‘I DIDN’T REALISE THAT MY WHOLE IDENTITY WAS TIED UP IN MY WORK’
wasted my boobs for all these years. I should have got them out more – it’s too late now.’
It’s impossible not to cackle along with the redhead, although the way the camera seems to lap her up on set at our photo shoot suggests that nothing in her life is late at all; rather, her career is building nicely towards who knows what peak?
Motherhood, though, has been a rockier ride, as she will later explain.
Angela, 36, from Ratoath in Co Meath, began her TV career in Dublin, after her work in clothes shops and as a personal shopper – combined with her gift of the gab – led to her being asked to appear as a style pundit. She has since presented The One Show, Robot Wars and worked on The Voice, as well as creating her own documentaries – in fact, her career was kickstarted by Oi Ginger!, in which she sought to ‘explore gingerism as the last remaining acceptable prejudice’, she says, laughing again.
At 30, she married her boyfriend Roy
Horgan, who runs his own tech company, and, she says, after such a busy time working in Dublin, ‘when I rocked up the aisle I basically had to say, “Hi, do you remember me?” He was trying to close a round of funding on his first business; I was travelling so much and pretending to producers that I already lived in London when we couldn’t yet afford to, and kept sneaking back home.’
After moving to London and finally buying a house, and with Angela – who grew up one of four sisters – already becoming an auntie, it seemed like the right time to start a family. Yet the reality of having a baby sent her reeling – she didn’t even fully understand that she was giving birth.
‘I knew I had the bump, knew we’d bought the cot and I had my labour plan – but I wasn’t really thinking about the next 18 frigging years. So when we went to the hospital with me eight centimetres dilated and asked them what was going to happen, they were like, “You’re going to have a baby.” And I was like, “What, now? No! I don’t even have an overnight bag!”
It was as if I hadn’t quite connected the two – it just hadn’t landed with me, you know?’
Having spent so many years building her name, constantly on the move and ticking the boxes of success, Angela says she found it hard to surrender to the helplessness a baby puts in front of you.
‘I didn’t realise that my whole identity was tied up in my work. Always reaching for things – if I can get to that other job, to that next gig, then I’ll be all right. Always looking forward, no matter how far I had come. In my little book of things I wanted to do, I had done quite a lot of them. So then you have this amazing little human and you’re supposed to feel pretty good and…’ she pauses, her voice turning quieter at the memory of it, ‘I didn’t really.
‘Social media had given me a sense that everybody had it all figured out, that the baby comes and then you’re in this glorious little love bubble. Well, I was scrambling. Suddenly you’re literally stuck on the couch. You know the line, “A baby is born but a mother is born as well”? I think we put pressure on ourselves that we should know exactly what to do, but I felt like a giant baby myself.
‘It took a long time for me to give myself a break and realise, “OK, you’re not supposed to know what you’re doing here. You learn with her.” And I think that has been a theme for me, because I’ve never really allowed myself to be an amateur at anything.’
She wonders if there was a certain Irish pressure in her predicament, especially when, from the outside, her life looked so perfect. There is always ‘that sense of, “Come on, you have everything you wanted; you made your bed, now lie in it.” There’s very little nuance. But you can also feel a lurching sense of loss when you become a mother.’
What has helped? Learning to be right there, in the room, breathing. ‘Learning to get lost in her, in the present, without thinking, “Right, what am I supposed to be doing?” It’s like a little meditation, you know?’
She brightens her tone. ‘But some people do feel that on the day they give birth. Good for them! Delighted for you,’ she adds, with a wicked hint of mischief. ‘I breathed it out through a golden thread,’ she says, impersonating the sort of earth mothers one might read about on Goop. ‘Well, I was too late for an epidural so I was chugging on that gas and air like it was going out of fashion.’
Two years later she’s in great spirits and in love with her daughter, whose name and face she and Roy try to keep private. But they are still slightly in shock: ‘We’re still figuring it out.’
As for social media, you might see the tiniest glimpse of their little girl in Angela’s public photos, ‘so it’s funny when we meet people we know and they say, “My God, I can see her face! I’ve only seen the back of her head until now.” I don’t think there’s a wrong or a right answer to all of that, though – whatever