'I am so grateful to be here': In the past three years she has faced huge personal trauma and very public criticism, yet Amanda Holden still considers herself lucky to be a normal mum with a career she loves
By JANE GORDON
|
'I think sometimes people think I lead a charmed life but so much has happened to me that has been horrifically challenging,' says Amanda
Amanda Holden tells Jane Gordon why Britain's Got Talent is her rock – and reveals the bottom line on Simon Cowell…
By the time I meet Amanda Holden – my appointment is at noon – she has been working since 6.30am on what she regards as the most important job in her life. Not, as you might think, judging contestants on this year’s Britain’s Got Talent, attending meetings about possible new acting projects or undergoing exhaustive exercise regimes to tone up her perfect body. For Amanda, her most important role is being, as she puts it, a ‘normal mother’.
Today, this involves getting seven-year-old Lexi ready for school, preparing a ‘proper’ breakfast for her daughter and her 40-year-old record-producer husband Chris Hughes, while dealing with the demands of 14-month-old Hollie Rose Hughes (nicknamed HRH). Then there’s the washing machine to load, the online Ocado order to place and the dog (and toddler) to walk in the park. Our midday interview has been prearranged to fit in with Hollie’s two-hour nap.
Despite having been on the go for five hours, Amanda is bouncing around with almost as much energy as she showed on yesterday’s photo shoot when we put her on a trampoline in several outfit changes (as a former gymnast, she throws some great shapes).
‘I shouldn’t say it, but both my girls are just wonderful,’ she says. ‘They are gorgeous little munchkins – they make me laugh so much, in different ways. And I am lucky to have a career that I love and that stimulates me, but also allows me to spend so much of my time being a normal mother, living a normal life in a normal home. It’s a cliché but Chris is the rock of this family, and in many ways our life is quite traditional. He is a family man, he loves his girls.
'He goes out to work and comes back and it’s great for me to have a meal on the table for him – which is often what happens – and for us to talk about our day. I love that feeling of this being a normal house with me waiting for him to come home. I don’t warm his slippers by the fire, I wouldn’t go that far, but I sometimes lay out his pyjamas,’ she says with a laugh intended to lighten what is, I sense, a very serious statement.
'It might seem a bit controversial but all I saw on Mumsnet was negativity. I expected it to be a website where women were embracing each other...'
It isn’t difficult to understand why Amanda puts such a high value on family life. One of her most endearing qualities (and there are many) is her refusal to dwell on the heartbreak and loss that came before her present contentment. In May 2010 Amanda suffered a miscarriage at four months and in February 2011 she went through the dreadful ordeal of miscarrying a son when she was seven months pregnant.
Hollie’s arrival in January 2012 brought more drama when – as a result of the placenta being attached to her bladder – Amanda haemorrhaged so badly that her heart stopped for four minutes and her life was held in the balance for several days.
‘I think sometimes people think I lead a charmed life but so much has happened to me that has been horrifically challenging. The past three years have been hard but out of it has come such happiness. When bad stuff happens you do sort of say to yourself, “Now I am going to see what I am made of.” I had to battle through it and you do come out stronger with a greater candour and empathy for people; it opens your eyes and makes you see the world differently.
'I think what helped me to be strong and battle through was the fact that I couldn’t bear the thought of it affecting my children. I couldn’t countenance the idea of a 13-year-old Lexi getting a tattoo or her belly button pierced because of the emotional trauma when she was six and Mummy had a breakdown. I just wouldn’t allow it.’
From left: Amanda on the panel of Britain’s Got Talent with fellow judge Simon Cowell, and at Ascot with her music-producer husband Chris Hughes
Amanda’s determination to restore normality for Lexi was the motivation behind her criticised return – just three weeks after Hollie’s birth and her own near-death experience – to Britain’s Got Talent.
‘The normal in my house is Mummy doing Britain’s Got Talent. When I had been in hospital Lexi had seen me in such hideous circumstances that I decided I needed to get back to normal for her and for me. Mummy shoved on her eyelashes and went back on Britain’s Got Talent because that was normal. I took Hollie with me and we went to Birmingham and I just did three days.’
'The truth is, I am quite an innocent. I have only ever been in long-term relationships. I have never had one-night stands. I did, once, have a much-publicised affair but I thought I was in love with that person…'
Amanda’s positive approach to life is helped in part by the fact that she never reads any of ‘the negative things written about me’. It wasn’t until a journalist mentioned the ‘controversy’ surrounding her early return to work that Amanda discovered that it had been prompted by comments posted on the all-powerful Mumsnet website.
‘I went on Mumsnet because I didn’t know what it was but I thought, “Oh, that sounds like a nice site where you can get handy tips on weaning your baby and helpful advice.” I thought it sounded like the perfect social medium; a support network for mums. But I discovered that, actually, it’s a lot of women criticising, judging and having a go at each other.
