Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sandra Igwe decided to turn a painful experience into purpose.  When we spoke recently she told me about some of her difficult experiences both during childbirth and afterwards. These led her to become the founder of The Motherhood Group which supports the Black maternal experience. Sandra has also written My Black Motherhood which demands that Black women are listened to, believed and unders...

Julia Bradbury is a TV presenter and an author with a passion for the outdoors.  She has a 12 year old son, and 8 year old twin daughters who she had through IVF. Her motto to them is: 'Be good, be strong, be kind'. We met at Julia's London West London home and talked about how in 2021, she and her husband had the nightmare task of breaking the news of her breast cancer diagnosis to...

Presenter Helen Skelton has been a familiar and much-loved presence on our TV screens since she presented Blue Peter (2008-2013) and then Countryfile. Famous for her can-do attitude to life she still has several Guinness World Records under her belt, she’s run a Namibian ultra-marathon (which is 3 marathons back to back), kayaked the entire length of the Amazon, and made it to the finals of Celebr...

This is an extra special bonus episode in partnership with the lovely team at Clarks.  Thanks to Clarks, I have brought my mum, Janet Ellis, back for this special shoecentric chat! We talked about the excitement of buying your child’s first pair of shoes, and we happily admit that we very much share the sentimental gene, as we have kept all our children’s ‘firsts’. My mum even has them o...

Dilly Carter is an expert in decluttering who presents the TV show 'Sort Your LIfe Out' alongside Stacey Solomon.  Born in Sri Lanka, she was adopted and then brought up in the UK, and is very positive about the cards she was dealt. However, her childhood home was chaotic, with her parents at work all hours, and when Dilly was 11 her mum was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. During her ch...

Charlotte Hawkins presents Good Morning Britain where she proudly helps set the news agenda for the day and quizzes the people in power on the TV viewer's behalf. She also has a lifelong love of music and presents a show on Classic FM. Charlotte talked about how she and her husband tried without success to have a baby and were just about to set off down the IVF route when Charlotte unexpected...

Professor Alice Roberts is a TV presenter and biological anthropologist - in her own words, she looks at old bones and tries to construct the person's history from their skeleton, and she loves the link betwwen the living and the dead. Her pink hair hints at her less traditional and more playful side, also illustrated by the amazing story that as a junior doctor she did some of her paediatric ward...

Laura Lee Dockrill is an author of both adult and children's books. She went to Brit School, she's married to the love of her life, musician Hugo White, and her best friend is Adele. After giving birth to her son Jet, Laura suffered severe postpartum depression which saw her waking up alone in a psychiatric ward on her first Mother's Day. One of her books based on her experience is calle...

Helen Pankhurst is a writer and a scholar who works for women's rights.   Her grandmother Sylvia and her great grandmother Emmeline were both suffragette leaders, and Helen carries her family name with pride. We talked about how Helen kept her family name of Pankhurst when she married, and about how she and her husband shared both their surnames with their children, in a clever way...

Suzi Ruffell is a writer and stand up at the top of her game, playing to packed audiences at her comedy gigs and with numerous TV appearances on panel shows. She also has two podcasts - 'Like Minded Friends' with Tom Allen and 'Out' showcasing gay success stories.   She uses her personal experiences of being ADHD, of having anxiety and of being the parent of a toddler, in her act. It's i...

Ruby Hammer MBE is a make up artist and entrepreneur. I first met Ruby when she made me up for a Christmas cover of Red magazine. I love her hardworking ethics as well as her helpful and gentle honesty. I spoke to Ruby earlier this year and she told me how her family moved to the UK from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the civil war there. She talked honestly and movingly abou...

Rachel Riley is the co-host and face of maths on Countdown and a self-confessed 'proper maths geek'.  I first met Rachel 10 years ago when we were both on Strictly together. When we chatted recently we touched on those rollercoaster competition weeks, and the mild PTSD which Rachel experienced afterwards. However she also said she got some good things out of it, namely a lovely husband a...

Laura Whitmore is a broadcaster and writer. Born in Bray in Ireland, she started out in live TV after winning an MTV competition in 2008 and moved to London in her early 20s where she remembers being suddenly sent to LA to interview Coldplay. She told me how she thrives on being flung into the deep end and loves multitasking, which comes in handy when you are presenting live TV.   I...

