‘My children can’t believe I ever took drugs’
Mariella Frostrup, who returns with a new series of Radio 4’s parenting show ‘Bringing up Britain’, tells Margarette Driscoll about her own family dynamics
Mariella Frostrup is determined to be honest with her children – Molly, 13 and Dan, 12 – so when asked about drugs, she admitted to having tried cannabis and cocaine. But far from being impressed at the revelation, or her single life as a party girl hanging out with Mick Jagger and George Clooney, “my kids just look at me… they are flabbergasted by the idea that I might have once been considered in any way racy,” she laughs.
“As far as drugs are concerned, I don’t think they really believe I know anything. They think I’m making it up and that I’ve asked someone more interesting what to say.
“Children are great levellers,” she adds, ruefully.
“I don’t know how anyone gets inflated ideas of themselves when they’ve got children around to point out their flaws.”
There’s something almost childlike – or at least teenager-like – about Frostrup, with her fresh face and tiny frame, casual plimsolls and pretty, flower-sprigged dress (made by Pearl Lowe, indie band singer turned seamstress, one of her fashionable neighbours in Somerset). If she’s feeling middle-aged, over-burdened and stressed, she hides it well: it’s hard to believe Frostrup is 55.
This weekend is an odd one, the first she has spent alone in… well, she can’t remember how long. Molly has gone away with a friend’s family to Italy, Dan to Ibiza, and Jason (Mccue, her human rights lawyer husband) is travelling to America for work. “The kids have never been away at the same time,” she says. “It certainly does feel strange, but it’s just them getting older. I am going to have to get used to it.”
Whether she opts to stay home in Somerset or at her flat in west London, she has plenty to take her mind off the empty nest. Before heading off on holiday next week, the TV and radio presenter, who is said to have “the sexiest voice on television”, has to complete editing an anthology of female explorers and a documentary about the menopause, and is mid-recording a new series of Bringing Up Britain, in which she talks to families, parenting experts and academics about issues affecting the family, including gender, the best age to start a family, manners and discipline – and how to cope with the long summer holidays.
It’s the 11th series of this surprise hit for Radio 4, which kicks off with Parenting in the Smartphone Age, a look at the ongoing struggle over screen time. Her son is “glued” to Fortnite, the most popular online game for 8-18 year olds, she laments, while her daughter has to be prised away from her phone: “I noticed the other day that she now carries her phone in her hand all the time. That, to me, is dependency.”
Like most parents, Frostrup lurches between strictness and hypocrisy. She insists the children put down their phones at 8pm (“They’ve got quite good at it, I think they just can’t be bothered with the fight any more”), but the other night,
‘My kids just look at me… they are flabbergasted that I might once have been considered racy’
alone at the London flat, she sat in bed with her iphone, googling and tweeting until 1am. “I was like a naughty schoolchild,” she says. “At home, I’m in bed by 10pm, read for half an hour, then go to sleep. [But] it’s just so easy to get carried away.
“Jason is the worst, though, he’s really appalling for always being on his phone but he’s ‘working’ so it’s OK. Try telling that to a grumpy teenager who feels they are being denied their rights.”
Recent research has found that one third of eight to 11-year-olds now have a phone, with that number rising to 80 per cent among 12 to 15-year-olds. Frostrup can see the benefits as well as the dangers of social media: “Molly left her school in London aged eight, but she can still tell me what her classmates are doing, so that sense of interconnectedness is real.”
Conversely for Frostrup, who was born in Norway but grew up in rural Ireland from the age of six, “when I was a child, if you moved a mile down the road from a friend that was it.”
For all she complains about Dan playing Fortnite, in which players land on a small island and battle to survive with guns and grenades, “he’s there in our TV room with his headset, playing against friends who live all over Somerset.
“So there is a sense in which I’d rather he was playing something interactive like that than sitting in a room on his own, but there definitely is an addictive quality to it.”
Girls reportedly suffer more frequently from the various anxietyled issues associated with social media. “But haven’t we always been more socially active and more insecure than boys?” she says.
“Girls have emotional relationships a lot earlier, not just with boys but with their friends. Instant chats [online conversations in which comments disappear after a few minutes] are like rolling news – if you’re not online for five minutes you’ve missed out.
“It doesn’t help that so much of all our lives is centred on this little object,” she continues. “If I say to Molly, ‘We’re in the car, put your phone down and talk to me,’ she says, ‘But I’m playing music for us,’ and I think ‘OK, but can you not check your messages while choosing the next song?’ You’re constantly trying to get their attention back.”
Depressingly for Frostrup, one the experts on Bringing up Britain’s smartphone panel suggests that if you want to get your children away from the phone, you have to offer them something equally exciting – and these days, that’s unlikely to be a book. Frostrup sighs: despite her lifelong devotion to literature (she is the presenter of The Book Show on Sky Arts and Radio 4’s Open Book, and always has four or five books on the go), her son finds reading a bore.
“When I was a child, reading was my escape,” she says. “If I wanted to get away from my parents, from school, from friend problems, from boyfriend problems… even now if I want to get away from everything I pick up a book and shut the door. Reading takes you into someone else’s world. On the phone, you’re meeting people just like yourself.
“It’s the same on Twitter, you’re in place where she could escape, and Somerset’s green serenity helps recharge her batteries.
Not that it’s such a quiet life down there, near Bruton, which has become a magnet for celebrities: Cameron Mackintosh, Sam Taylorjohnson, Rhys Ifans and Alice Temperley live nearby.
Even so, it makes for less harried family life which, at 39, Frostrup had all but given up on. That was until she met Jason on a trek to Nepal: they married two years later, and the children followed in quick succession. “The pleasure of having children in your 40s can’t be overstated,” she says with a smile.
Two “ridiculous” dogs complete their family unit – a Yorkie Poo and a Yorkie Maltese Poo called Bam! and Katyusha, after the Russian-made missile.
“My husband and my son said if we were going to have small, fluffy dogs, they had to have powerful names,” she laughs.
Last weekend, her brother got married nearby – and for once, smartphones didn’t take centre stage. “It was the most idyllic day,” she says. “Everyone was jumping in the river and swimming and chatting and lying in the sun, all generations together.
“On days like that I just can’t believe my luck.”