Jennifer Zamparelli Donal O’donoghue chats to the host of a new family quiz show
After a soul-searching year, Jennifer Zamparelli is back on the box with a new quiz show, Home Advantage. She talks to Donal O’donoghue about quitting Twitter, life lessons learned and minding herself
It’s just after noon on a recent Friday: another week done, another weekend looming. Radio and TV broadcaster Jennifer Zamparelli is zipping from the Radio Centre in RTÉ to a hotel to do a rehearsal for her new TV quiz show, Home Advantage. She has just wrapped her 2FM morning show, her head is (I’m guessing) buzzing and she has totally forgotten our interview. Yikes! “And I have a rehearsal in half an hour,” says Jennifer or is it Jenny or Jen or Jayzee? (I plump for Jenny) Can she talk now? Can she talk fast? Yep and yep and so we beat on, against the clock, questions fired out like clay pigeons in a erm, rapid-fire, quiz show. So starter for two: How did she get to host the family quiz show Home Advantage? “They asked me,” says Jenny simply – they being production company Loosehorse for RTÉ, whose newest quiz show is tailored for these times, which pits families against each other and where the emphasis is on fun. “In the last few months, I’ve really begun to appreciate the importance of light entertainment,” says Zamparelli. “To be honest, I never thought I’d go down this road, but when I did Dancing (with the Stars) I just loved it so much. The fact that everyone – from grannies to five-year-olds, could watch that show together was something I loved. Home Advantage is another one of those shows: a family quiz show, three people in studio, families at home, families of all shapes and sizes from across the country getting involved.” Flip through her CV and Jennifer Zamparelli might seem the unlikely face (and mouth) of a family show. Or at least, she was before Dancing with the Stars changed so much. Zamparelli, then known as Jennifer Maguire, made her name on The Apprentice, touting herself as ‘the best saleswoman in Europe’ before Alan Sugar fired her seven weeks in. Back in Ireland, she was the terror of the red carpet on Republic of Telly, and One Night Stand pushed the envelope further. Bridget & Eamon showed her chops as an actor and writer and her time on 2FM’S Breakfast Republic led to her own radio show in 2019. Not to mention raising a young family with husband, Lauterio, and reaching a milestone birthday during a pandemic. Something’s got to give, right?
“I absolutely lost my mind turning 40,” Zamparelli told Deirdre O’kane in a TV interview last year, recalling how that significant birthday in April 2020 prompted panic attacks. Nearly a year on, how is she? “I’m much more comfortable in my 40s than when I was turning 30,” she says. “So in that respect, it was better, but it is a milestone and like I said on Deirdre’s show, I ended up asking myself some massive questions like ‘Where am I going?’ and ‘What am I doing?’. You’re wondering should I be doing this ’cos I’m turning 40?’. It’s like ‘Sh*t, am I halfway there or what’s the story?’ So there was a lot of self-reflection but I just got myself a glass of wine and chilled out.”
Well, not entirely. Zamparelli did seek professional help, going to a psychotherapist, easing back on her workload, quitting Twitter in January, getting out into nature more (“I bought a pair of hiking boots”) and learning not to say yes to everything. “I’m doing much better now,” she says. “I’ve taken a lot of steps to mind myself. I came off Twitter and am limiting myself to Instagram. With my job it’s important to stay informed, but not consumed. Before I was consumed by the news and what was going on and it was too much. It wasn’t doing me any favours mentally. You’ll get the news anyway, whether you want to or not.”
In that interview with O’kane, Zamparelli also spoke about being bullied at school, paralysed with fear in the toilets after being picked on for wearing a duffle coat. I would have thought she’d have been the toughie, someone not to be messed with? “Sure, I had a big bleeding mouth and I was a huge target,” she says. “I couldn’t shut up. For me it was wearing a duffle coat but it can be anything. It’s that gang mentality and kids being kids.” Her revelations triggered feedback from others with their own stories. “Everyone is vulnerable and more needs to be done. Talking about it is the first step, saying yes it happened to me and it was awful. But my biggest fear for my kids is for them to be bullied or even worse for them to be the bullies.”
At the beginning of this year, Zamparelli took two weeks off to “decompress” as she put it. How helpful was that? “It was just two weeks Donal!” she says and laughs. “Two weeks of a holiday, gimme a break. Isn’t that what people normally do on holidays, take a rest? I was at home gardening with the kids and making banana bread.” Why delete her Twitter account? “I was bored looking at people fight and that didn’t make me feel good any more. I kept convincing myself that I needed to be on it because of my job, which is totally not true. (Twitter) wasn’t making me feel good and I figured let’s just eliminate those things that don’t make me feel good.” Does she worry about the impact of social media on her young children, Florence and Enzo? “Ah yes, but we’re the experiment, they will be well clued in. They are all into Snapchat now which is messages and pictures deleted straight away. We are the fecking eejits leaving stuff up forever. So I’m not as pessimistic about the future as I was. You have to be positive.” And you can sense her striving for the upside. “Getting out into nature has been a godsend for me. It sounds so basic but it has made the world of difference. Now I’ve become a bit of a hiking nerd and bought myself all the gear, hiking boots and the rest. Although I have yet to get the walking sticks. Maybe I’ll get them for the 42nd birthday.”
The Apprentice was a terrifying experience
I had a big bleedin’ mouth and I was a huge target
If she has one regret, it was probably missing out on college. After school, she left home in Baldoyle (the youngest, by a stretch, of six) to carve out a career as a businesswoman in London. “I made £60,000 in six months” she proclaimed on The Apprentice, her big mouth striking again. So if she were to go back to college, what would she like to do? “God. I’d probably do a cookery course because I’m brutal at cooking,” she says. “I think my husband would appreciate that. But who knows what I’d do? I get these questions all the time like what would you like to do next and what’s next after that and what’s next then and I’m thinking,’ Jesus Christ, can I just do what I’m doing at the moment? That’s what I am.”
So what did she learn from her experience on The Apprentice (she was typecast by the media as an ‘ice maiden’ while an ex sold his story of their love life to The News of the World)? “Everything is a stepping stone,” she says. “The Apprentice taught me about business in a weird way and also made me very wary of the whole reality TV industry. That was a terrifying experience. And now I look at the young people on shows like Love Island and it is worrying because some of them don’t seem to know what they are letting themselves in for. I just hope that the networks have systems in place to look after them when they come out because it’s a lot worse now. With social media, people are so vulnerable.”
In 2019, after years of being part of the Breakfast Republic team on 2FM , Zamparelli got to helm her own show. “I missed the whole Gerry Ryan era because I was away for those years,” she says of the late broadcaster who was the King of that morning radio slot in his day. “If I have even half of his success, I’ll be happy.” So what are her ambitions for her own show? “To get better,” she begins. “To be . . . I don’t know. With radio, it can take years to find your voice and then to bed in. I’ve found my voice, I know what I like and what I don’t like and I have an excellent team.” Is she tough on herself? “Yes,” she says. “After every show, I think that it can be better. It’s also important to have a team that tells you when you’re crap.”
I suspect Jenny Zamparelli is unafraid to tell that to herself.