Hello I’m Sophie Ellis-Bextor and this is my new series Spinning Plates where I speak to busy working women, who also happen to be mothers, about how they make it work. I am a singer and have released 7 albums in-between having my 5 sons who are aged between 1 and 16 so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing.. but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Join me ...
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In We're Spinning Plates, Ciara and Em talk about navigating life in their early twenties, and their experiences balancing work, side hustles, and their personal lives. In each episode they dive into their highs and lows of the past week, explore a topic of interest, and step into their agony aunt shoes to answer your burning questions and dilemmas.
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Steph Douglas is a mum of three who founded the gift company Don't Buy Her Flowers ten years ago. I’m a repeat customer of the website when I want to send a friend some TLC if they don’t live round the corner. Steph explained how the idea for her company came about when she received 8 well-meant bouquets following the birth of her first child - and…
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Ashley James is a presenter and DJ who first made her name appearing briefly in Made in Chelsea. On instagram @ashleylouisejames has a huge following amongst 25-35 year old women and she frequently posts about being a mum of two little ones, and about other women's issues. Originally from the North East, you would never know that from Ashley's acce…
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Ayalah Bentovim - known as Sister Bliss - is the woman behind Faithless, which she created in 1995 with Rollo Armstrong, Jamie Catto, and the legendary Buddhist rapper Maxi Jazz. Maxi died in 2022 and Ayalah talked to me about how she’s managing to keep him as part of the show, as they prepare to go on tour for the first time in 8 years. We also ta…
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Episode 133: Reshmin Chowdhury
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Reshmin Chowdhury is a sports broadcaster who’s had a love of football since she was a little girl. Growing up in a large and close Bengali community, she told me her childhood memories are of being the only girl, surrounded by boys, watching football on TV. Reshmin’s drive to break into the world of sports presenting was very strong - much to the …
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Nina Tame is a counsellor and a content creator. I started following her on Instagram because I love the way she educates non-disabled people in a light-hearted way. Nina was born with spinal bifida, and has four children. Her third child was also born with spina bifida. His arrival helped Nina accept her own disability much more, and also helped h…
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Episode 131: Joanne Hardcastle
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I first came to follow Joanne Hardcastle (@hardcastletowers) when she was a contestant on the fourth series of Interior Design Masters, which is one of my favourite TV shows. Joanne's husband Tim encouraged her to apply for the show and she says it was the first time she had ever put herself first, and she loves her new found 'me-time'. Joanne lost…
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Kirsten Lane is a freelance music supervisor who negotiates the deals that make it possible to put music into films, TV and adverts. She was the music supervisor for Saltburn and so that is how we met. She is now part of Murder on the Dancefloor’s journey and helped make its inclusion in the film’s soundtrack possible, naked dance and all! We talke…
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Anne Twist is a first time writer and a long-term philanthropist who has two very succesful grown up children. Her eldest is podcaster and writer Gemma Styles, and her youngest is the singer, Harry Styles. I spoke to Anne, not long after she’d become a grandmother for the first time, which sounds like a very special feeling indeed. She’d also just …
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Rachel Jackson is a jewellery designer whose work I particularly love. We even collaborated with on a necklace design once. She discovered her passion for her career while solo travelling in South America where she made a good friend Ali in Brazil and then spent 2 months living with his mum Cinderela (yes that really was her name!) who taught her h…
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Natalie Cassidy is familiar to us all from EastEnders where she's been playing Sonia since the age of 10! When we met she told me about her love of growing up on a TV set, where age meant nothing and her best friend was June Brown, who was 50 years older than her! Natalie is a mum of two daughters, Eliza and Joanie. My heart melted when she describ…
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Episode 126: Natasha Khan aka Bat for Lashes
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Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan is a singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and a mum to a three year old. She has just brought out her 6th album and this one is inspired by the birth of her daughter and is called The Dream of Delphi. She was pregnant in LA during Covid and the album recalls how she reconnected with nature during that …
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Vicky Gill is the Wardrobe Lead for Strictly Come Dancing, amongst many other things! We first met when I appeared on the show in 2013. She is passionate about merging fashion and performance. I can vouch for the fact that she is supremely talented at making costumes that people can dance in - and her sparkly leotards are still part of my onstage e…
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Episode 124: Michelle Ogundehin
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Michelle Ogundehin is best known as the head judge of Interior Designs Masterclass on BBC 1. It’s a programme I am utterly addicted to, and I was therefore delighted to have been asked to join as a guest judge for semi finals week, this week (TX 23/4/24). I have been a fan of Michelle’s expert eye when it comes to interiors for a long time, having …
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Heather James is best known to us all as the mum of Deborah James, the beautiful bowelbabe, who I interviewed for Spinning Plates 3 years ago. That was the year before her premature death at the age of 40, from bowel cancer. Heather explained how she is grieving but working. Not only working in her day job as a gymnastics teacher, but also doing ev…
