm like, wow, I had so many aces in my pack in terms of, you know, growing up in London, a time when... people from record companies would go out and actually go and watch gigs.
Yes, I mean, everything's different now, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that my, this is actually probably the biggest one, because my parents worked in a similar field, they never, and my family haven't, they never became my fans, which sounds like a really odd statement. No, But it can really shift things.
And they never were starstruck by any element of anything I got up to, which meant I had such a solid home base, such a grounding. It was lovely if I'd enjoyed the things I was getting up to, but really they always wanted to check in. How was I feeling about...
emotionally, what was going on at home, how was my relationship at the time, was everything in order for, you know, could I pay my rent, all those sorts of things that was quite practical and emotionally led and not... You've sold how many units? You're going to this country? That was at the end of the conversation. So that was a benefit too.
It's so interesting because I had never thought about that, that if you become famous, your parents sort of become fans and how nice it would be to have somebody. Yes. Or at least be starstruck by the whole thing. Yeah. Or it's unfamiliar, you know. They might not know what they're entitled to. Yeah, they're entitled to help you. So those things help me for sure. And all the kind of
things that I was saying about you at the beginning about being just down to earth and normal. I see you as kind of a humble, a humble superstar. Wow. No, but that's how I see you. Like you are really well known. Everybody knows who you are, but you are, you've got your feet on the ground. And now that makes real sense, you saying that.
I can completely understand that they would know exactly what you needed. Yeah. Janet would know this is what I could have done with. Yeah. I'm going to let me give this to Sophie. Yeah. And she's still in that role now. Is she? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very, I'm lucky. I do have a lot of people that give me lots of support.
So nothing I do is happening on its own really as the support for my redirection, including Richard, of course. Yes. I mean, I really want to talk about him a bit now as well, but I want to stay on being a mother because, you know, you then went on to become a mother and you were famous. And then funnily enough in 2021, you know, with Kitchen Disco, that happened again.
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Chapter 5: What challenges arise when balancing fame and motherhood?
I knew what I felt like I needed, but... Yes, I see what you're saying. I didn't know if... Are people really struggling and are they going to think how frivolous, you know? Oh, what? It was the opposite. Yeah. And actually, it was Richard's idea to do the first one. He said, oh, because I was feeling really restless, discombobulated, missing people, missing music, performing.
It was such a heavy time. And he said, why don't we live stream like you do singing a party set? And I said, that is a crazy idea, but I haven't got anything else I'm doing. So yes. So we did the first one and I sort of waited you know, to see what the reaction was. Like that. Yeah, like, oh no, everybody's going to say, what are you doing?
But then all these lovely, lovely messages were coming and I thought, oh, this is actually okay. It's okay. And it's funny because obviously I do sing for a living, but the kitchen disco was very much about my relationship with music and people. It wasn't really about the day job at all. It was about needing...
to invite people over, as you say, that catharsis, a little bit of escape, just change the tone just for a minute, just 20 minutes, half an hour of being a bit silly, getting together. I would have my friends and family I knew were watching so they could see the kids. My youngest was a baby, he was one, so the grandparents could all see the grandbabies and what they were up to that week.
And see them happy. See them happy, see us being silly, And it really worked. I liken it to, it was like having a non-alcoholic drink when that bit where your brain reads it as giving you a bit of an upper. Even though really we hadn't seen anyone, we hadn't gone anywhere, there had been no party, there had been no gig.
I would tidy up the house afterwards and I'd half expect to find remnants of people. Yeah, it was a very strange time, but it was so pure. I would cry all the time as well. If I sang a song that was a bit more... I would cry because all my emotions were so close to the surface all the time. Like everybody, very... Just felt quite sort of unarmored, I think.
Do you know, for me, it's quite nice to hear you say that because I've met quite a lot of people who loved lockdown. Yeah, me too. And who loved the isolation and the, I cried all the time. Yeah, I found it really tough. I found it cruel. I found the cruelty of thinking seeing people you love might mean they get very, very sick and they might die. That was so heavy to me.
But, you know, everybody had their own stories of what was happening and some people have experienced extraordinary pain as well. So... whilst I did lose my stepdad during that time, which was... awful. At least... at least we were allowed to have a funeral together when we did, and we're all, none of us were traveling, we were all together, we could support one another.
So... I'm actually grateful to have us having that time together as well. But yeah, you know. If people found out good aspects, I'm really happy about that. Of course, we found some good aspects too. I loved being with the kids all that time. Yes. Me too. But I haven't lost sight. I didn't need a global pandemic to teach me what mattered to me. I already knew that.
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Chapter 6: How does the experience of motherhood evolve over time?
But what I rather liked about what she said is that she had an absolute understanding. And I think as a parent, I think you'll get this, that she was a safe place for you to be angry. Like if you'd have been with somebody else, a friend of hers, you might not have felt free enough to feel fucking furious. But because it was your mother and you knew she loved you,
She was a safe enough place to really fucking feel it. Would that be fair? I could even guess what happened that day that she wrote that entry. Because I smashed up my childhood bedroom and they let me so I could hide it from the world. And they never said anything. And they used to do this thing for me called face care. It was part of my treatment.
Like when I came back from France, you have to have face care. So face care is like when you're doing it from home with what you've got. It's just like a tub of E45 and you just lay on the bed and you hang your head and your neck off the bed to stretch your burn and you massage it. And mum would do face care. And then I would feel like all... uh, like wet.
And I was like, and obviously I'm blind in one eye, right? So I'd be like, and then I realized mom was crying on my face silently. So mom, and it was in mom's room that had an ensuite bathroom. So mom would swap with dad and be like, I need, I need a wee. And then the ensuite bathroom had a fan and she pulled the fan and,
it would be gone ages for a week so you couldn't hear and then dad would take over and then then I'd be feeling like the same wet and I'd be like what is happening then dad would go into the bathroom the phone would stay on then mum would come back and they would do like shifts like that and we used to play we always used to play audiobooks I had like you know like a ghetto blaster yeah we had cds in a ghetto blaster we used to play like Deepak Chopra
this was even before people like Mel Robbins. It was like Rhonda Brine, like The Secret, you know, like the really early days. And we used to play all that. And I'd come out and be like, oh, you've missed CDA. You were in there for ages. I'm on CDB. Almost not realizing because I was, you know, yes and no. Like the day I gave birth to my first child and I was a mum, I rang my mum and I was like,
Sorry, because now I'm a mum and now I understand. And yeah, I understand more now I'm a parent. But yeah, I knew some of it, but it was it was like because I had a lot of post-traumatic stress, I was always in like fight or flight. Yes. So it was it was difficult. I'd like to quickly talk about something that I am, you are. Yes, yes. And that is a step-mom. Ah, I know. Isn't it cool?
Can you just talk me through what it's like being a step-mom for you? It is so fun. I just have the best time with them because I'm like that fairy godmother that gives them all the sugar and all the ice cream and then sends them back. And their mother, who I love dearly, is sort of like, they're bouncing off the wall. And I'm like, sorry.
But, you know, I think that's the fun part of being a stepmom. Like, you can do those naughty things. And, you know, I take them out. And I took them to an Ed Sheeran concert. I met Ed Sheeran. Like, I was giving it all to these kids. I was very much like... I cared about making them feel like comfortable and safe and I wanted them to feel safe around me. And, you know, I love my partner so much.
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