Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Siobhán Donaghy is a singer songwriter best known as one of the Sugababes. The Sugababes have now reformed in their original line-up and last year wowed Glastonbury to the extent they had to close the field they were performing to, because so many people wanted to get to see them - shows just how delighted people are to have the band back together.  Siobhán signed her first record deal at the...

I met up with singer and broadcaster Jessie Ware at her home in South London, on the very day her new single 'Pearls' was released. She told me how she'd had to miss the school run that morning to record a TikTok of herself listening to the first play of the single, while dancing in her kitchen. What a strange job we have! We also talked about how funny it is when your two worlds of musi...

Claire Hodgson is a theatre director who hates rules and who wants to make a difference to the world through the shows that she makes.  I first met her last year at Camp Bestival, when she was coordinating the Guinness world record attempt for the largest number of simultaneous disco dancers!! 600 altogether - and they did it!! We talked about how Claire, her brother and her sister cleaned up...

Anna Haugh is an Irish chef at the top of her game, who runs her own restaurants in Chelsea and Dublin, and who you may know as one of the judges on  Masterchef and as a regular on Saturday Kitchen.  It was on Saturday Kitchen last year that I first met Anna, when her baby boy Oisin was just 8 weeks old. I was struck by her absolute joy in motherhood and when we spoke recently I learned...

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist and science communicator and presenter of The Sky at Night and the BBC's GCSE Science Live! lectures. She also presented the series Out of this World, on CBBC during lockdown with her daughter, Lauren, now 11. Maggie had her daughter when she was 42 and carried on doing science talks around the world, often with her little girl on stage with h...

Sara Davies is the warm-hearted, fast-talking, hard-working entrepreneur you will know from Dragons Den. She still lives in the same village in County Durham where she grew up and is married to Simon who she started dating when she was 15. They have two boys: Oliver and Charlie. We met up at my house a couple of hours after her weekly QVC appearance and we talked about looking in the camera d...

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist, artist and writer who has a weekly agony aunt column in the Observer. She has written the only book on parenting that I feel speaks to me, and that I recommend to other people. It's called: 'The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did)'. Her big messages are that talking to your children about feelings is...

Cerys Matthews is a Welsh singer, presenter and writer. I first became aware of her when I was starting out with my first band Theaudience. She was then with her band Catatonia, which was big - and part of the Cool Cymru trend. After Cerys left that band she went on a voyage of musical discovery while living in a cabin in the woods near Tennessee - an experience she draws on to...

Davina McCall has been an energetic and enthusiatic presence on our TV screens for decades. As a teenager I loved watching her dating show Streetmate, and God's Gift which I adored. Then I was glued to the screen as she fronted Big Brother for 11 series between 2000 and 2010, and more recently she's presented ITV's emotional series Long Lost Family and of course the pure fun show The Masked S...

Sabrina Ghayour is a British-Iranian chef who's written several books which adorn my kitchen shelves, about Persian and Middle Eastern food.   She came to the UK with her mum and grandmother in 1979 as a refugee. By the age of ten she was in charge of the family kitchen and after being made redundant from her marketing job aged 35, she stumbled into catering as a career, putting on...

I so loved meeting up with Kimberley Walsh this month. I was signed to the same label as girls aloud when I started my solo career, so we've known each other for over 20 years. It was great to compare notes on those days, our mutual love of singing around the house, of being mums of multiple boys, and so much more. We met at Kimberley's house, just two days after the Primrose Ball, held to ce...

Dawn O'Porter is the writer and broadcaster with the sharp bob, vintage clothes and brilliantly witty turn of phrase.  We’ve met lots of times over the years and she’s always the best company. She's married to comedian Chris O' Dowd who she met in LA, fifteen years ago. Since then they've shuttled between America and the UK, bringing up their two boys Art and Valentine. She told me how h...

Who doesn’t dream of sitting down to tea and cake with Mary Berry? Well luckily, that dream came true for me – and this week I’m asking you to join me. Tea with no sugar for me thanks, because we’ve also got a slice of salted caramel cake to get through too!   I visited Mary a couple of weeks ago, at her home in Henley. Her kitchen was a hive of activity, with her Christmas rec...

