Konnie Huq: “I still think I’m in my twenties!”
TV presenter Konnie Huq, who shot to fame on Blue Peter before signing up to host The X Factor’s spin-off show, reflects on her showbiz career and why she’s focused on family life
‘Our kids are the icing on the cake’
She landed the coveted role presenting Xtra Factor in 2010 at the height of the show’s success, but Konnie Huq reveals she’s no longer in touch with her former boss, Simon Cowell.
The 44-year-old TV host, who replaced Holly Willoughby when she departed the spin-off show for This Morning, reveals, “I haven’t heard from Simon for a while because he ditched his phone.
“I loosely hear from him through other people, but since having kids I’m just so bad at keeping in touch with anyone. Simon met my eldest boy who is now eight when he was a baby.”
Konnie shot to fame on Blue Peter and became the show’s longest-serving female presenter from 1997 to 2008.
She now juggles motherhood with writing children’s books, but recently stepped back into TV life to help her husband of ten years, Charlie Brooker, 49. The creator and presenter of BBC Four’s Screenwipe, Charlie produced a one-off TV show on life under lockdown from their family home called Antiviral Wipe.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Konnie – who recently revealed she hasn’t bought clothes in ten years because she’s still the same size she was when she was 18 – says, “We converted our front room into the Screenwipe set.
“The kids and I got cameos in it, so it’s a real family affair. It’s a good job that I have a background in television because I was doing the autocue, I helped to do the set, I made some props, I did hair and make-up – I’ve even had to learn to use the hair clippers to give him a haircut!”
Konnie describes their two sons, Covey, eight, and Huxley, six, as “the icing on the cake” in their relationship, but children weren’t always on the cards for one half of the celebrity couple.
“Charlie is a really good dad, which is funny because he never wanted kids – before he met the right person, obviously,” Konnie laughs. “When he was younger I think he thought, ‘That’s not for me,’ and then he knew he had to have kids to keep the gene pool going.
FUN FAMILY UNIT
“I’d never say never to another, but I’m not going to try to have a third. I really like our family unit – we work well together and we have fun. But I’m sure everyone says that until they have another one and then that works just as well with a new dynamic.”
She may be taking a back seat when it comes to TV, but Konnie is regularly reminded of her Blue Peter heyday and finds it hard to believe it’s been more than two decades since she landed her big break at 22 to become the first Asian presenter on the BBC show.
She recently said, “I still have people now in their
20s or 30s going, ‘I never saw Asians in that role, or even black people’. You end up going through a thing where people may get called ‘token’, but you have to have people doing it first for it to become the norm.”
Looking back to her youth, she adds, “I literally am in denial that I’m not still in my 20s. I got an invite to my 20-year school reunion and went, ‘This must be a mistake’ and, ‘I’m not that old!’. People come up to me and I’ll presume they’re the same age as me and they say, ‘We grew up with you on Blue Peter’ and I’m like, ‘Nooo, it can’t be!’ I perpetually think I’m in my 20s.”
● Konnie Huq is launching the Recycle Your Electricals ‘Little Spring Clean’ project. See www. recycleyourelectricals.org.uk