The weekend is for catching up on rest
Singer and reality TV star Megan tells Rick Fulton about her struggles with being a gluten-free teen and how she’s turned it into a success story she wants to share
We clock off early on a Friday. I’m going around everyone’s desks at 4.05pm going, “Come on. Log off now.”
My weekends are all about family. Growing up, we would eat fish on Fridays at my grandma’s and we’ve tried to keep that tradition. We sit down to eat dinner as a family. After, my sister might come round with her husband and their daughter, as well as my mum and dad. We’ll play a game or watch a film.
I’m a football mum, so I’ll try to get up early on
Saturday to go on my run before I take my son to training. Our two sons – Oliver, eight, and Charlie, five – are football mad, so my husband Simon takes one and I take the other. Afterwards, we reconvene at one of the parents’ houses and have brunch.
Saturday afternoons are when we will try to see friends. On Saturday night, now we’re coming into the nicer weather, we love to have people around for a barbecue. But the weekend is catching up on our rest more than anything, so we tend to put them to bed by 8.30pm so Simon and I can watch a film or Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
Sundays are football match mornings. When I was doing Strictly last year, I was always travelling home on a Saturday night. I could be getting back at 5am but I still wanted to be there to watch my boy playing on the Sunday morning.
We often have family round for a Sunday roast. The evening is homework and hair wash so they’re ready for the next day – I’ve turned into my mother! Sara Davies has teamed up with Hasbro for My First Monopoly Game, available from Smyths Toys, £21.99
IAGNOSED in her teens with coeliac disease – where your immune system attacks your own tissue when you eat gluten – and a wheat allergy, Megan McKenna knows the stigma that can come with a restricted diet. The 29-year-old, from Barking, who is a singer and a regular on reality TV shows, said: “People automatically think you’re fussy. They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re just one of them, you’re just gluten-free’. But no, actually, it can make me really, really ill. “With wheat, I get hives, allergic reactions. With the coeliac, it’s more of a lifelong autoimmune disease. So if I keep eating [gluten], in later life it can cause complications.” There’s no cure for the condition but Megan has learned to overcome the shame she used to feel about being different. She admitted: “I always used to say to my mum, ‘I wish I was normal’. “When you’re at school, you just want to have school dinners, you don’t really want to stand out, do you? I did feel a little bit like the odd one out. “But my mum has always been the most incredible cook, and has been able to cook for me from scratch. This is what I wanted to put across in the book: u don’t have to eat a salad, you don’t e to eat boring things. You can eat tries, you can eat cake.” Megan, who released her debut um Story of Me in 2018 and won a ord deal with Syco after winning The actor: Celebrity in 2019, has also appeared in Ex on the Beach, Celebrity Big Brother, The Only Way is Essex and last year’s Celebrity MasterChef, in which she made it to the final three but lost out to Paralympian Kadeena Cox.
Passionate about cooking, Megan has published Can You Make That Gluten-Free? – the culinary questions she gets asked the most.
It only came about because her plan to get into the studio and record a new album with Syco was curtailed by the
Covid pandemic. Instead of singing the high notes, she began sharing videos with her 2.4million Instagram followers and found her gluten-free recipes struck a chord.
In the handy new book, she shares the recipes she swears by, such as the fluffy, American-style pancakes that are her weekday breakfast go-to, the Sunday staple of beef and crispy roasties, and a host of colourful cakes and puds.
But she insisted: “The book isn’t just for allergy people.
“Some of the recipes in the book are naturally gluten-free anyway. That’s just how I cook.”
She cooked gluten-free on Celebrity MasterChef and was chuffed when “every single person on the judging panel said they would never know it was gluten-free”.
The show has given her renewed confidence about what she’s doing.
“I know I can make the food taste amazing, that’s why I’m so confident with this book,” she said.
“I honestly think it’s going to change people’s lives.”
Having guested on so many TV shows, would she like to front her own cooking series?
“That would be amazing,” she said. “I never know what’s in the pipeline but being able to make people realise you can eat amazing [gluten-free food] is my goal.” Music is her other big focus. After touring with Michael Ball and Alfie Boe in 2021, the singer is gearing up to release more music soon and hints at some “really exciting big things coming up”. Even putting her music plans with Simon Cowell’s record label on hold because of the pandemic is brushed off as something that turned into something better.
“Everything happens in a weird way,” she claimed on a Zoom call from her home in Essex.
“I’ve had time to do my writing and get all my material ready.
“It has held things back but that’s fine – it held the whole world back, not just me.”
The all-rounder relished being made to slow down.
She said: “I’ve been crazy for however many years I’ve been doing TV – seven or eight years. So to actually have time to do me... I was at home, I’m so lucky to have a lovely house with a garden.”
While she has split from her boyfriend Josh Riley after 20 months of dating and will only claim it was an “amicable break-up”, it’s looking like a big year for Megan, who has dated TOWIE’s Pete Wicks, Geordie Shore’s Scotty T and Magaluf Weekender’s Jordan Davies. She turns the big 3-0 in September. And she is excited about what the future holds.
Megan said: “I feel like my 30s are going to be the best time of my life. I feel like my 20s were a learning curve.
“I’ve done a lot in my 20s – a lot – and I feel like I’ve moulded into who I am now.”
She added: “I’ve learnt from all my mistakes, I’ve grown up, I’ve got my home. So, I think my 30s will be about living my dream.” Can You Make That Gluten-Free? by Megan McKenna is out now.