I first saw Marawa perform as part of a circus show about 15 years ago. I was mesmerised by her hula hooping and roller skating simultaneously to disco music, and I've been following Marawa on Instagram for years now. Her posts are always fun and uplifting. They are usually of her rollerskating in the sunshine at her home in LA in high-heeled roller skates. She is also a hula hooper...

TV presenter and entrepreneur Sarah Beeny feels like the calm, confident, sensible friend we all could turn to when we’re having a wobble. She'd be logical and straightforward and sort us out. Perhaps she feels like this because she’s been on TV for a couple of decades now, guiding people through property projects and helping them to avoid disasters, pulling no punches along the way.  Sarah t...

Olga Fitzroy is a studio engineer who I really enjoyed working with in my own studio sessions. Since then she’s had a little boy called Lucas and our chat centred on what it’s like as a freelancer when you become pregnant, take maternity leave and then try to come back to work in an industry where women are few and far between, recording session hours are long, and people make assumptions about yo...

Angel Strawbridge is the glamorous businesswoman with the amazing red hair who fronts Escape to the Château, now in its 9th series! - which charts her and her husband buying, renovating and decorating a chateau - all while bringing up two little children.  I spoke to her on zoom, which made me feel rather jealous, as she sat looking out at the view of their very own moat in the sunshine, whil...

Konnie Huq is a presenter and writer and a mum of two boys aged 8 and 10. She was also the longest serving female presenter of Blue Peter from 1997 to 2008. The Blue Peter link makes us feel like we are almost related. Like my mum, Konnie loved her time on Blue Peter and time flew because she found every day on the programme was so fun and different. We talked about how she and...

Frieda Gormley - originally from Ireland and with a background working for Top Shop - set up the flamboyant interior design business 'House of Hackney' with her husband in 2011. They were doing up their house in East London at the time and wanted to get away from the plain white decor of the noughties. They set up what they themselves were looking for - a place to have a b...

Meet someone who literally ran away to join the circus! Emilia Sandulescu is the proud mum of a sweet one year old boy, who everyone calls 'baby Tony'. Originally from Romania, Emily joined the circus temporarily as a dancer, planning to use her wages to fund the rest of her studies at university. But she never went back. Two decades on she now performs acrobatics on horses, alongsi...

Gemma Kemp is a forensic pathologist and a mum of two little girls.  We talked about the juxtaposition of motherhood with a job which is on the one hand fascinating, but on the other hand, unremitting and emotionally demanding.  We agreed that the British attitude to dealing with death is generally unhelpful, from the euphemisms used to talk about it, to our inability to face the inevita...

Karen Elson is a supermodel and singer-songwriter. We were born in the same year and I’ve admired her from afar for a long time, so it’s great to have got to actually speak to her via zoom at her home in Nashville.  Karen has a son and daughter with her ex, The White Stripes frontman Jack White.  Karen was born in Manchester but by the age of 16 she was travelling the world as a model. W...

Melissa Hogenboom is a Dutch-born science journalist, now working at the BBC. A mother of two, she is also a  documentary-maker and author of a fascinating book (which she astoundingly wrote during her maternity leave) called The Motherhood Complex, which mixes her own personal experience of motherhood with proper science. It’s fascinating, as is the documentary ‘A Mother’s Brain’ which...

Stacey Heale is a writer and former fashion academic and mum to 2 little girls.  I have followed her on Instagram for a long time.  Five years ago her artist musician husband Greg was diagnosed with bowel cancer, on their second child’s first birthday. Stacey and I talked about how she then took voluntary redundancy to spend all the time she could with Greg, how she had to navigate...

Sophia Webster is a sought-after British shoe designer whose business took off like a rocket soon after she left college.  We sat at the kitchen table in her colourful house in East London and chatted over a cup of tea. Sophia described how her shoe designs have mirrored her own life, with her adding a bridal range and a children’s shoe range along the way. Also how her husband Bobby bec...