Top of the podcasts

Fearne Cotton was on our screens over the festivities for the Christmas and New Year’s Day Top Of The Pops specials, but the presenter has taken a notiecable step back from television duties in recent years as she becomes more involved in building her Happy Place brand.

Having previously spoken about issues with panic attacks and anxiety, the 39-year-old mum has been focused on her mental health and passing on what she has learned to others who may also need guidance or advice.

She has written three selfhelp books – Happy, Calm and Quiet – over the past few years, recently released an album called Happy Place, which featured artists such as Lissie, Emeli Sande and Sam Fender performing original songs around the themes of mindfulness, self-care, hope, life, love and loss, and she has even established her own outdoors festival that focuses on physical and mental well-being.

Sitting alongside all of that is a popular podcast, Happy Place, which has now been running for eight series and reached 100 episodes before Christmas. The idea behind the series is to hear Fearne talk to people about life, love, loss and everything in-between as she uncovers what happiness means to them.

In the most recent episode, she chatted with Robbie Williams who, despite being the biggest pop star in the UK for a period of time, still could not find true happiness. He reveals it took him years to work out why, despite him seemingly having everything, he wasn’t happy.

Fearne also chats with England football manager Gareth Southgate in the latest run as well as bestselling author Gabby Bernstein.

It was hard to find anything to be happy about in 2020, but Fearne will demonstrate it is still possible to find inner happiness.