By Rebecca Hardy


Looking great: Fern Britton, who has a new chart show, is as feisty and single-minded as ever


Fern Britton wants to make something clear: she doesn’t lie. Never has. Never would.

Oh, and while we’re at it, Fern doesn’t have an ambitious bone in her body, nor does she give two hoots about money.

‘I’m not motivated by money and I’m not motivated by ambition, which is odd because my lot in life was to receive a fantastic career and a wonderful income, although none of that is what I actually wanted in life,’ she says with the shiniest smile. ‘I’ve been very, very fortunate and I don’t know why.’


The smile drops. ‘I’ve had a lot of bad stuff along the way…’

Poor Fern. There has been bad stuff: a divorce after ten years’ marriage to TV executive Clive Jones, her first husband and father to three of her four children, depression, a rape at 21, a drink-drive conviction, a suicide attempt and threat of bankruptcy, all of which she charted with searing honesty in her 2008 autobiography, My Story, but none of which she’s talking about now.

No. We’re on the subject of gastric bands and the criticism she faced when the truth came out about her five-stone weight loss three years ago – a year before she left This Morning.

Fern was the rapidly shrinking face of Ryvita, espousing the merits of healthy eating and hard work to get in shape, but it soon turned out she’d had a gastric band fitted in the summer of 2006. Not that she lied. Saintly Fern? Perish the thought!

‘I hadn’t lied,’ she insists. ‘No one ever asked me how I’d lost weight. It’s something I did for myself, and I naively thought I’m entitled to privacy, but clearly I’m not,’ she says, referring to the public uproar following the gastric band revelation.

It does sound rather terrible. Fern, after all, was the much-loved presenter of This Morning, respected by viewers for shopping at M&S, enjoying caravan holidays in Cornwall and celebrating her fuller figure. Most importantly, women loved her for her honesty. Wasn’t she being, well, a little disingenuous trousering £200,000 a year from Ryvita but neglecting to mention the gastric band?

No looking back: Fern lost five stone three years ago, after being fitted with a gastric band


‘Economical with the truth? In what sense?’ she asks. ‘The Ryvita thing was not to do with losing weight, and I had the gastric band for health reasons.

'My cholesterol was high. My knee joints were starting to hurt. I wasn’t able to run. I was approaching 50 and I thought: “Do you know what? I’m going to be different when I’m 50.”

'I was cycling like mad and nothing was happening. My GP said I was a good candidate for a band, so I went ahead. I needed to get healthy. I wasn’t unhappy the way I was; I was unhealthy. I’d been recovering from having children, having a divorce, all those emotional things.

'Maybe eating was a self-comfort. Up to my 50s, I’d had people to please. Then you get to the stage where you go, “Actually, I don’t need to please any of you any more. I’m not breast-feeding. I’m not pregnant. My body’s my own and I’ve only got myself to concentrate on, so I’m going to do that.” It was wonderful.

'For me it’s worked. I’ve got good cholesterol now. I’m incredibly fit. I’m the same size I was at 24. I can do the splits.’ Gosh, I’m impressed. The splits? At 53? ‘I’ve always been very bendy.’

Bitter Rivalry? Fern Britton reportedly quit This Morning after hearing her co-presenter Phillip Schofield was getting paid three times as much as her


Fern is in rather good shape – glamorous too. At the photo shoot she positively blooms in front of the camera.

I think about asking her to do the splits, but she’s had a Long day flogging her first novel, New Beginnings, and is tired. She’s also been knocking back a gin and tonic.

Now might not be the best time. Her second husband (chef Phil Vickery, who she met on Ready Steady Cook and to whom she’s been ‘blissfully’ married for 11 years) is out with the lads so she’s looking after the kids tonight. As well as her twin sons, Jack and Harry, who are 17, she has daughters Gracie, 13, and Winnie, nine.

Before she goes Fern wants to talk about her new chat show, Fern, on Channel 4, which will be in the same teatime slot as The Paul O’Grady Show used to be.

‘I can’t remember where I was when the call came through a month or so ago,’ she says. ‘It’s like one of those lightning flashes that’s so white it blocks out your vision. I know I was excited – and scared. I said to Phil: “It’s such a long journey. I don’t think I can do that drive any more [from their Buckinghamshire home to London].”

'He said: “Are you mad? What woman your age is offered a show like that?” I said: “Oh yeah, I suppose I should be pleased.”’

She should, of course, have been jumping for joy. In July 2009, Fern left This Morning, which she had co-hosted with the hugely popular Phillip Schofield, amid reports she was furious to discover he was paid £45,000 compared to her £15,000 for presenting All Star Mr & Mrs.

The misunderstanding over the gastric band was also said to have played its part, and Fern’s career was thought to be largely over.

Her likeable image took a further battering last year when her former agent, Jon Roseman, wrote in his autobiography about her rivalry with Schofield and their own falling out after unflattering snaps of her in a bikini appeared in the press.

‘He [Roseman] was there that day [in summer 2005, when the photos were taken] and we were all on the beach together.

'We had ten years of holidays in a caravan in Cornwall, proper bucket and spade holidays with a community who cared about us and protected us. We never had a single problem until that day, and it ruined our holidays and our family life. We don’t have the caravan any more because of it.’

Fern’s working herself up again now. She needs to calm down. The photos weren’t that bad.

‘I’d been thinking about leaving This Morning for a couple of years. I’d done the show for eight years. My littlest daughter was fourish, and I was missing time with her. My other daughter was going up to secondary school. It took me two years to decide it was the right time to go.

'But then I had to deal with all that stuff – Phillip and her have had a row, Phillip’s earning more money, she’s p***** off. Phillip and I were both furious because it wasn’t the truth. In the end it becomes pointless to try and explain. It’s just rubbish.’

Cue trembling chin. Oh dear, this is a tricky one. Surely she’s long enough in the tooth to know that her This Morning colleagues were sticking the knife in, that they were the ones spreading rumours about her and Phillip.

‘Strange isn’t it?’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t say anything bad about people just for the sake of it.’

Now Fern has been busy writing her first novel, New Beginnings, which is loosely based on her experience of bitching and backstabbing in television. ‘I was so euphoric when I left This Morning,’ she says. ‘It was a real leap into the unknown but I felt completely comfortable doing it. I never expected much more to happen – and yet it has.’

The shiny smile is back. ‘I did get the children up and off to school. I did get on top of things again. Then HarperCollins [her publishers] and I got together in the winter of 2009 – I think. I forget timings. It’s all been a lovely blur the last couple of years.’

Wasn’t she sort of cashing in on This Morning?

‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘That would be foolish of me, although it is based on a live television show. There is a lot of bitchiness in television.’

So what makes Fern tick? ‘I’m much simpler than people think,’ she says. ‘What makes me tick is my home, my family and other people’s happiness. I think: “Wow, I’m almost 54. My parents are still happy and healthy. I’ve had four children who are healthy and seem to be achieving good things. I have a good marriage with a man I trust implicitly.” I am very fortunate.

'Whatever happens with the show we’re all going to work hard to make it a success. I always hope for the best and expect the worst.

‘Everyone dismisses daytime sofa presenters, but I think as a woman it’s nice to be underestimated, because if you’re underestimated you can always win.’ Surely, too much honesty.

‘What I mean is that when interviewers are soft, people can reveal more of themselves than they intend to.’ With which Fern polishes off the last of her G&T and heads for the train home.

Fern starts on Channel 4 on Monday 28 March at 5pm, and runs Monday to Friday.


Source : dailymail