Laura Whitmore: ‘I’ve had enough of being trivialised and gossiped about’

After reading No One Can Change Your Life Except for You, the new book by self-described “presenter/writer/actor/DJ/chancer” Laura Whitmore, I assume she must be a fan of The Secret. Whitmore’s easy-to-read, sweary, self-help manifesto includes details of the chalkboard above her desk where she pins notes to self, photos and inspiration with the aim of honing her life’s “vision” and “purpose”.

Self-help bestseller The Secret by Rhonda Byrne was all about manifesting and visualising but it turns out, Whitmore has never read The Secret. Her mum Carmel did though, years ago along with millions of others around the world. “At the time, my mum told me ‘you don’t need to read it, you’re doing all of that already,” Whitmore remembers with a smile.

Whitmore, who grew up in Bray, Co Wicklow, has manifested an impressive life since beating off thousands of hopefuls to become the face of MTV news in 2008. It's fair to assume it took more than a "vision board" to get her show on Radio 5 Live and presenting gigs on high-profile telly programmes such as Love Island and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here along with lucrative brand endorsements for the likes of Coca-Cola and Nintendo Switch.

The last year has been eventful for the Co Wicklow woman. She got married in Dublin during the pandemic in a reportedly "low-key" ceremony. It was a private celebration for family and friends as opposed to a celebrity wedding splashed across the pages of a glossy magazine. The only photo she has shown off to her more than a million Instagram followers is one of her in a beautifully cut white wedding trouser suit with husband Scottish comedian Ian Stirling looking loved up and joyous in Dublin's City Hall. That's where, according to The Sun newspaper, they were married last November. She says she only put that photograph on Instagram because, despite having never talked publicly about getting married, newspaper reports about the wedding led to a flurry of congratulations by well-wishers.

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The title of the book, her first, is a line from the Wilson Phillips song Hold On, a tune the 35-year-old loved as a younger woman. No One Can Change Your Life Except for You “is how I’ve chosen to live my life,” she says in the book’s description.

There are a lot of writers who inspire me, from Glennon Doyle to Matt Haig, because they've had to show vulnerability

“There is a freedom when you take back control. Stop waiting for someone to save you and do it yourself. I recognise everyone has different levels of struggle but no one just hands you a chance. We don’t have to wait for Prince Charming to rescue us, or wait for the opportunity to come to us. We can be our own heroines. We can create our own dreams.”

On a Zoom call from her home in London, she elaborates. saying the book “is very much not me telling you what to do. You read it and take from it what you want. Because no-one can fix you, no-one can tell you what you should do, well they can, but it won’t work. You have to make that decision for yourself.” The first self-help book she remembers seeing was a copy of her mum’s Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway growing up. “I think we’re a bit more open to helping ourselves now, which is a good thing. There are a lot of writers who inspire me, from Glennon Doyle to Matt Haig, because they’ve had to show vulnerability, which in this industry, god forbid you show any vulnerability or any emotion. That’s been really inspiring and helpful for me on my own personal journey.”

Here is some of the advice she offers in the book: Before tackling a big project or job interview, she suggests doing “what professional athletes do … spend time picturing yourself accomplishing and succeeding ... I have a visualisation chalkboard over my desk where I write things I want to achieve, I set myself goals and imagine the possibility of getting what I want. I put everything up there – from the dream job and the perfect trip away to what I want for dinner.”

Lucky breaks, according to Whitmore, come to those who are ready to “step into their own power, even when they’re feeling nervous as hell about it.” The book is punctuated by stories about boyfriend trouble, feminism, body image and self-doubt, learnings from Whitmore’s own life experiences. She writes movingly about pregnancy loss, something she wrote about in Hot Press but hasn’t talked about a lot. “I didn’t want to become the poster-girl for miscarriage,” she says.

In the book, she wanted to channel the energy of Wilson-Phillips lyrics such as “don’t let anybody step all over you” and “hold on for one more day”.

