'I discovered the secret code of swingers': The world according to Mariella Frostrup
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The gravelly voiced presenter on drinking with Clooney, hot-desking with Geldof – and how she inadvertently stumbled upon her neighbour’s secret club...
'I've turned down hundreds of offers during my career because I don't want to be stereotyped. Blondes can have brains just as beautiful women can have brains and be successful,' said Mariella Frostrup
I can’t stand my voice.
I don’t think it’s sexy. It’s too harsh and too loud. I know it has been very good to me because I get asked to do lots of voice-overs, but I’ve hated the sound of it since I was 16 and first heard it back on a telephone answering machine. People say I sound like Honor Blackman but I don’t think I do at all. It’s weird when people ask me to do a commercial for something like sofas and to make the sentence ‘sofas can be found...’ sound really sexy. That happens quite a lot.
My father died when I was 15 and I was so devastated my hair turned white.
He was a journalist in Dublin and I was completely mad about him. Everything changed when he died. I felt this huge need to be grown up and be responsible and go and work to earn money. I dyed my hair from mouse colour to blonde to cover the white, went to London and ended up working in the music industry. It made me the person I am – incredibly independent and resilient – but it’s not something I would wish on any young girl. I look at my daughter now and think I was just eight years older than she is, yet my mission is to preserve her childhood for as long as possible.
'I can't stand my voice. I don't think it's sexy. It's too harsh and too loud,' said Mariella
I discovered the secret code of swingers.
I put two pampas grass plants on my balcony and when one of the dads from school came round he explained that that’s what you do if you are looking for a bit of neighbourly action. I haven’t removed them but sadly I’ve managed to kill one. We have just bought a house in Somerset and I’m taking them down there. I’ll put them in the window and see what the local swingers are like.
I had to get in drinking practice so I could hang out with George Clooney.
For a while when the children were little, I’d be so tired I’d be crashing out all the time. But then my husband Jason started doing a lot of work with George and they would stay up working and drinking. I’ve put the hours in and trained myself up, so now I can get in a couple of hours talking and drinking before going to bed.
I’ve turned down hundreds of offers during my career because I don’t want to be stereotyped.
Blondes can have brains just as beautiful women can have brains and be successful. People have asked me if I feel so strongly why I don’t just change my hair colour, but that is absolutely my point. Why should I do that just because it’s a misguided opinion of others?
I’m always up for a fight.
I can’t bear injustice, and whether it’s about poverty or being a blonde stereotype or the position of older women in television I will have my say. I have never been any good at taking things lying down. The other day a car bumped into my bike with my daughter on the back. I was straight off and raging at the driver. Then a little voice piped up, ‘Leave him alone, Mum.’ My daughter felt sorry for him.
Simple Minds tricked me into being naked in front of them.
When I was 17 I was sent to an old farmhouse in Wales where Simple Minds were recording. In the evening I asked where I could have a bath and they told me the best bathroom was down this corridor with a big frosted window. When I came out they were all laughing – the window was see-through and I’d been conned.
I worked in the music business in one of its most decadent periods.
That’s when it really did have a licence to print money. I was at all the parties with all the big stars of the day but I’d be the sensible, boring one rushing about saying: ‘I don’t think you should have another one of those’ or ‘Let’s get you home now.’ I had this absolute need to show I could stay in control.
Pampas grass is used by swingers to signal their availability to other couples for sexual encounters
Glastonbury terrifies me.
I mean, what do you wear? How cool do you have to be? It’s all too much. I’ve done an awful lot of music festivals in my time and I’m happy to no longer go. It’s all very different at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. You get old, young, parents, teenagers, kids, ladies from Bloomsbury mixed with grungy students. It’s what a real festival should be.
I’m not a snob about books but I have not read one of Katie Price’s.
I tend to read books by authors who write their own. I get through six books a month. I can’t go to sleep unless I have read – even if it’s just a couple of pages. Books can be a form of escapism – they can educate you, help you, give you something to talk about.
Bob Geldof stole my desk at Live Aid.
I volunteered to work on both Live Aid and Band Aid and at some point Bob decided he’d share my desk. He’d sit there bullying the biggest names in music and I’d be wondering whether I’d ever get my phone back. It was an incredible time. You knew something massive was happening. I remember turning up at studios in West London really early on a Saturday morning to get things ready for the musicians who were coming in to record Do They Know It’s Christmas? No one really knew what would happen or who would turn up. Then the doors opened and in shuffled Duran Duran, Bananarama, George Michael, Sting, Paul Weller... It was an amazing experience.
Rock stars and authors are very different.
The biggest distinction is that authors spend an awful lot of time thinking about interesting things to say. While a lot of rock stars don’t actually spend any time thinking at all.
I am going to be an incredibly irresponsible 60-year-old.
I’m going to buy myself a sports car, drive around with my grey hair blowing in the wind and embrace every frivolous experience with gusto. Regret is the most wasted human emotion. It removes energy, it leads you down the wrong path. We are who we are and we’ve done what we’ve done. In a different world, I would have got a degree and become a foreign correspondent, but I didn’t. My life turned out like this and I’m happy.
Mariella Frostrup presents ‘The Book Show at the Hay Literature Festival’, nightly from June 3-5, 7pm, Sky Arts
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