TV star Fern Britton, 67, tells Yours why she’s finally found happiness in the later years of her life and why she doesn’t live her life with any regrets.
Fern Britton is her usual bright and bubbly self when we catch up with her ahead of her next book release. The TV presenter turned reality star has a long history of career highs and lows behind her, as well as a tumultuous love life that has seen her grace the covers of tabloids for the last 30 years.
But these days Fern is well and truly finding her way in life, having moved to Cornwall to pursue her passion for writing. ‘I think I’ve returned to the person I was in my late 20s before any marriages,’ she tells Yours. ‘She was certainly a work in progress back then, still is, but she’s proud of having done some incredible things in the intervening 30 years or so.
‘The point is that an uncertain future doesn’t panic me and nor do I long for the past.’ So, she feels liberated? ‘Definitely. The fact is that I’m happy in my own skin. I took a long time to make my decision to relocate to Cornwall but I have faith in the fact that it’s going to be all right.
‘I’ve made lots of mistakes but I’ve learned so much along the way. Now, I find myself looking forward to the last third of my adult life.’ Joan Collins, we tell her, always says that the third act is the best. ‘In that case,’ she laughs, ‘the Dame and I share something in common.’
She may refute this but Fern Britton, who starred in the 2024 series of Celebrity Big Brother, attracts drama like iron filings to a magnet. In 1979, at 22, she was alone in her small Cambridge flat.
‘I was working in theatrical marketing at the time, a job I hated. I’d just been diagnosed with depression. It was three in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. All of a sudden, I saw a white, glowing shape. I couldn’t see his features although I sensed it was a man. Then he leant forward and put his hand on my forehead. I instantly fell asleep.
‘In the morning, I felt completely different. I handed in my notice and, within a month, I was on a train to Plymouth to start work at Westward Television. I found a little house a short walk from the River Tamar, the salmon leaping on a summer’s afternoon. I remember thinking: Thank you, God, for bringing me this.’
She’s twice been sacked in her TV career, the first occasion when she returned to GMTV’s Top of the Morning having given birth at 37 to twin sons. ‘The man who told me there was no more work for me was a coward. He’d put somebody else in my position while I was on maternity leave and he didn’t have the guts to give me back my job.’
The second dismissal was from Carlton Television’s After Five. ‘I was in the grip of post-natal depression. The woman I’d been interviewing was talking with much courage about the fact that she was terminally ill with breast cancer. And I’d cried on air, which was judged inappropriate.’
In 2009, she stepped down from co-presenting This Morning with Phillip Schofield after 10 years. ‘I always say that he and I had an indefinable chemistry, which seemed to work well on screen. But, like Morecambe and Wise, we chose not to live in each other’s pockets.’
This seesaw life has resulted in her accruing a reservoir of wisdom. Much of it was distilled into a book, The Older I Get: How I Repowered My Life (Ebury Spotlight), published last November. ‘I felt it was time for women to recognise their own needs. I’m not afraid of many things,’ she says, firmly, ‘and that includes being on my own. I’ve been married to two amazing men. Suddenly, you stop seeing all the bits that were difficult and the happy memories bob to the surface. Those three decades also produced four incredible children.’ There are three with TV executive Clive Jones and a daughter by TV chef Phil Vickery.
After 20 years together, she and Phil went their different ways in 2020. ‘We’d simply run out of road. I realised not long ago that I was married, on and off, for 33 years. I’m currently part of the army of silver splitters.’
It took a while but she’s adjusted to the single life with a new novel, The Cornish Legacy, due out in May. Is there anything she’d change about her life? ‘Well, I do regret incidentally, accidentally, having hurt anyone. We all do. And there are people who have hurt me a great deal. But from this vantage point,’ she says, ‘I can look back on my life and say that, yes, the vast majority of it has been a joy.’
Fern has talked in the past about ‘the black dog of depression’ that has hounded her down the years. The last time we asked after the mutt, she made us laugh by saying he was currently in kennels although occasionally she might hear the odd whimper in the night.
And now? ‘He must be off on his travels. I haven’t seen him for some time,’ she laughs.