“I know it sounds cheesy,” she grins. “But those words are powerful to me because I work in a job where sometimes you are waiting for someone to choose you … or when you’re younger and waiting for a guy to ask you out or for a friend to invite you to a party. And I’m like, why are we always waiting for someone else to tell us how to live our life?” The book is full of quotes from people such as Brené Brown, Rebecca Solnit, Sylvia Plath and – interestingly, given how divisive he is – Jordan Peterson.

This is not the book she was approached to write four years ago. She turned that one down because the publisher wanted stories from her MTV days when she was travelling the world interviewing celebrities. She was approached again a year ago and this time she agreed. “I had grown up a little bit. I think in the last four years I found my voice a bit more … I was very protective of myself. I still am. But I’d written a few more articles I probably wouldn’t have been in the place to write a few years ago. Then I was approached to write something I felt I had more control over ... and then sure then it was lockdown and no better time, no excuse not to finish it”.

“Sometimes it feels like writing the book is the easiest part,” she says of publishing her debut in pandemic times. “I was talking to Roddy Doyle a while ago. His book Love was supposed to come just before the lockdown and then all his stuff got locked away in a warehouse … and so I’m very thankful that I actually have a physical copy of this” she says proudly picking up the book and showing it off.

Along with the motivational and empowerment themes, the book covers her childhood growing up in Bray. The Whitmore work ethic, she says, was honed as a child observing the dedication of her single-mother Carmel to her job as a civil servant in the Department of Environment. “She would pick me up from the child-minder wearing a business suit. I used to love that,” she says.

Whitmore never felt different or disadvantaged as the only child of a single mother but she remembers a girl in her class saying “your dad isn’t your dad because they’re not married” and coming home to her mother who set her straight.

“But I also saw my parents having this really great relationship because they were friends … I had a relatively positive upbringing, when I look back, and it did probably give me this strength and this idea that you didn’t have to fit into this box of what people thought you should be or what a family should be.”

It’s surprising, given her outgoing, breezy television persona, to discover she was a “really shy” child “a nerd”who was encouraged to do drama classes because her teacher said she wasn’t really talking in class. They definitely helped, she says. “It’s funny even now people think, because of my job, oh you’re a talker, you’re confident. But when I go back home, especially with family, I can be the quietest person in the room sometimes.”

She was drawn towards drama but in the end chose to study journalism in DCU. “I liked the storytelling side of it … for me university wasn’t just about the degree, it was about growing up and meeting people.” Some of her best friends are still people she met during that time. She joined the drama society and had the opportunity to study in Boston as part of the course.

I tell her that somebody I know who was in DCU at the same time as her said if there was one person she’d have guaranteed would become famous, it was the “strikingly beautiful” Laura Whitmore. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just remember the first day of college, John Horgan came in and said look at the person on your left and on your right, only one of them will be here when you graduate. He was right.”

Amy Winehouse was around when I was living in Camden and I saw that side of things and it probably scared me a bit. It made me more cautious when I was starting to get a little bit more attention

Part of the degree, in the final year, was an internship which she did at Newstalk where she met another of her best friends Cork woman Samantha Barry, now New York based Glamour editor-in-chief. While working as a researcher in Newstalk – “probably the toughest job I’ve ever done” – Barry was the only person Whitmore confided in that she had entered the contest to become a new face of MTV news. About 3,000 people applied. “I never thought I’d win it,” she says.

The job meant moving to London for a year. “And now it’s been 12 years, time just goes by. London’s a tough place”, she says, and jobs in TV are “never as glamorous as people think”. She was doing her make-up in the toilet before interviewing Coldplay, carrying equipment for the camera people. “I probably didn’t understand how life changing it was but I did understand it was a huge opportunity.”

MTV kept her on for seven years and during that time she got what was “a huge live job” hosting the ITV2 aftershow of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in Australia. She’s been a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, written and starred in her own short film Sadhbh and more recently presented Love Island.

I’m interested in what she said earlier, about being guarded and ask how she has handled the pressure of being a celebrity in England. “It’s different here, the culture is different. I think in Ireland it’s like two photographers maybe … and they are normally quite nice and chatty. Like, ‘can we take a picture?’”

