How TV’S happiest star made her fortune out of pants
Carol Smillie may have disappeared from British television, but that doesn’t mean she’s not been busy behind the scenes
When TV presenter Carol Smillie watched from backstage as her 18-yearold daughter Jodie performed in the blind audition round of The Voice aired last month on ITV, she was torn between fear and pride.
“It’s a brilliant experience,” she says, “great for confidence, but I understand these shows. It’s not a competition, it’s television. You don’t even get to meet the judges at this point. We never expected her to get through. No one shoots to the top of their profession via a talent show.”
What did concern 56-year-old Smillie, who lives with her husband, businessman Alex Knight, 51, near Glasgow, was how social media might react. “Because it can be horrible. People say such awful things.” However, she adds: “It was overwhelmingly positive – bar a few people assuming Jodie was only on because she was my daughter. Which just wasn’t true. The producers approached her after seeing a clip she put up on Youtube. I would hate people to think I was a pushy showbiz mum. I know nothing about the music or singing industry.”
Smillie, who has two other children – Christie, 22, and Robbie, 20 – does, however, know her showbiz: in a career spanning three decades, she has presented on numerous shows including Wheel of Fortune, Changing Rooms, The National Lottery Show, as well as her own morning chat show, Smillie’s
People. She has toured with the play Vagina Monologues, written a book (Carol Smillie’s Working Mum’s Handbook) and came fifth in the
2006 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
And then, suddenly, she was gone. The wide, knowing smile which always seemed to be on the viewer’s side rather than her TV colleagues had vanished. Having updated scores of British homes on Changing Rooms, Smillie was determined to remodel her own career.
“I knew my TV career was coming to an end, and I was prepared for that. It has been brilliant and I’m sure many would envy it, but you have to move on and give someone else their turn. I didn’t want to have to wait around for less interesting presenting work as I got older. I don’t like being at someone else’s whim. I like to have matters in my own hands.”
Were Smillie male, she knows that might not have been an issue. “Let’s not kid ourselves. A man could have hung around much longer than I was able to. And times are changing. It’s fantastic to see two women hosting Strictly. TV should be shaken up, and older presenters are better on the whole. They are more self-assured, calmer. They roll with the problems because they have experience. But I never gave consideration to older girls when I was younger, so I can’t bleat about it now.”
Instead, in 2012, Smillie took an unexpected turn, setting up her own business, producing knickers with a special design incorporating a waterproof panel to prevent period leaks and called it Diary Doll. Five years later, the brand has been renamed Pretty Clever Pants, and is aimed at solving any kind of leaky problem, with most pairs sold to older women who have stress incontinence.
The original idea had come from Smillie talking to her own teenage daughters on holiday. “They were worrying about going on sleepovers when their periods started, and I just thought: ‘This is ridiculous…’ We used to worry about leaks and bulky pads showing back in my day.
“We’re all quite used to shapewear and sports bras, but in this area, nothing had changed in years.”
Smillie began drawing up ideas of how a “smart pant” might work. She carried out a survey of teenage girls at three local schools, and learnt that more than 90per cent of adolescents were so worried during their periods, they avoided sport, sleepovers and light-coloured clothing at that point of the month: “It’s awful to think their lives are so controlled by anxiety.”
Her daughters wisely told her not to make branding obvious – “because then everyone would know, Mum,” they said. And that taboo of talking about leaks is what Smillie has become acutely conscious of. So
‘I never considered older women when I was younger, so I can’t bleat about it now’
much so that when she was invited on to ITV’S This Morning to talk about the underwear, she suddenly realised she was expected to share stories of her own incontinence.
“It was so frustrating,” she says, still a bit fed up two years later, “as I don’t suffer from bladder weakness. But I was put on the spot and didn’t want to deny it, because that would have made it look as though I thought it was shameful in some way. Which I don’t,” she emphasises.
“Stress incontinence is horribly taboo, yet it is nothing to be embarrassed about. I really felt for anyone watching, all those thousands of women who lose bladder control or maybe get heavy periods. It was sensationalising and finger-pointing for no reason. A cheap shot, not about helping to fix a problem.”
Showing how important the issue is, she points out, Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, has just talked about suffering stress incontinence as a new mother.
“It was so good for her to be honest and open about that. Women can feel very alone, and they don’t realise they can fix the problem. It’s never too late to start pelvic floor exercises.”
So where did Smillie’s inventive flair develop? Her father was an electrical engineer, but she says: “I don’t think it came from him. My parents were very traditional: mum at home with the children, dad going out to work. He was always into preparing things properly, not talking short cuts. But I’m the sort who throws the instructions away. I’m always in a rush.” She is not, however, in a hurry to start a new business. Pretty Clever Pants has just been licensed to highstreettv.com, a shopping channel, leaving Smillie free to start again.
“No,” she cries, “not another business. What I have learned has been amazing – but it’s been a lot of sleepless nights and we’ve spent a lot of our hard-earned cash. People talk of setting up a business and selling it for millions with no apparent effort. Well, that’s rubbish. Starting a business is one of the toughest things I have ever done.”
One of the compensations she found was how supportive women in business can be of each other, from helpful buyers at John Lewis and Boots – who didn’t mind if the former TV host couldn’t speak sales jargon – to Jacqueline Gold, CEO of Ann Summers, who responded to a tweet from Smillie (“How do you turn a taboo subject into a High St phenomenon?”) with lunch, advice and a day shadowing her marketing team.
When Smillie asked Gold why she was helping, Gold told her: “It’s hard out there in business for females. I’m more than happy to help other women.”
Smillie laughs. She still can’t quite believe how fortunate she has been at times. So how will the next life-makeover look – given that another business is not on the cards?
“I’ve no regrets about television, nothing left undone. I’ve been to Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, driven tanks in Germany… I’ve not been short-changed. I’m not one for plans – things happen, or they don’t. If one door closes, you open another one.”
All very optimistic, but surely something makes her frown? “I don’t like people who are rude, impolite or have a lack of manners. I really can’t bear it when someone chucks litter out of car windows. I do feel that there has been a loss of politeness in this generation… though I suspect my mother felt the same.”
But, she adds, if Generation Snowflake are over-cosseted, “that is our fault – the parents. We have to teach them that s--- happens.”