Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
WITH JAMES IT WASN’T MEANT TO BE, THE TIMING WASN'T RIGHT
Donna Air says she isn’t what you would call a ‘jobbing actress’. She might have started out as one – she was just a child when she got her first acting role, in Byker Grove alongside Ant and Dec – but in the three decades since, she’s become more famous as a presenter, personality and general socialite whose main role seems to be appearing in the gossip columns.
Every so often she does dip her toe back into the world of fictional TV, though. This time she’s back with quite a corker, having landed a part in the returning BBC drama The Split, joining a top-notch cast including Nicola Walker, Stephen Mangan and Frances Barber. The series, set in the world of the divorce lawyer, sees her play Fi, a glamorous celebrity who is trapped in a high-profile but miserable marriage, and with a suffocating pre-nuptial agreement in place. The role involves much wafting around, showing off an Instagram-enviable life in public, but also much weeping in private.
‘It’s a horrible marriage, a s**tshow,’ she says. ‘She’s got a terrible husband. He gaslights her. He’s a pathological liar, controlling and narcissistic. She starts to lose her mind. I mean, you think the one person you can trust is your husband, but that isn’t the case. She was a dream to play, though.’
Marriage gets a bit of a bum rap in general in this rather excellent drama. Clients are warring, desperate to escape their unions. The lawyers are cheating in their own marriages. The unrelenting message? Marriage is a messy business. Thank God, says Donna, she never succumbed herself.
‘It made me relieved I’m not married,’ she admits. ‘I’m so glad I’ve waited this long and I haven’t rushed down the aisle. My daughter, who’s 16, teases me about it. She’s desperate for me to get a husband but she does say that at least when I do it, it will be for keeps, and that if I’d married years ago I’d probably be on my second or third marriage by now. Some of my friends are.’
She jokes about the fact that there’s a family history of taking some time over the marriage question. ‘My mum is on her second marriage now but she only got remarried last year. She’d been with him for 22 years, though. The Air women aren’t known for rushing down the aisle. Yes, I probably would like to marry Mr Right, but I’m glad I didn’t marry the wrong man for the wrong reasons.’
If you only know about Donna through Hello! magazine, you might be surprised that she hasn’t hot-footed it up the aisle before now. Her life, outwardly, has seemed one big preparation for the sort of wedding that keeps high-society milliners in business. Previous highprofile partners have included multi-millionaire conservationist Damian Aspinall – the father of her daughter Freya – and James Middleton, brother of the Duchess of Cambridge.
Neither of those relationships worked out (we will come to that), but today, as we meet for lunch, the surprise is that she says she’s not actually that keen on weddings – not the big socialite ones anyway. ‘I don’t go to that many. I find them terribly boring. It’s such a long day, and there’s a lot of small talk. They’re not that exciting. Some of them go on for days too.’
But she does weddings so well! Back in 2017, when she seemed poised herself to marry into the Middleton clan, she was a guest at the society wedding of the year – that of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews. There she met that other happy couple, the not-then-engaged Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. She’s at pains to stress that this one did come under the ‘boring society wedding’ bracket. ‘I don’t think Pippa would want me talking about her wedding. There may have been people standing outside taking photos, but inside it was very much a private wedding, a genuine family wedding, and those ones are lovely.’
We are meeting at a time when the whole world is talking about the Harry and Meghan bombshell, and their decision to jack in royal duties for a new life in Canada. Having actually met them, and having some awareness of what life in the goldfish bowl is like, can she empathise? She can indeed. ‘I’ve met the prince and he’s lovely, but we did get our knickers in a right big old twist over this, didn’t we? They’re just going on an aeroplane, for goodness sake.
‘My mum said the other day that she was thinking of moving somewhere hot and I said, “Good for you, Mum, do it.” I’d have the same view with them. They seem a very nice couple. Why should they not have the best shot at their relationship, a bit of private time? I know a lot of people don’t feel like that but are we really bothered where they live? And they’re going to be making their own money, so they can do what they like. Yes, we love Harry but we don’t own him. They’re not our prisoners.’
Given half a chance, she’d go with them. ‘I would! Their new life sounds wonderful – outdoorsy and healthy. Good for them.’
Actually, this latest debacle has made her love Harry even more. ‘I think it’s quite amazing that he’s put his wife and child first. Isn’t that how we’re supposed to be? Shouldn’t most men put their wife and children
Yes, we love Harry but we don’t own him. They’re not our prisoners
first? I do think it’s an incredibly brave thing to do. But can you imagine if he didn’t? He’d be damned that way too. Don’t we all want a husband like Harry? Of course we do.’
In the flesh, Donna Air is great fun. Her presenting skills might have once led to her being dubbed Donna Airhead (her most famous gaffe was when she asked Irish band The Corrs, at the time perhaps the most famous siblings in the pop world, how they met), but there is nothing airheady about her today. She’s 40, smart and seemingly sorted. She is still, underneath the social gloss, a very down-to-earth Newcastle lass, although as has been pointed out, the accent comes and goes a bit.
She grew up in a two-bedroom house with a mum who was a BT receptionist and a dad who was a bus mechanic. In the past, much has been made about her humble Geordie roots, with general astonishment that one can go from them to moving in royal circles with apparent ease. She is (rightly) offended at this. ‘I always tell them, “People from Newcastle can go all sorts of places. They can even get on aeroplanes.”’
