Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Catherine Anne Davies is better known by her stage name The Anchoress.  She is a musician, producer and a former academic, which results in her providing a fascinating reading list with her art pop albums, of poems and other writing that inspired her. After many losses, Catherine had a successful 7th pregnancy and her daughter is now 5 years old.  She told me how becoming a mum radi...

Honey Spencer is a wine expert who has two little boys aged 6 and 1.  She and her husband Charlie run a neighbourhood restaurant called ‘Sune’ in Hackney in East London, which she describes as feeling ‘wholesome and right’. Honey told me that Georgia is the birthplace of wine, and how she is a fan of ‘skin contact’ wine. She also described how vineyards are like the ‘canary in the coal mine’...

Lisa Oxenham is a mum to Eliza who’s 10 and to Wolfgang who’s nine and a half months old.  She started out as beauty editor at More magazine and then worked for Marie Claire magazine for 20 years concentrating on beauty and, later, on wellness too. Lisa became a mum for the second time at the age of 50 and she now has her own YouTube channel concentrating on wellness and motherhood. She told...

Nadine Merabi is a British-Lebanese clothes designer. She is the founder of the brand which shares her name and is based in Manchester. She is mother to two little girls aged 4 and 5. Nadine says at the heart of the brand is a desire to instil confidence in young women and make them feel great about themselves.  Nadine played hockey for England for 10 years and always felt she struggled to fi...

Becky Barnicoat is a cartoonist who has recently published the paperback version of her memoir ‘Cry When The Baby Cries’. It’s a cartoon depiction of new motherhood and it makes me laugh out loud. Sleep deprivation; the tricky time-consuming bedtime routine; the body after birth with deflated stomach and huge boobs; and perky youthful-looking parents pre-birth compared to the same couple with thei...

India de Beaufort @indiadebeaufort is a British actress who lives in Los Angeles. She is also an influencer who shares my passion for vintage and antique clothing. I love her natural flowing posts because the strands of her life will be woven in as she’s snipping a dress with a scissors while wearing it!  India has an 8 year old son Crosby. She shared with me how she had terrible postpartum d...

Siobhan Priest - or Shiv - appears as @thefiremum on Instagram and I love seeing her posts about her life as a firefighter in the London Fire Brigade. Shiv started her working life as a model and continued in that job when she became a single mum to her daughter, at the age of 24.  However she says she was always looking for a helping role in life. Firefighting appealed from an early age but...

Louise Boyce aka @mumastillgotit is a content creator, author and model. She has 3 children aged 13, 10 and 6, and she has developed a huge following for her fun and largely positive take on motherhood, which she makes fun of, in her online reels.  She told me how she started modelling at the age of 15 and became bulimic to reach the weight goals set by the industry at that time. After she ha...

Dr Sian Williams is a journalist and broadcaster and author. She trained as a trauma assessor while working at the BBC and is a registered counselling psychologist. She presents the fabulous Radio 4 series and podcast ‘Life Changing’ which I totally recommend. She has 5 children, the eldest being in their 30s, the youngest 17.   Sian told me about having her glorious and unexpected first...

Helen Dukes is an entrepreneur and DJ, and mum to 2 daughters, 11 year old Anya and 19 year old Lottie .  She is the founder of Disko Kids, a clothes and accessories brand that I love for its roots in music, festivals, sparkles and fun.  It also has at its heart a deep connection with charities such as Winston’s Wish. This child bereavement charity helped Helen navigate the death of her...

Anna Lunoe is an Australian DJ, singer, songwriter and producer. She lived and worked in LA for 8 years, performing at festivals such as Coachella. She’s now back in her hometown of Sydney, and has an 8 year old daughter and a 6 year old son and I caught up with her after she’d spent the night in Sydney Zoo for her son’s birthday.  I loved her idea of 2 night reset away, alone, every few...

Fran Cutler is famous for organising wild parties attended by A-listers. Things really took off in the 90s when she started organising parties for Oasis albums with Meg Matthews.  She’s a self-confessed technophobe and she’s using this fallow Glastonbury year, to write a memoir which she promises will be both salacious and funny. She brought up her daughter Mercy on her own, after the father...

