‘Let your 60s be your NAUGHTIEST'
Fern Britton has returned to our screens, and this time she’s not holding back
Over the past decade, we had recategorised Fern Britton, from ‘TV star’ to ‘bestselling novelist’ (and firm advocate for seaside living!). But her recent surprise appearance on Celebrity Big Brother (where she placed fifth and was the last woman standing) has set tongues wagging that the presenter, at 66, may be staging a second act and, this time, it’s firmly on her own terms.
While she is keeping her immediate plans under wraps, we’re meeting a new version of Fern: one who is more determined to wring the good out of life, and not let anyone get in her way. “Approaching 60 you can so easily lose confidence. The number of women who say, ‘well, nobody looks at me any more. I’m not whistled at any more’.
Invisible, that’s the word,” she says.
“Well, maybe that’s a superpower now because you can get away with anything. Let your 60s be your naughtiest decade. Enjoy it. And you can start thinking ahead to what happens in the next decade.” Not being discounted in later life was an important topic during her Big Brother stint, with the presenter firmly telling Strictly dancer Nikita Kuzmin that, while she might be 40 years his senior, she still has “exactly the same brain” as when she was 26. “Never look at an old person and think they’re just old,” she warned.
It seems only fair that the newly slimmed-down Fern (the result of a passion for fitness, including undertaking the Couch to 5K running challenge) is playing by her own rules, having weathered a turbulent few years. As well as the loss of both parents (her mother in 2018 and father in 2019), in January 2020 she split from her husband of 20 years, Phil Vickery, with whom she shares grown-up daughter Winnie. She previously told Yours: “There comes a point when the children are substantially off your hands and you look at each other and wonder where you’re going from here.” She has now started to “enjoy being alone”, partly as a result of the weekly therapy sessions she’s attended for the past decade. Fern also has twins Harry and Jack and sister Grace, from her first marriage to TV executive Clive Jones. Having raised four children, perhaps it’s time to turn back to television, with speculation that she’s being eyed up as a potential fit for Loose Women.
While she’s worked across a variety of programmes, it is, of course, This Morning for which she’s best known. When she left, after a decade at its helm, there were rumours that relations with co-presenter Phillip Schofield were fractious. “It’s fair to say that towards the end we were not getting on. Things were tricky,” she admits. “I wasn’t expecting to resign on the day I resigne