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Episode 122: Natasha Bedingfield
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Natasha Bedingfield is a New Zealand-UK singer and songwriter who started out in the business at a similar time to me. Another shared link is that we are both currently on a new adventure with songs we brought out originally in our early 20s! How's that for a coincidence? We've each been on an unexpected and exciting journey with our old songs... b…
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Trinny Woodall is the CEO of the beauty brand Trinny London - she's an entrepreneur, businesswoman and author. She became a household name in the late 90s when she teamed up with Susannah Constantine to present the TV makeover show What Not to Wear. Last year she published her book Fearless about how to find your style and boost your confidence. Sh…
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Michelle Kennedy is a tech entrepreneur and businesswoman. She is CEO of Peanut App, and mum to two young children, Finlay and Nuala. Michelle started her working life as a corporate lawyer and became interested in tech when she worked for Badoo and then Bumble. She set up Peanut after she gave birth to her first child and felt lonely and isolated.…
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Kelly Hoppen is an interior designer who is renowned for working with big celebrity names and is known for her signature neutral palette. Kelly started her business aged 16 and a half, just afer her father died unexpectedly, and she told me that the feeling she wants to create for her clients is the one she had from her grandmother's home where she…
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Episode 118: Sophie Darlington
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Sophie Darlington is a wildlife cinematographer for shows such as David Attenborough's 'Planet Earth'. She regularly gets up way before dawn in places such as Sri Lanka or East Africa, and sits for over 12 hours a day watching the animal she’s filming, often for weeks at a time. She says it’s the best job in the world but you come back 'rinsed'. Wh…
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Amy Hart is a social media influencer, former reality TV star and podcast presenter. She appeared in Love Island in 2019 (Richard and I are avid viewers!) and she now has an adorable little baby called Stanley. Amy is the only Love Island contestant to have appeared on Question Time and she is a big food bank supporter. Amy worked as cabin crew bef…
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Gabby Logan is best known as a BBC sports presenter but has also turned her hand to stand up comedy for Sports Relief (2012), to writing her memoir called The First Half, and to ice baths on Freeze Your Fear (2022). She hosts an excellent podcast called Mid-Life in which she, a guest and an expert explore how to navigate the mysterious territory of…
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Alex Head is the founder of Social Pantry which runs food events with the wow factor, as well as a restaruant, and a cafe. I first met Alex this Summer where she was rustling up a banquet twice a day, in a tent at Latitude Festval. Two of the banquets featured food from 'Love, Food, Family' and Richard and I had the much easier job of meeting and g…
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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 Blac…
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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…
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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 …
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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 chil…
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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 diagnos…
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Episode 109: Charlotte Hawkins
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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…
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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…
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Episode 107: Laura Lee Dockrill
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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 he…
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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…
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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 p…
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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. Sh…
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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 thin…
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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 w…
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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…
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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 includ…
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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 als…
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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…
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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 ope…
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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 rem…
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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…
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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 surprisi…
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Episode 93: Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
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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 th…
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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…
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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 w…
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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 show…
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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.…
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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 …
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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 C…
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