I was a ropey mum but us all living in lockdown together under the one roof has been fabulous
Home invasion helped Anne Robinson strengthen bond
Richard Simpson
Stopping off on the school run to buy her daily fix of vodka, Anne Robinson glanced at her small daughter Emma to see her eyes brimming with tears.
In that moment, the TV presenter knew she had to stop drinking.
Fast-forward four decades and The Weakest Link star, 76, says her family life today couldn’t be more different after lockdown presented an unexpected and wonderful opportunity for her and Emma – her daughter with ex-husband Scottish journalist and former Times editor Charles Wilson – to spend time together.
In March, broadcast journalist Emma, 49, fled London to her mother’s home in the Cotswolds with her advertising film director husband Liam Kan, 56, kids Hudson, 11, and Parker, 10, and two large dogs – and stayed for almost six months.
Anne said: “It is years since we spent so much time under the same roof. It was a pretty powerful experience.
“It gave Emma and I a chance to see what went into each other’s day-to- day routines. She’s veryery big on ‘to do’ lists. Her mother generally y likes to wing it.
“It made me appr e c i a t e how much she and Liam put in to bringing up my grandchildren. n. I don’t think until ntil we sat back and thought hought about this summer,mer didwequitedidwequite grasp what had happened to us. The first few weeks felt like an invasion. Emma put up notices saying, ‘ Cello lesson in progress. Please be quiet!’
“We really did have to readjust. I live on my own and I don’t expect someone to barge in and say, ‘ You’re not having another siesta!’ “She bossed me around like her children a nd t he i r puppy. After a while, we adapted enough to tolerat e our differences and laugh at them. Soon we got to a stage when it was fabulous.”
It is very dif ferent from her early experiences of being a mum.
“I had a fairly ropey start to motherhood with a serious drink problem,” Anne admitted. “I managed to get sober by the time Emma was eight. But it took quite a few years to feel properly normal.”
Anne detailed her struggles in bestselling 2001 autobiography The Memoirs of an Unfit Mother. After she got sober, her career as a newspaper journalist then a TV personality took off. She became the host of quiz show The Weakest Link and became known as the Queen of Mean.
Six months after the show aired in the UK, NBC bought the rights to the quiz to be shown in America and kept AnnAnne as host – something that had never happened with a BritBritish show before – pushing her eearnings into the millions.
AfAfter school, Emma moved to New YYork to study film and stayed there for the next two decades.
In 11990, Anne and Charles bought their daughterd an apartment on Fif th Avenue. And when NBC promopromoted The Weakest Link, Emma ended uup looking at 40ft billboards off hher motherh in Times Square.
Anne said: “Emma very much likes to keep her life apart from my showbiz image. When The Weakest Link was first shown, a friend dropped by and said, “Why on earth have you got a photograph of that Anne Robinson on your wall?’”
In 2006, after Anne’s second marriage to journalist John Penrose ended, she bought her barn in Gloucestershire.
She said: “The children adore it here. We hate Sunday nights when they have to pack up and go. But suddenly lockdown came along and there was no packing up.”
Now, as long as the PM allows it, they are hoping to spend Christmas together.
“Christmas will be big,” Emma said. “Mum will be going all out.”
Does she feel any animosity for those tumultuous early years?
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Emma said. “I love her completely. I admire her. Not a week goes by when I don’t think, if I have done something right, who taught me that? It’s monkey see, monkey do.”
Anne added: “You learn what is worth fighting for, and what you can change and can’t change. Relationships get so much easier if you put the effort in.”
She bossed me like around children her and their puppy