Starting out, she was one of the first people to interview Ed Sheeran and Katy Perry at the beginning of their careers. “I could see them being guarded. Amy Winehouse was around when I was living in Camden and I saw that side of things and it probably scared me a bit. It made me more cautious when I was starting to get a little bit more attention. I was wary because I’d seen it happen to other people on a bigger scale and it’s scary.”

This exposure to other people’s fame influenced some of her early decisions as her own profile grew. While presenting on I’m A Celebrity, she was encouraged to allow photographs be taken of her on the beach from a distance. “I said I don’t want to do that … I knew once I did that I could never complain about it. I’ve never set up a shot like that. I don’t get pictured at the beach. It should all be about consent … so I shut things down quite quickly.”

In the book she writes about the experience of male photographers taking “pants shots” of her on the street outside her house. “I didn’t complain at the time when those pictures happened. I was so mortified. I thought if I say anything people will just Google them and see them so I’ll say nothing. Then I remember talking to Davina McCall about it, and she said ‘it happens to everyone, it’s really embarrassing’. So I thought well it happens to all these people that I respect so it’s fine … and then I was like, it’s not fine. Just because it has happened to these people I really respect doesn’t mean it should continue to happen.”

We talk about the notion that celebrities shouldn’t complain, that they’ve put themselves out there and should accept the consequences. “It’s the same thing people say about a girl wearing a short skirt. She’s asking for it … like it comes from that same mentality doesn’t it?”

I remember being asked to do FHM and I thought f**k yeah, I want to do it. It's my decision and I'll look back on it when I'm an old granny

Recently, she did a glamorous pregnancy photoshoot with photographer Claire Rothstein who she thanked in an Instagram post “for showing my bump in such an empowering way and making me feel like a [f**king] QUEEN!” In 2011 she posed in her underwear for the cover of now defunct men’s magazine FHM. She addresses that shoot in the book explaining that when she was younger “guys didn’t ask me out and yet somehow I ended up in the FHM 100. It’s fun to do what’s not expected. Can you be the on cover of FHM and write about feminist issues? YES YOU F**KING CAN.”

“Women’s bodies are amazing,” she says. “We’re told to be ashamed of them, you get this with pregnancy as well, like put it away. We’re told to breastfeed and then put in a room somewhere because God forbid you need to feed your baby on the bus.”

“I remember being asked to do FHM and I thought f**k yeah, I want to do it. It’s my decision and I’ll look back on it when I’m an old granny.”

A few years later there was a debate in Britain about the now illegal practice of “upskirting” – the act of taking a photograph underneath a person’s skirt without their consent. A woman “quite high up” in sports broadcasting told Whitmore “you can’t really complain about upskirting because you were in your pants in FHM.” She found that astonishing. “So because I chose to do a shoot that I controlled, in underwear that I find sexy it means that any man can come to my house and take pictures up my skirt. It just blew my mind.”

A childminder commented on one of her recent Instagram posts on the subject saying “I mind kids at nine to 3pm during the week, it doesn’t mean it’s okay for a mother to come knocking on my door at 3am and give me her kids to mind.”

“It’s about consent,” Whitmore says, again.

Eventually, she bought back those FHM photographs “not because I am not happy with them, I love those pictures. But everytime I did something the Sun or the Mirror would buy that picture and put it on the front cover … I ended up having to buy the pictures … it’s quite expensive.”

It’s great that you could afford it, I say referencing a quote in the book where she says her working-class dad who grew up in a flat in Temple Bar would have preferred her to train as an actuary. She writes that she is “happier (and wealthier)” in her chosen field.

“Yeah and I am proud of that. Sam Barry taught me a lot about money and knowing your worth. Because sometimes we’re embarrassed saying ‘this is my job and I get paid to do my job’. I remember a good friend of mine whose mother was stuck in a relationship who couldn’t leave because she couldn’t afford to leave. And I think there’s a lot of women who’ve been stuck in situations like that. I think we need to be told more about the importance of money. It isn’t everything and it isn’t happiness, but by god it does help you have a little bit of power and control.”

