Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Helen Thorn is one half of the wonderful comedy duo Scummy Mummies whose stage show and podcast explores all the dirty, grimy, embarassing stuff you never thought was part of being a mum - till you become a mum. She's just written a book called Get Divorced Be Happy, charting the year she split from her ex, which happened to start 3 weeks before lockdown. She told me how difficult it was...

Rachel Ama is a chef and a vegan, as well as mum to her one year old boy. We talked about the pros and cons of having a 'lockdown baby', about her amazing-sounding home birth, and how living with her mum has helped with the birth of two babies: her son and her new book! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

6 years ago businesswoman Jo Tutchener Sharp underwent brain surgery and was very much afraid she wasn't going to see her family again, including her then 1 and 3 year old boys. Happily surgery was successful, but having looked at her life so far, from the pearly gates, Jo decided she hadn't done enough good with her life. So she came up with superhero sleep buddies - cuddly toys which have a...

Binky Felstead made her name on Made In Chelsea back in 2009, leaving 8 years later, just after she'd had her daughter India.   Binky told me how being a reality TV star gave her huge anxiety but how becoming a mum to India was the best thing that ever happened to her. Now she's just got married to the dad of her new - and very well-behaved - baby, Wolfie, who mostly slept through our po...

My guest this week has just helped save the world! Dr Catherine Green OBE is one of the team in Oxford who developed and began manufacturing the AstraZeneca vaccine. Together with her colleague Professor Sarah Gilbert (now a Dame) she has just written a book 'Vaxxers' which explains in a rather thrilling and readable way, just how they did this, in the hope of communicating the science b...

Laura Brand is a mother of two little girls and author of the book The Joy Journal. We spoke about where you find joy after motherhood and how expectation and reality can sometimes (always?) be very different beasts but you have to be able to roll with it - especially when you have a young family. She now runs online tutorials to show people ideas for craft and fun with the children in their life...

Natalie Imbruglia is an Australian born singer songwriter who’s got 5 albums to her name with a sixth, Firebird, coming out in September. In 2019, at the age of 44, she announced on Instagram that she I’ve given birth to a boy who had been conceived using IVF, and a sperm donor. We talked about the joy and peace that her little boy has brought her, and the new period of creativity that he has...

Sylvia Mac is a campaigner, a survivor and an award winner. Sylvia was two when she suffered horrific burns, in a scalding accident, and was given the last rites. Against the odds, she survived but it wasn't till her 40s that she learned to accept her scars and not to feel ashamed of them. Her three children have been on a difficult journey with her but there is love everywhere in h...

Deborah James is a podcast presenter, campaigner, writer... and mum to 11 year old Eloise and 13 year old Hugo. It's nearly five years since she was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. Since then she has found a loyal band of followers on instagram as @bowelbabe, where she talks about living with the diagnosis, her ongoing treatment and is just all-round inspiring. She’s often dancing around...

Business woman and former Dragon's Den dragon Sarah Willingham surprised everyone some years back, by taking her 4 children out of school and setting off for a round the world adventure. She and her husband rented their house out, put all their possessions into storage and were only allowed 23 kilos of luggage each, which she found hugely liberating. Now back in the UK with the...

Journalist Emma Barnett is a regular presenter of Newsnight and has recently become the main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. She's good at asking questions and bringing people to account but says she's had to learn patience because as a mum, 'losing your shit' gets you nowhere! Emma struggled to get pregnant, which after two and half years she realised was because of endometriosis....

This week’s episode is very close to my heart as it’s a friend. Meet Kath Gillespie-Sells MBE. She talks with kindness, honesty and humour about making brave decisions and following her path as a mother who was also a lesbian, back when that was acheivement in itself. But she didn’t stop there - she was awarded an MBE for her work founding REGARD, campaigning for LGBTQ+ disabled rights. She has 3...

Helle Thorning-Schmidt was the Prime Minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015. She was the first female leader of the Danish Social Democrats and the first female PM. I think she should wear that as a slogan on a T-shirt! She lives in London with her husband, MP Stephen Kinnock, while their two daughters, now in their early 20s, live in Copenhagen. We talked about how Helle managed to juggl...