'It might seem a bit controversial but all I saw was negativity. I expected it to be a website where women were embracing each other, applauding each other and helping each other. What we need is a site that gives positive support instead of encouraging guilt by making women who aren’t able to breastfeed feel bad, or condemning women for going back to work,’ she says with real passion as she runs a hand through her hair (now toned down to ‘total mouse’).
Amanda at a film premiere with daughter Lexi
Impossibly pretty and delicate (although she insists that at 16 she was ‘hideous, with braces and short permed hair’), Amanda is an unlikely feminist, raising her girls to speak up for themselves, resist negative peer pressure and understand the importance of financial independence.
‘I say to Lexi, “I have never been dependent on a man for anything other than love,”’ she says, with a grin. But then Amanda is a mass of surprising and appealing contradictions. Simon Cowell says she is ‘one of the boys’ but she insists she is absolutely a ‘girls’ girl’ and that from quite an early age she deflected male attention by being ‘one of the lads’ to the point where, she claims, ‘I have never been asked out in my whole life.
‘If I was to get really deep I would say that at puberty, when I started learning about boys and sex and had to wear my first bra, I found it so excruciating and embarrassing that the way I dealt with it was to be more outrageous. I would pretend I knew more than I did and tell jokes about things like sex acts that I knew nothing about.
'The truth is, I am quite an innocent. I have only ever been in long-term relationships. I have never had one-night stands or anything like that. I did, once, have a much-publicised affair but I thought I was in love with that person…’ she says, stopping short of saying anything more about her relationship with Neil Morrissey which was exposed in 2000 when she was married to her first husband Les Dennis.
Amanda was a successful television actress in 2007 but it was Simon Cowell’s decision to make her ‘one of the boys’ (alongside Piers Morgan) on the panel of the first series of Britain’s Got Talent that turned her into a household name. Now in her seventh year on BGT, Amanda is one of the few panellists on a Cowell show who hasn’t been fired (Cheryl Cole, Paula Abdul, Kelly Rowland and, allegedly, Tulisa have all been dropped). How has she pulled that off?
‘I think I understand Simon, I know him well and I enjoy him. And, of course, I know an awful lot about him – I know where the bodies are buried!’ she says with a raucous rat-a-tat-tat laugh.
Amanda can’t reveal too much about this year’s show but she thinks it will be brilliant because for the first time in several years two of the contestants reduced her to tears (she says she has hardened up since her first tearful years) and even made ‘Simon’s eyes go a little misty.
‘But I can give you one outrageous exclusive. During the auditions we discovered that Simon doesn’t wear pants. I can’t reveal how we discovered this fact but he doesn’t wear underwear. Maybe because he has such a busy life he doesn’t have time to put them on or take them off – perhaps he should get someone to do that for him.’
Despite the endless press reports of Amanda’s rivalry with fellow judge Alesha Dixon, the two are great friends (Alesha refers to Amanda as her ‘TV wife’). This year they became such a tight team that one day during the auditions the boys were behaving so badly they staged a walkout.
‘They had to come and apologise to us before we would come back on. I knew Simon wouldn’t be able to say sorry, and he said, “Let’s all say sorry together.” But Alesha and I said, “Say it and mean it.” We were so close this year that I hope all that nonsense about us “feuding” and “competing with each other in the fashion stakes” will stop. It makes me angry because I am a mother of girls and
I never want Lexi to read something and say, “Oh Mummy, you don’t like Alesha, you don’t like girls.” I want my daughters to grow up knowing that girls are strong and clever and that when they are adults they should embrace and support other women, rather than bitch and criticise them,’ she says.
'I am lucky to be alive and I am happy to just be me, warts and all, because I am so grateful to be here’
Amanda has endured more than her fair share of envious criticism from other women, particularly allegations about the amount of cosmetic surgery she has allegedly undergone (one journalist described her as looking like an ‘alien’).
‘I have not had any surgery – look at this – it’s so annoying,’ she says, screwing up her face to reveal every last line. ‘I may once have thought about having a face-lift when I reached 50 but after what
I have been through in the past couple of years I never want to go under a general anaesthetic again. Without being dramatic, I am lucky to be alive and I am happy to just be me, warts and all, because I am so grateful to be here.’ As she says this, baby Hollie starts singing in her cot, bringing our interview to a close.
‘Hollie is adorable, edible, but there will be no more babies. I am so lucky to have my two girls and Chris, who is tall, sexy and gorgeous as well as one of the funniest people I know. I have always stopped to smell the roses but these days I have a new appreciation of what I have got – God, I am the luckiest woman alive.’
Amanda is a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, which is on Saturday evenings on ITV
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2302844/Amanda-Holden-tells-Jane-Gordon-Britains-Got-Talent-rock--reveals-line-Simon-Cowell.html#ixzz2QNlvihvx
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