Sam Dabb has loved live music all her life and she has run the Le Pub music venue in Newport for decades.  Le Pub is one of the 130 venues being supported by the National Lottery this summer, as part of the United By Music tour.  I talked to Sam about her love of small gigs, about growing up in a pub herself, and about bringing her own daughter up in a pub and live music environment.&nbs...

Julia Haart is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur and author of her bestselling autobiography 'Brazen'. She was also the subject and executive director of the Netflix documentary series 'My Unorthodox Life', about her life as a working mother of 4, after she left her ultra-orthodox Jewish life. Julia updated me on her latest projects including a new type of shapewear that she has deve...

Kate Ferdinand is a TV personality and author who is married to footballer Rio Ferdinand. Kate was best known on TV for appearing on Towie and now has a successful podcast called Blended. 1 in 4 families in Britain are now blended and Kate is stepmum to Rio's 3 older children Lorenz, Tate and Tia. She loves them as her own children. She and Rio also have a toddler called Cree and sh...

Anne Fish is a mum of two sons... and a pro gamer.   When her younger son Benjy won a Fortnite tournament aged 14, he also won thousands of dollars and it became clear it was a serious sport that he wanted to pursue. Anne made the decision to homeschool him fromt he age of 15, to make room for the late-night tournaments and the long hours of practice that Benjy had to put into gamin...

Gemma Bird @moneymumofficial is a hard working mum of two from Essex who after years of working multiple jobs at the same time, managed to pay off her mortgage, and is now a constant source of money-saving tips and ideas on instagram, and a regular on Lorraine's Saver Squad. She's a fast-talking, determined and positive person, who is also very open about her struggles with anxiety...

Emma Dabiri is an Irish writer, academic and broadcaster - and an expert on race.  Born to a Nigerian dad and an Irish mum, Emma experienced extremely different environments growing up: first in a predominantly black area of America and then moving to Southern Ireland where she found herself in the opposite - a very white and racist society.   She remembered how a bookshop in D...

Heidi Range is best known as a former member of the girl groups Atomic Kitten and then Sugababes.  It feels like she was destined to become part of pop history from an early age. A good start was being born in the very musical city of Liverpool! She was part of a children's road show from the age of 12, with her and her friends performing songs such as Copacabana at all th...

Hannah Fry is a mathematician, author, and radio and television presenter. She applies maths to pretty much everything in her life. She gave a TEDTalk in 2014 on the maths of dating, and in 2022 she made a documentary called ‘Making Sense of Cancer with Hannah Fry’ about her personal experience of cervical cancer, in which she unpacked the surprising statistics behind cancer diagnosis, treatment a...

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton (or Sab) took my breath away when I met her. She has achieved, and continues to achieve, so much despite her early life being incredibly tough. Sab found herself homeless aged 16 after her beloved Dad died and her mum's mental health crumbled. She talked to me about how she has suffered from hyper-vigilance ever since, as the strategies she developed for keep...

Tess Daly, known nationwide for her role fronting Strictly Come Dancing for the last two decades, is also mum to two teenage daughters, Phoebe and Amber. We spoke over zoom a couple of weeks ago (apologies for any little glitches caused by the technology) and we had a lovely chat.   We talked about Tess's beloved dad who, despite being ill, made sure he walked her down the aisle, but who...

Katie Melua had massive fame at the age of 19 with the release of her first album 'Call Off the Search', and then 2 years later with her hit 'Nine Million Bicycles'. She has brought out 8 albums since then, with her 9th album 'Love & Money' which she recorded last year while she was pregnant, just released last month. We met recently at her house when her gorgeous baby boy was just 3 months ol...

Hannah Chambers has spent 25 years in the comedy management business looking after many famous comedians including Jimmy Carr, Sarah Millican, Joe Lycett and Aisling Bea.  As she explains, she has given up her Monday to Friday fully for her job, and in fact it's not unusual for her to work 14 hour days, often spending evenings watching stand up shows or TV recordings that her clients are...