Her non-tv work does seem to involve endless charity fundraisers and hob-nobbing. She’s involved with the Elephant Family charity, whose royal presidents are Charles and Camilla, and is an adviser to a retail company that runs luxury shopping outlet Bicester Village. And she’s at pains to point out that it was not her ex James Middleton who opened the door into that society. She had highly connected friends before (Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are part of her circle). ‘He didn’t take me into any circles,’ she says. ‘We had mutual friends from the start. London is a small place. We all eat in the same restaurants, go to the same places.’ She sighs. ‘It’s not that much of a stretch, but the trouble is that if a woman has anything, people assume it has been given to her by a man.’
She was never supposed to be a damsel-in-waiting, though. She moved to London at the tender age of 15, having been offered a recording contract on the back of her Byker Grove success. Her parents, who are divorced, stayed up north. Although she had a chaperone (‘my London mum’), it was a brutal entry into a very adult world. Her own daughter recently signed a modelling contract, becoming the youngest model on the agency’s books. She admits she was torn. ‘But it’s a different world now. I had my share of having to bat off sleazy guys. It’s just how it was then. My daughter’s generation are in a completely different environment. They wouldn’t stand for that.’
She was a pop star for a bit, then landed a dream job as a presenter on MTV. There was a stint on The Big Breakfast which seemed to be putting her on the same trajectory as her old mates Ant and Dec. No, they aren’t still in touch to the same degree, but she has watched their careers – and personal ups and downs – with interest. Was she surprised to learn about Ant’s welldocumented addiction issues? She shrugs. ‘I’m never surprised. You just don’t know what’s going on with anybody. People have all sorts of struggles. Us Brits can get judge-y about it, but are you going to punish anyone for having an illness?’
While Ant and Dec were born presenters, she says she wasn’t. ‘I’m happier acting. I like not being me for a bit. You can lose yourself in a good part.’
She’s rather good in her latest role, holding her own against some of the most respected names in the business. She’s dipped in and out of acting over the years, but admits today that although it’s her ‘first love, and the thing I’m most passionate about’, she never considered it would be her mainstay. ‘I thought that acting was a young person’s game and that the roles would dry up as I got older. Actually, I was wrong. Things have changed and there are brilliant roles for women of my age now.’
Back then, she was part of the young and beautiful set. She hung about with the likes of Kate Moss and Sadie Frost, and when she was 21 was introduced (by Tara Palmertomkinson) to the person she thought would be her husband, Damian Aspinall, son of the conservationist and wildlife park owner John Aspinall, and a man worth £42 million. A whirlwind romance followed, and home became Howletts, the grand Palladian mansion in Kent. She was 24 when she had their daughter Freya. The couple were together for six years and – in her eyes – as good as married. People even used to call her Mrs Aspinall. Damian, though, had been married before and famously said that rich men should stay single. She admits that she want to marry him – though never for the money. ‘That’s no reason to marry, is it?’ she says. ‘But there was definitely a moment when I wanted to marry Damian.’
That split was one of the great heartbreaks of her life. She says she’s been in love ‘probably three times in my life, deeply in love’ and came close to marriage ‘a couple of times, but I couldn’t do it, and I
haven’t done it, so I have to accept the universe had a different plan’.
She and Damian now co-parent Freya, and successfully so. ‘I think our situation does prove it can come right in the end. We are good friends. I’ve said that in the past when it wasn’t entirely true, but we’ve reached a place where it works for us. You don’t get everything you want in life and it didn’t work out – I know Freya hoped it would, every child wants their parents to be together – but I’m lucky with Damian. I know a lot of women who don’t have an active, reliable, present father in their child’s life, and I do. But it can be the luck of the draw.’
Damian has since married, though, which must rankle. She insists not. ‘I’m happy for him. We are still family.’ Do they do a Rod Stewart and all go on holiday or have Christmases together? She smiles. ‘No. You’ve got to have boundaries. I don’t think any wife would want the ex on holiday.’
Then came another high-profile romance. She was with James Middleton for five years, quite a stint. He too, though, is off down the aisle with someone else. He announced his engagement to French girlfriend Alizee Thevenet in October. ‘With James it wasn’t meant to be, but we were together for five years and he’s a great guy, we had a lot of fun. I wish him nothing but happiness.’ So what went wrong? ‘The timing wasn’t right.’
Then there was an 18-month relationship with yet another posh boy, Harrow-educated property developer Ben Carrington. She’s now been single for six months, the longest time she’s ever been on her own. Actually, her life seems quite perfect as it is. ‘It’s quite liberating, but it’s also nice to share things. I mean my life is not empty. I don’t need to be in a relationship. I function well on my own, but I probably would still like to get married at some point. Why would you not?’
Some day her prince might come, then, but she says, ‘God knows where he’ll be from, because when you get that flutter in your heart it could be from anywhere.’ She confides that in her Byker Grove days she was smitten with Ant. ‘He was my first crush, but he was with someone else,’ she says. ‘I’ve still got a bit of a crush on both Ant and Dec, hasn’t everyone?’ How history might have been rewritten, had she and Ant teamed up. She roars with laughter. ‘Maybe I should have married Ant, found a nice lad from Newcastle. It’s not too late. I could still end up marrying a plumber from Newcastle.’
The Split returns 11 February, 9pm, BBC1.