I eat everything. I drink everything. I had a friend who never made it to 50. Her biggest regret? Spending her life on a diet
‘It’s 100% survival. My mum went to work. My nan worked. I work. My sister [Debbie, 46, who was involved in a serious car accident 18 months ago] works her a**e off. We are a strong, matriarchal family.
‘I like to be busy. That’s another reason I went back to work. I didn’t want to think. The fact I had died... and my own mortality . . .and thinking every time I had a headache I had a brain tumour and I was going to die . . . ’ She swallows to stem her tears.
‘I never cared about dying until I had children because I didn’t want them not to have a mummy.
‘I’m like one of those horses with blinkers on. I constantly look forwards. When I went back to BGT after having Hollie I took her to Birmingham [for he regional heats]. That’s where I’d been the day before I realised I’d lost Theo. To go back with a baby in my arms was like, “We’ve done that. Survived it. Let’s go forward”.’
The ‘we’ includes her husband Chris Hughes. He is a solid, gentle man who works as a record producer, but prefers to stay out of the spotlight so rarely accompanies Amanda on the red carpet events that are part of her job. They met in the front row of a fashion show 15 years ago, after Amanda’s first marriage to comedian Les Dennis had ended. Chris took her out for dinner that night and has been the most important part of her life ever since. ‘I’ll catch a glimpse of him in the distance and go: “Oh he’s fit”, then I realise: “Oh, it’s Chris”!’ He is her ‘absolutely everything’, her ‘adviser’, her ‘calm in a storm’. ‘I say we’re like the plus and minus on a battery. You can’t have one without the other. I’d give up everything if he wasn’t comfortable with it. ‘We bicker a lot, but he also makes me laugh. Even during the difficult year we had with our babies, we were very dark humoured. We found a lot to laugh about.’ Such as? ‘It’s so sick nobody would get it. In our house we’re like Beetlejuice.
‘I love my life now. I am constantly touching wood. But you have the foundations because you’ve seen tragedy and recognised loss.
‘It’s amazing to be able to look across your life and think, I am really grateful for everything that’s happened to me because it’s prepared me for, probably, the worst thing ever. That’s what everything was leading to and now, thankfully, the rubbish is all over.’
She reaches out to touch the mock-wood-effect table — ‘Oh, this is metal!’ — and roars with laughter.
‘There’s still more though. I appreciate everything I’ve got but still go, “this is looking lovely and I’m spinning all the plates but there’s another plate over there I’d like to spin”.’
Most recently that means her interiors collection, BundleBerry, for QVC UK, which includes cushions, throws and pieces of furniture influenced by her childhood in the Seventies.
‘The throws, the blankets — everything has come from loving the Seventies. It’s linked to my childhood and not having anything much.’
Amanda’s biological father left when she was three. She has little memory of him so considers her stepfather Les to be ‘Dad’.
‘They had no money,’ she says. ‘My dad was a second-hand car dealer. Things got better as we got older and they made their own luck by running a guesthouse in Bournemouth. They now have a thatched cottage by the sea in Cornwall, which is what my mum wanted when she was ten.
‘When I was younger I felt I wanted to move away from the village and be successful and give my mum and dad everything they’ve given me.’
‘As you get older you realise your family are the only people who truly give a damn about you. The truth is my family is my life. Simon Cowell’s the same. His relationship with Eric is beyond anything. To imagine him with a child is something I could never comprehend just because of his life.
‘I used to think it was a shame because he was always so good with other people’s children, but I never imagined him toilet training a child and cutting up somebody’s fish fingers. It’s been a great thing for him.’
She’s less forthcoming about her co-star Ant McPartlin, who has been in rehab battling drink and painkiller addiction after pleading guilty to drink-driving after a crash in March. Ant won’t be on BGT’s live semi-final tonight, and it’s unknown when, or indeed if, he will be returning to the show. Amanda says she hasn’t heard from him.
A few days later we speak again while she’s at her Portuguese boot camp. If there was any doubt about the energy and resolve with which she trains for these live finals, and frankly how impressively fit she is for a woman nearing 50, you only need to look at the extraordinary videos and pictures she posts on her Instagram.
But it’s more than this. Unlike many celebrities I’ve met, there’s a genuine joy about Amanda that, I’m sure, has more to do with the way this funny, vibrant woman looks than any juice fast, boxing workout or hill climb could ever deliver.
AMANDA HOLDEN’S BundleBerry collection is available exclusively at qvcuk.com