Speaking of money, those brand endorsements can sometimes be tricky. Her latest for Coca-Cola led to an online comment that as a pregnant woman Whitmore should stay away from such drinks. “I might have been shooting up some heroin, like, you know it’s just stupid … when you’re pregnant and you give up alcohol you normally get a soft drink. And anyway the whole thing was like this lovely campaign about sisterhood. Sometimes you just have to laugh.”

In the book she makes some excellent points about the way the lives of women in high-profile roles are discussed compared to men. She mentions one report of a charity initiative where every woman involved was mentioned in relation to a supposed love interest – “other stars to lend their support include TV presenter Laura Whitmore who was once linked to Leonardo DiCaprio” – for example, while the men involved escaped such a description. She has no time for any of it.

“I’ve had enough of being trivialised and gossiped about. Women are not play things – either of men or of the media – and should not be treated as such.”

And I am an over thinker, but … who knows what challenges like having a child will bring? A lot, I'm assuming, and you kind of just have to take each step as it comes

Having spent so long in the interviewer’s chair on radio and television, she admits she is more comfortable asking questions than answering them. Before this interview, Whitmore made it clear through her publicist that some subjects were out of bounds.

For example, she did not want to be asked questions about the death of fellow TV presenter and friend Caroline Flack just over a year ago. However, she does address this tragedy in the book writing “when Caroline Flack took her own life, I remember thinking back over what she’d had to put up with. All the comments I had seen online, and savage headlines sprawled across the papers.

“Caroline always seemed like nothing bothered her … I had been jealous that she was able to not let it all get to her, whereas I knew that in a similar situation I would have crumbled. But it did get to her. Whatever happened in her personal life or the bad decisions she may have made, she didn’t deserve the attention she had to deal with daily.”

When Whitmore was asked to host Love Island after Flack’s death she says part of her thinking was “do I want to put myself on that platform and be held up to public scrutiny ... But I’m good at my job and I love doing live telly. My decision should be based on my opinion, not those who haven’t even formed one yet”.

The other thing she was not keen to discuss is her participation in British Army podcast The Locker. Again, she references this in the book. "I have had a huge backlash for talking to a British Army soldier – a 23-year-old female who I admire – about working in a male dominated sphere, I have friends who are doctors and nurses in the army but that doesn't mean I accept the atrocities the British Army has inflicted on many countries in the past."

This appears in a chapter where she encourages her readers to “keep learning” and makes a valiant attempt to untangle Irish/English relations. I joke that hers must be the only self-help book to contain an explanation of the Easter Rising and the establishment of the Irish Free State about which she writes: “This accomplishment is hugely significant and celebrated by Irish people. To a lot of English folk … the Irish idea of celebration is to get intoxicated beyond function. Rather than understanding us as an oppressed country for so many years, the sense of community and partying can be seen as wasteful and frivolous instead of the uniting of a nation.”

She sees the lack of understanding from both sides. She’s had comments from people worrying that her child with Stirling might – shock, horror – have an English accent and from the other side has had to explain to oblivious friends in London the historical roots of Irish animosity towards the English.

Whitmore, while understandably reticent about some aspects of her life, is open, fun and easy company. She’s about to have her first baby, the due date is next month, but says she will film a whole series of TV show Celebrity Juice before then.

“The thing is, I love working. I can’t sit around the house all day, I’d go mad … my mom worked and I loved it, so for me that’s not really going to stop.” She adds that it’s “a bit scary bringing a child into the world at the moment, in some ways because of the landscape that we’re in. Over here, I’m feeling quite hopeful with the vaccinations rolling out super quick … I just think it’s really important to cling onto hope.

“In the book I talk about not having to have a plan, like, you can overthink too many things. And I am an over thinker, but … who knows what challenges like having a child will bring? A lot, I’m assuming, and you kind of just have to take each step as it comes.”

“I got my big break with a competition that I won by fluke … so I’m just one of those people who is like, let’s just see what the world throws at me. And then I’ll make it up as I go along. Fake it ’til I make it.”

No One Can Change Your Life Except for You by Laura Whitmore is  published by Orion