Woo! It’s a new episode of my podcast Spinning Plates. I’m so excited to be back with new episodes for you. Kicking off series 4 is the wonderful, warm and wise Melanie C. She tells me about the challenges and joy of being a solo artist and about facing the worst nerves she's ever had before going on stage for Blood Brothers on the West End. We also talk about her lovely relationship with her 12 y...

It’s the final episode in this series of Spinning Plates! Wow what a lovely group of guests and my 30th is no exception. Meet Tina Crawford, who is an artist who I got to know through her  embroidery. She used the Kitchen Disco as a subject for part of a huge piece she started working on as lockdown began. Its an incredible piece and talks about how we are all connected - hasn’t so much about...

Anna Whitehouse is a journalist, author and radio presenter and the founder of Mother Pukka, 'a platform for people who happen to be parents'. She is a long-term campaigner in the fight for flexible working for everyone. We talked about the concept of family and how you can get trapped into believing that 2.4 children and a white picket fence equals happiness; we discussed flexible working ho...

I have been following tattoo artist Rebecca Vincent on instagram since I saw a beautiful tattoo which she did for one of my earlier SP interviewees, Sali Hughes. Rebecca's style is usually botanical-inspired pure black ink. She reinvented herself as a tattoo artist when she felt her previous job as a pub landlady didn't fit well with becoming a mum. Her child is now ten and has rece...

Giovanna Fletcher is a writer, presenter and blogger who has a hugely successful podcast Happy Mum Happy Baby. When we chatted I asked about the course which took her to marrying her childhood sweetheart, Tom Fletcher, she also told me how her three boys loved watching her on I'm a Celebrity and we compared notes on how many people ask her, as the mum of sons, whether she really wanted a girl!&nbs...

This week I talk to stand up and soon-to be-published writer Ellie Taylor. She went from being completely disinterested in children to, now that she has a little girl herself, finding new mums 'like catnip' and striking up conversations with them whenever she can. We talked about having a baby when you're not really maternal, performing on stage when heavily pregnant, and writing in a pandemic. He...

I first met Australian DJ twin sisters Mim and Liv (aka @nervomusic) over 10 years ago when we wrote a song called Not Giving Up On Love together. It was the most fun writing week. I immediately adored them both. Such smart, talented and gorgeous women - and so much positive energy! When they both became pregnant around the same time it seemed the fates were smiling on them. They both have gorgeou...

This week I'm talking to Cariad Lloyd, actor, comedian, writer, podcaster and mum of two. I hope you'll agree that this is a really positive and uplifting chat, even though we are talking about death. Cariad lost her Dad when she was 16 and we talk about how that has affected her through her life, including when she became a mum. In the last 4 years she has spoken to over a hun...

This week I meet Rosa Bloom, designer of the sequinned capes and cat suits that have brightened so many festivals. They've been described by one of her customers as 'wearable happiness' and I love the superhero feeling I get when I wear her clothes on stage.  In our chat I hear about growing up in a household shared by three families, and about how she and her husband chose a new family...

I really wanted to meet Jess Phillips. We are just about the same age and I have followed her career with interest and affection. I was very glad to say that I liked her just as much in real life as I have done from afar. Jess is the Labour MP for Yardley in Birmingham, serving the same area she grew up in. It's also where she has brought up her 2 sons with her husband Tom, who has alway...

Jack Monroe is a cook, a writer, a campaigner and also a mum to 10 year old Johnny. We talked about Jack's dream job in the fire service, experiences of not having enough to eat as a new mum, what it means to identify as non-binary, and how you should never panic when your child only wants to eat chicken nuggets.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Musician Róisín Murphy can be a creative ‘bag of baldoons’ - a phrase her mum uses to conjure up what she’s like when she’s working on multiple projects. She is also mum to 10 year old Clodagh and 8 year old Tadhg. We talked about savouring every moment while your children are little. And I learned a lot about elaborate bedtime tucking-in routines, which I’ve been practising on my boys ever since!...