The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
My Saturday
Darcey Bussell
Former Strictly judge Darcey Bussell on the joys of gardening and skipping
The former Strictly judge, 51, on competitive family skipping, making clothes for her daughters and getting creative in the kitchen
8am We live near Wimbledon Common and I walk our two spoodles, Lolly and Pop, before it gets too busy. If my daughters are home I have a late breakfast with them – soft-boiled eggs and avocado on toast. 10am I’ve never been a gardener, but I’ve been revamping ours and have become slightly obsessed with going to garden centres. If it wasn’t lockdown, I’d be doing an event for my dance-fitness programme for schools, Diverse Dance Mix. Last September, when restrictions weren’t so tough, I filmed a lovely TV series about the islands off the west coast of Scotland and they blew me away – I can’t wait to go back with my family. 1.30pm To burn off frustrations, we’ve been doing a skipping challenge every afternoon: we count how many cross skips we can do. My husband Angus [a businessman] is beating me and our youngest daughter Zoe, 16. Our eldest, Phoebe, 19, is locked down at university where she’s studying politics and international affairs. 3pm We have a late lunch. I’ve been getting imaginative with ready-made puff pastry, making cheese swirls, mushroom tarts and chocolate and cinnamon swirls. 4pm Lockdown has been an opportunity to get my sewing machine out. My daughters are quite creative with their fashion and we’ve had a lot of fun making them unique things to wear. 5pm My parents live in France, and my brother and my husband’s family are in Australia, but the pandemic has meant we’ve been making an effort to chat each week and send ridiculous pictures all the time. 7.30pm Saturday is a takeaway night. Both my daughters are vegetarians and my husband, being an Australian, loves his meat, but we all like Asian fusion food – I’ll order a spicy tuna bowl. I’m not a big drinker but I do enjoy a glass of pinot noir. 8.30pm We’ve been having movie nights at home. On New Year’s Eve, we watched Frozen and got dressed up as the characters – even the dogs got involved. 9.30pm My guilty pleasure is chocolate – I have a couple of squares of dark chocolate with a cup of jasmine and green tea every night. 10.30pm I’m addicted to sudoku and do one before bed.