Jamie Genevieve is a Scottish make up artist and entrepreneur. I follow her on Instagram and am so impressed by the brand she’s launched. Some of her products have now become my make up staples.  We talked last month about how she started out as a makeup counter girl, loving demonstrating makeup and selling it, moving onto YouTube herself and then launching her own brand Vieve. Jamie has a li...

Nicole Appleton is a singer and a mum to Gene aged 24, and Skipper who is nearly 6.  She first came into our lives in the 90s when she and her elder sister Natalie were members of the hugely successful band All Saints. Together, the Appleton sisters have just brought out a new single ‘Falling Into You’ and it’s gorgeous. Very much their classic, warm and optimistic selves.  She and I tal...

Dawn Williams is a mum of three and an Olympic weightlifter. She is also a campaigner for exercising throughout cancer treatment to get the best possible chance of recovery. And this is all before we even touch on her full-time job in life sciences.  Dawn and I met by chance on a train when I was travelling to a gig. We got talking and I knew I wanted to share her amazing story with you. In t...

Kelly Rutherford is an American actress probably best known for her starring role in 7 series of Gossip Girl (2007-2012). Kelly's instagram is the most intentional and curated grid I have ever seen, with beautiful quotes interspersed with stylish selfies, many of which are taken in an elevator. It’s very beautiful and peaceful.  Kelly has a son Hermes aged 19 and a daughter Helena aged 16, wh...

Dr Eliza Filby is a writer, a generational historian and mum to two children aged 8 and 5. I loved her book ‘Inheritocracy. It’s time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad’ which came out in paperback last year which contains some fascinating stuff about money and the generations of today.  We talked about how children often rely on a financial springboard from their parents these days, and h...

Monisha Rajesh is a travel writer who focuses on train travel adventures. She wrote her first book ‘Around India in 80 Trains’ after being made redundant, and she wrote ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’ just after her first daughter was born. My favourite of all though is Moonlight Express, her most recent book which is all about her experiences on night trains.  Monisha is a lovely writer, and...

Welcome to a new series of Spinning Plates! My podcast where I speak to working women who happen to be mothers. We are up to episode 171 now, and fast approaching 6 years since I started the podcast with Fearne Cotton in 2020.  My first guest of the new series is Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer. She has made history as the first woman in 800 years to hold that title.  I spoke...

Amanda Ross is a highly influential TV producer who has brought us the likes of  Saturday Kitchen  which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, the  Richard and Judy  show which ran for 9 years, and the book show,  Between the Covers , which she is now touring live and presenting herself.  Amanda and her husband and business partner Simon Ross, own and run Cactus...

Dame Jacinda Ardern is the former prime minister of New Zealand, who was elected in 2017 and in post for 6 years. In 2018 she became the second elected World leader to ever give birth. Her partner Clarke (often referred to as 'first bloke'!) frequently took on the role of stay-at-home dad. Together they took baby Neve with them to many important meetings, including the UN summit in New York i...

Fiona Bell is the founder of Their Nibs clothing brand which specialises in night wear.  I first came across Fiona’s shop when pushing my eldest son around Ladbroke Grove in his buggy in the mid naughties. And I still think she makes the loveliest pyjamas in the land! Fiona has a 25 year old son Finn and an adoptive daughter Maggie who is 11. We talked about the close link Fiona still keeps w...

Lavina Mehta MBE is a health campaigner, a personal trainer, and an author. She came to my notice during Covid when she started doing weekly exercises on YouTube with her mother-in-law. She’s just published her book The Feel Good Fix which is designed to improve your health during menopause, and presents her idea of exercise snacking - incorporating short bursts of activity into your normal day ra...

Lara Maiklem is an author and a mudlark. She told me there’s nothing she likes more than kneeling on the banks of the River Thames for 5-6 hours at a time, scanning the mud for tiny treasures which are twice daily being given up by the tide!  Lara shares her fascinating finds on Instagram, where I've been following her for a while. Her favourite finds include a Tudor shoe, part of a Roman swo...

Julia Samuel is a psychotherapist and an author, who is best known as a grief counsellor. She was one of the founders of Child Bereavement UK which has just had its 30th anniversary. She has an agony aunt column for Times Luxury, she has a podcast, and she sees about 15 clients a week, describing that as ‘the heart of me’.  She has 4 grown up children and 10 grandchildren aged 18 months...