While most people are focused on productivity and achievement, for TV, radio and podcast presenter Angela Scanlon, nourishment is the number one end goal. Here, she shares her thoughts on everything from gratitude and motherhood, to sound baths and self-care
WORDS | Holly Treacy
celeb interview
When we think of celebrities, we think of confident, happy, shiny people, who appear to have it all. We watch them, we admire them, we sometimes want to be them. So, it seems a strange notion that a celebrity would want to be someone other than themselves. But that’s exactly what Angela Scanlon, author of Joyrider, admits in the opening pages of her beautifully written book: “I spent 37 years trying to be someone else,” she writes. She continues in the book to tell us how she had spent a couple of decades exploring many areas of self-help to try to ‘fix’ herself and it’s a topic she is more than happy to open up about when I speak to her on the phone for this interview. “I’ve been reading self-help books since I was 15 years old so I’ve always clearly been looking for something. But gratitude just kept coming up. I’d dip into it and enjoy it, and really get something tangible out of it, but then I’d abandon it in favour of something a bit shinier.”
Now, 39, and mother to two daughters, Ruby (5) and Marnie (1), Angela is slowing down to really listen to that inner voice and get to know her true self.
Speaking to Angela, I quickly realise that she is no more immune to the busyness of a Monday morning than the rest of us are. She jumps on our call straight from a podcast record and dropping her daughter off at school: “I always think, Monday morning: new week, new me – but then the school run throws you and the traffic’s a lot, and all of a sudden, you’re catching your tail,” she confesses early on. It’s a sentiment I can relate to since I’ve started dropping my own son at nursery, so I know only too well how much coordination it takes to get everyone to where they need to be on time. But, despite recording the second series of her Irish chat show, Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything, as well as BBC’s Your Home Made Perfect and planning the seventh series of her podcast, busyness is not a lifestyle that Angela subscribes to anymore. “I used to go all guns blazing at the start of the year,” she tells me, “but this year I’m going consciously slower.” And, if you’re wondering what slower looks like to a multi-hyphenated celebrity: “lots of lazy, long lunches and walks; buying groceries; having friends over; taking naps.”
“I used to think this meant I’d
