Gail Porter speaks to Female First about why she's getting her teeth into just about every spectrum of the entertainment business, from stand-up comedy to managing indie bands!
Thanks for talking to Female First today; you must be pretty busy with it being the run up to Christmas an’ all.
“Yeah it is quite busy, I’ve been doing the Wright Stuff in the morning, you know that’s on Channel 5 in the morning so I’ve been getting up really early, yeah lots and lots of lovely charity things as well, I’ve been looking forward to the weekend for a change.
I bet you’re looking forward to Christmas Day as well?
“Well unfortunately my daughters at her nanny’s house this year so I have her on boxing day so we’re going to have her Christmas Day on Boxing Day so I’m really excited about that.
So what’s been your highlight of the year?
There’s some really great things been happening, I’m looking after a band at the moment, I’m managing a new band, which is a completely different thing for me to do. They’re called New Vinyl and they’re this new band from Leeds, well they’ve been going for 6 years but they’ve suddenly started coming down to London and it’s going really well so it’s quite exciting and something different.
What kind of band are they?
They’re sort of a mixture between The Strokes and Kings of Leon, that kind of thing, you know, indie band.
You’ve got so much going on at the minute haven’t you!
I know, it’s kind of funny at the moment, especially with TV, there’s really not much happening unless you’re working on the X-factor or Strictly Come Dancing but I’m doing the Wright Stuff like once a month and that’s great, I go on for a week with Matthew and that’s quite good fun but it sort of catches up with you, I just bumped into him actually coming back here and he was sort of like looking half dead and going “oh my god, I don’t know how you do it?”.
So how do you balance it? How do you balance being a mother with such a hectic lifestyle?
Well, bless my daughter, I actually had to grab her up this morning and take her to the Wright Stuff, she’s come to the meeting with me but she’s just a really good girl though she’s really patient and she quite enjoys it really. She was lucky enough to get sent a Nintendo DS today by a PR company and she just broke hers so she was very happy about that. I just either take her with me or her dad’s great as well so between the two of us we manage it, we don’t have nanny’s or anything we can’t afford things like that but we can manage it and she’s such a good girl so we’re very lucky.
Oh well that’s brilliant. Now, obviously your personal life has been quite a high profile one over the years, has that been a difficult thing for you to cope with?
Not really, I’m quite laid back and I take everything with a pinch of salt because I think, well when my hair felt out I thought, “what else can go wrong or go right” or whatever and I don’t know, it just teaches you to be a stronger person, you take everything in your stride and also working with the amount of charities I work for, I’m very lucky and thank goodness I’ve got a good shaped head.
Yeah you’re clearly a strong woman; you’ve obviously got a very good sense of humour as well!
Well you have to really!
What always puts a smile on your face when you’re feeling low then?
I think Honey (my daughter) really. Every time I say “God, I’m so lucky to have her”, because I was told I could never have kids and then when I had her it was unbelievable and I just look at her and think okay, there are some people who can never have children but you don’t really think about these things until you have your own.
Yeah, definitely, would you say that Honey is your most treasured possession in life?
Yeah, absolutely, she’s something money can’t buy so you know she’s my best friend and she’s great company and she’s got a brilliant sense of humour, too.
And if you could rewind back to one moment in time, what would it be and why? You know something positive that’s happened perhaps?
I’d probably go back to Honey again, having Honey! I think that’s one of the most amazing things, I mean obviously it’s bloody painful, oh you’ll never forget the pain – I haven’t! They’ll always say “Oh you’ll forget the pain” and I think nope, still remember it! But you know, you have got this amazing little human being wandering about beside me so I think I’m very lucky.
And what is the best advice you could give to someone in life?
I probably say, you’ve always got to think positively, no matter what kind of things are going on in your life you’ve got think of the positives and just think there’s always people worse off than yourself so I think the best thing I’ve ever done is get involved working with other kids, charities and then you just realise how lucky you actually are. When you put more effort into other people’s problems it helps you get through your own I find.
So you mentioned that you do a lot of charity work, what is it that you love you much about being a part of such good causes?
I think it’s the same with positive effects, I did a charity gig the other day and once a year they donate all the profits to charity, so they pick like 10 or 20 charities and this year between charities we’ve raised £11.5million so you can imagine the difference that can make to all these individual groups. It’s just amazing to know that you can make a difference. You know, i'm fortunate that in my line of work you can actually make a difference to other people and you can’t even put a price on that it’s just amazing.
Gail Porter Interview. Part Two.
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