Fearne Cotton - The Biography. Nigel Goodall
I always wanted to do and read English at London University with writing in mind. I taught English for seven years and was Head of English at St Gregory’s RC High School in London by the end of that period. I have enormous respect for those who still labour at the chalk-face. In truth, I can’t find it in me to miss the grind of paperwork and initiatives. I do miss the camaraderie of the smokers’ room, as well as the lessons where their faces lit up as they understood what I was wittering on about.
‘My mother is Irish and from an early age she told me history as an exciting series of stories – with dates. My great-grandfather was a Seannachie, so I suppose storytelling is in the genes somewhere. My father flew in Bomber Command in WWII, then taught maths and science. Perhaps crucially, he also loved poetry and cracking good tales. Though it seems a dated idea now, I began teaching when boys were told only girls were good at English, despite the great names that must spring to mind after that statement. My father loved working with wood and equations but he also recited Vitai Lampada with a gleam in his eye and that matters, frankly.
‘I’ve always loved historical fiction as a genre and cut my teeth on Hornblower and Tai-Pan, Flashman, Sharpe and Jack Aubrey. I still remember the sheer joy of reading my first Patrick O’Brian book and discovering there were nineteen more in the series. I love just about anything by David Gemmell, or Peter F. Hamilton or Wilbur Smith. I suppose the one thing that links all those is the love of a good tale.’
But not all her teachers were like Iggulden. There was one, Fearne remembers, who was very discouraging towards her and did everything he could to put her off going into the entertainment industry. She bumped into him six years after she had left school and he couldn’t believe she was doing so well. ‘He had to eat his words,’ she recalls. ‘I remember him saying at school that success in showbusiness was one chance in a million and he told me not to have high hopes about it. But I was, like, “I don’t care what you say because if I have that attitude, I’ll never succeed. I’ve got to think that I’m going to do it!” I had to believe in myself, so his attitude spurred me on even more. I thought, “I’m going to prove you wrong, you so-and-so.” And I’m glad I did.’
But there were, of course, embarrassing moments, she remembers, and one of those was when she and her friend Lucy went to dance school and made up routines of their own instead of doing PE as they were supposed to. They created a unique choreography for Janet Jackson’s ‘Together Again’ and performed it wearing black tights with the crotch cut out as a top, plus lots of eyeliner. ‘We thought it was brilliant,’ she laughs at the memory today, admitting that in reality, ‘I’m sure it was trashy as hell!’
She was passionate about going into showbusiness from a very early age; by the time she reached her teens she had attended lots of auditions and spent her evenings and weekends studying at drama school, learning tap, jazz and breakdancing, and even doing some modelling for girls’ magazines like Sugar (which she habitually mentions to passing journalists with only the minimum of reference).
Another of Fearne’s great passions while growing up was to immerse herself in books. Even though most children today would probably pick a work such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Children of the New Forest or Harry Potter as their favourite read, the most influential book of Fearne’s childhood, she says, was The Twits by Roald Dahl: ‘My mum used to read it to me. All the characters came to life but I still can’t eat Heinz spaghetti for fear I’m actually eating worms!’
Equally influential, albeit for different reasons, was her self-made resolution to succeed. Perhaps the teacher who was so discouraging towards her didn’t realise that even as a child she was pretty determined and the philosophy she had been taught by her family was that anyone can do anything if they want it badly enough and are prepared to work hard enough for it. ‘But you have to think about how to get there,’ she comments. ‘Just saying, “I want to be famous” isn’t enough. It’s got to involve thinking about what school subjects might help, how you could get a behind-the-scenes job, anything … And then, you’ve got to work really hard.’ And that is exactly what she did. Not that she knew at first what presenting was all about. She thought ‘it was just people larking about on TV – which is what I do. But as soon as I tried my hand at it, I was hooked and I wanted to pursue it seriously.’
From then on, she remembers, ‘I knew what I wanted to do and I was lucky enough to go from job to job. My dream was always to work at the BBC.’ With her individual look, a sort of girl gone mad in a hippie dressing-up box, she certainly wasn’t the usual choice for the rather conservative Corporation, but little did she know that her dream was to ring truer than even she could have imagined.
‘I’m not paid to look like a supermodel – I’m paid to talk. As long as I’m doing my job and improving each week then I’d rather gauge my success on that level.’
The first time Fearne Cotton featured in the Radio Times, it was July 1998 and she was pictured in her school uniform. Not that that was how viewers of Diggit were used to seeing her; but when she wasn’t presenting the Saturday morning weekend show on GMTV, she was at school revising for her most important exams: ‘When I started on the show we were doing our GCSEs, but somehow we managed to find time to revise.’
Although her co-presenter Paul Ballard, known on screen as ‘Des’, was familiar with combining school with his television work, having spent five years working on The Disney Club before Fearne won her audition, she herself was not so experienced. Working in television was all relatively new for her, even though, by all accounts, she didn’t have any trouble mixing her educational revision with learning lines for when she was on screen. But it was, she says, a lot more difficult when the show went live: ‘It was scary, because you know you’ve got to get it right first time and it’s hard to say your lines when someone is giving you instructions in your earpiece. But it’s just practice, really.’
Indeed, Diggit was an ideal opportunity for her to familiarise herself with the technical side of live television. It taught her how to deal with incidences such as having a voice yelling down an earpiece while she was supposed to talk directly to a camera. That alone may well have been infuriating, but her biggest problem was the early morning starts. Usually she had to be up at 4am and in the studio by 5.10am.
It probably helped that she didn’t actually need that much sleep. ‘As long as I’ve had six hours, I’m all right,’ she once said. There were times, she says, when she would even go to work having had no sleep at all. And even that was okay, she continues, up to a point: ‘I know that I can do it if I really have to.’ But then again, she is, by her own admission, not a natural morning person, ‘but I’ve adapted to become one because I’ve had to get up at ridiculous hours of the morning’. Most journalists and photographers who have worked with her agree that her best time is around midday. That is, they say, when she is really chirpy.
With or without sleep, exercise is something else that helps keep her bubbly: ‘Sometimes I’ll be really good and go to the gym but then when I’m working I don’t always have time. I do like running, because I’m inside a studio most of the day, so it’s good to get out and get some fresh air. I’m a trained dancer so I like to go to dance classes when I can as well.’ Despite her slender figure, which she says she is generally happy with, this is not something she has had to work at. Neither does she have to worry too much about her diet: ‘I just tend to eat when I’m hungry, although I do try to eat healthily and I am a vegetarian.’
She has been vegetarian ever since she watched a programme on live animal transportation when she was just eleven years old. That was then she decided, ‘That’s it, no more burgers for us, and my mum and I haven’t eaten meat since. It also inspired me to get involved with animal charities.’ In many ways, she says, she has Linda McCartney to thank for her decision, although she agrees